Yahoo + Open Content Alliance = Smooth Text Indexing Move
Yahoo's riffing on the Google Print project with an opening move that should keep them out of litigation as they gain a foothold in the book indexing world: they're indexing public domain texts (and will make this index openly available!!).

While there's considerably less monitization possible here, they can surely shake some affiliate/advertising change loose from folks who sell bound versions of the classics.

"As soon as [a text is] made available on the O.C.A. Web site, we'll get a feed letting us know, so it can be indexed by us immediately," said David Mandelbrot, vice president of search content at Yahoo.

Detractors claim they're not forcing the issue with publishers and authors the way Google is: "While it's a nice project, it comes off more like Yahoo's reactive response to Google's project... but where they don't have the guts to stand up to authors and publishers to explain why getting the books online is a good thing."

I think it's a good first step that will help demonstrate the value to publishers and authors of having their copyrighted works indexed (for snippeted results only of course).

Via GB (where I found said detractor in comment)
OCA's post on Yahoo blog
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |