Amazon recently announced their new book search service; its newest and sharpest weapon against Google. Amazon made the text of 120,000 books, with more than 33 million pages, fully searchable.

"Seventy-one percent of college students use the Internet as their research tool of first resort," he says, citing figures from a 2001 PEW Internet Study. "Personally, I think this number is low. For most students today, if something is not on the Net, it doesn't exist."

"But you cannot download, copy, or read the book from beginning to end. There is no way to link directly to any page of a book. If you want to read an extensive excerpt, you must turn to the physical volume -- which, of course, you can conveniently purchase from Amazon. Users will be asked to give their credit card number before looking at pages in the archive, and they won't be able to view more than a few thousand pages per month, or more than 20 percent of any single book."

Amazon has taken a bold step. There is hardly a system that can not be beaten, so there will be copyright infringements, but the increased sales and the increased attention of Amazon as a unique service provider will probably outweigh the cons.