"Pay for Google?" part 2*

Let's assume Google has scanned and indexed *every* book ever published. How much would you pay to search and read them all (i.e. without limitations)?

part 1: http://blogoscoped.com/forum/82804.html

I'm not going to buy scanned books from Google.

I'm going to borrow books from the library or buy them from local bookstores. I like books that I can touch and carry around. I don't want to read books on the computer screen or print the scanned pages one by one.

I'm so sad that everything's becoming so... how do I put it... "less human".

If, in the near future, the only books are "scanned" books online by Google, I'd pay $1-5/book. $1-5/book is probably a reasonable price since they wouldn't have costs like shipping and warehousing. Hmmm..selling books online would save many trees. If I had to pay a yearly fee, I'd pay $40! (... I'm a "starving" student.) LOL

Wow, I'd love to be able to search through all that. Like Jenny, I wouldn't want to read it on the screen, but it would be great for research, quoting, finding quotes, finding ideas, finding mentions and so on.

Hard to put a price tag on this though. Maybe $200 for lifetime subscription? :)

<<Maybe $200 for lifetime subscription?>>
GoogleKillerBot will hunt you down. [Reference: Pg.174 – 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google]

Some interesting questions related to the original one are:
- How much would the editors want to be payed to let Google do it?
- Let's assume that you should find all the books in a free, illegal way (p2p). Would you pay Google Book? It would search quick, while you searching a word in every book published in your single machine would be not *that* fast... (Could this search be distributed in a p2p network too?)

For the moment, Google Book Search is a good way to find books you wouldn't have found otherwise. After that, it's up to you how you obtain the books (buy them from a book store, borrow from the library or find them on the web).