Why is this significant? Because we are offering libraries and publishers much better terms than our competitors are offering. For one, they get to keep a copy of every scan we do for their own purposes. But there are other differences too between our efforts and those of some of our competitors.

What is so interesting about scanning books? Well, we have a bunch of things we’re thinking of doing with those books. For one, it makes our Tablet PC much more attractive. Reading a book on a Tablet is WAY better than reading on a horizontal screen. For two, we have some ideas on how to make searching that knowledge base much better.

It’s about thrilling audiences. The company that makes great content available in the best way will build an audience. Where you find audiences you’ll find advertising. Our business is in a race with other businesses to build audience-thrilling experiences.

Our efforts here sure are making for strange bedfellows, though. We’re supporting the Open Content Alliance, which is setup by Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive. Now THAT is interesting! Why? Because the Internet Archive already houses the entire Grateful Dead library (among a lot of other things) for free! And, is a place that many video bloggers host their files. Again, for free! Brewster made a bunch of money off of his sale of Alexa to Amazon and is donating machines and bandwidth to the community for free.

I hope Microsoft continues supporting Brewster’s efforts. I think what he’s doing is hyper important to the long-term health of the Web. If you haven’t checked out the Internet Archive, you should. I hope I get to meet Brewster someday and thank him for what he’s done.