I have access to Safari Books through my university, so this hasn't yet been a problem, but it's a fair point.
However, when I'm searching for something precise, a google search / help documentation usually suffices. When I'm reading a book, it's generally in search of more deep understanding or just the process of learning in general - i.e. more long-form learning. For the latter I would still prefer printed.
I love o'reilly publications, but I remain a fan of printed books. Specifically in technical texts, I like being able to scan and leaf through physical pages. If they had a special on printed books today, I would buy a couple; alas, with this special, my wallet remains closed.
The algorithm is quite fascinating (from what we can infer). Using things like a markov chain to model results in Google shows a big jump from human-compiled results in early search engines - it's a new application of theoretical knowledge that has greatly enhanced society, and frankly shows a degree of automation that could be a basis machine intelligence.
Rather than revenue diversification, I was thinking more about product diversification. With core products like GMail, search, Plus (hah), and Google Apps, if any one of those takes a catastrophic plummet in traffic, their revenue wouldn't crash completely. In their early days, if a competitor took over search, they would have no remaining products that continued to generate revenue.
However, I am interested in seeing how their business diversifies over time - Google has both stability and revenue from expanding beyond search. Additional features such as SSO and analytics are increasing the value of Facebook beyond just friend-to-friend interactions, and I am curious about how their business plan will support long-term stability.
I think you can see it if you are referred via social media, so . . . tweet it and click the link, or search for the title on twitter and click the link.
(I could post a link to my own tweet of the story, but I feel it would come off as more self-serving than altruistic.)
Intriguing, but I feel that most of the efficiency problems it tries to overcome can be mostly remedied by key-based SSH access. Can anyone comment on this?
However, when I'm searching for something precise, a google search / help documentation usually suffices. When I'm reading a book, it's generally in search of more deep understanding or just the process of learning in general - i.e. more long-form learning. For the latter I would still prefer printed.