I personally wouldn't call it a tragedy. No way google did this to "serve humanity", they see a way to make money on this. 10-20 years down this road, and the only way to access this knownledge would be to subscribe to some service.
Yeah, the article discusses this point a lot—the argument in favour being that's it's better to have _some_ imperfect access to out-of-print books than none at all. But yes, your point is ultimately a big part of why the project didn't happen