[Corpora-List] Something to think about: metadata in Google Books

[chris brew]

Google is a company. How much will providing a service for scholars increase
value for
Google's shareholders? It surely depends on what the business model is. It
could be that
ad placement close to Google Scholar search results is effective. Or that by
exercising the
technology on Scholar, techniques are developed that produce big money in
other domains.
I am sure Google knows. Everything will be costed and measured. Metadata
improvements
have both a cost and a value for the provider, as well as a value for the
user, and somewhere
a balance is struck. It is definitely not obvious that the level of metadata
quality that Google is
willing to provide will be tightly aligned with either

- what scholars say that they need
- what scholars would actually accept as an imperfect solution preferable to
the status quo ante
- how scholars would spend the resources that Google allocates to metadata

but it is pretty likely that it is tightly aligned with

- what Google can measure about the effect of metadata quality on search
behavior,
- how Google can monetize search behavior


On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Paul Johnston <
paul.johnston at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

> The key is the line:
>
> "But whether or not the needs of scholars are a priority"
> Google is a company, companies are there to increase the value for their
> shareholders.
> How much will the scholars pay?
> The End!
>
> Paul Johnston
>
> ________________________________________
> From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [corpora-bounces at uib.no] on behalf of Kevin
> B. Cohen [kevin.cohen at gmail.com]
> Sent: 16 March 2011 18:37
> To: Corpora List
> Subject: [Corpora-List] Something to think about: metadata in Google Books
>
> http://chronicle.com/article/Googles-Book-Search-A/48245/
>
> Kev
>
> --
> Kevin Bretonnel Cohen, PhD
> Biomedical Text Mining Group Lead, Computational Bioscience Program, U.
> Colorado School of Medicine
> 303-916-2417 (cell) 303-377-9194 (home)
> http://compbio.ucdenver.edu/Hunter_lab/Cohen
>
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