>The thrilling thing about Google Books, it seemed to me, was not just the opportunity to read a line here or there; it was the possibility of exploring the full text of millions of out-of-print books and periodicals that had no real commercial value but nonetheless represented a treasure trove for the public.

I had the same excitement as the author when Google Books came out. The service has stagnated over the years. Reading snippets is such a frustrating experience (you cannot even cut and paste the text). Even the books where one can buy an ebook is not available for some countries. Many times it is quicker to search on archive.org to find related books digitized by Microsoft.

We still have a long way to go where knowledge can be distributed at low cost and in abundance ...