The monopoly doesn't exist because Google is trying to force other people out; it exists because no other company is willing to take the expense/risk to do it themselves.
Incorrect grammar. Should read: "Google, in acceding to the Authors Guild's requests, has attained a legal near-monopoly on searching and distributing the majority of books ever published."
Company names should always be referred to in the singular object form, as in "it", not "they" or "them".
Mr. Doctorow, is Boing Boing hiring any editors? ;)
The University of Nottingham (which is most certainly British) has this in its style guide: "similarly, use the company is rather than the company are" [1]
The Economist (a publication of a British company) has a style guide that has this gem: "A government, a party, a company (whether Tesco or Marks and Spencer) and a partnership (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill) are all it and take a singular verb. So does a country, even if its name looks plural." [2]
[1] http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/public-affairs/uon-style-book/si...
[2] http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=...
With this deal, Google's dominance in search engine market is even more secure than it has been. We don't want yet another monopoly, even a purportedly benevolent one.
To compensate Google for the cost of scanning all these books, perhaps the publishers and author's guild should force Google to license the scanned version to other companies at a 'fair' price, which they also need to agree upon.
