I like this bit about the way that Google is skewing research away from books:

Google is beginning to have a subtle, but noticeable effect on research. More and more scholarly publications are putting up their issues in PDF format, which Google indexes as though they were traditional Web pages. But almost no one is publishing entire books online in PDF form. So, when you’re doing research online, Google is implicitly pushing you toward information stored in articles and away from information stored in books. Assuming this practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you’re better off publishing a PDF file on the Web than landing a book deal.

The answer, of course, is just to start publishing books online for free. Seems obvious to me. Amazon has started doing it, but not in an especially useful way. But it’s a start. I remember also seeing a Google test feature a while ago where they were publishing full-text indexes of certain books. I’ll have to look for it. This quote was from Digging for Googleholes: Google may be our new god, but it’s not omnipotent.