What Will Google Think of Next?

I really, honestly hate to write about Google because it’s kind of like writing about Radiohead – everyone knows they’re awesome, everyone has written their little two cents, so what else is there possibly to say unless you rescue Thom Yorke from a dog mauling or something?

And unfortunately, this is just another one of those, “wow! Google did something innovative!” posts, but oh well…suck it up I guess. I just discovered Google Books, which both excites me and makes me dread looking at a computer screen for another couple of hours a day. But while I don’t anticipate reading books from the computer anytime soon (I like to settle for the less-eye-straining, but still slightly environmental route – the library. And yes, they still exist), I found something that I’ve been looking for for ages on Google Books.

In The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell wrote a GENIUS essay (“The Nerd Voice”) about nerds, particularly in relation to Al Gore and why people didn’t feel like they related to him during the election process. I’ve told people about it for ages, and I desperately wanted a link to send people whenever I told them about it. Hello Google Books. Here’s the link again.

However, much to my dismay, many pages are cut from the “preview,” though it seems fairly random. Unfortunately a few of those random pages are right in the middle of “The Nerd Voice.” But, you can get the gist of it, and read how Sarah Vowell flawlessly and hilariously describes why Al Gore was the perfect person for our presidency, but our ridiculous societal standards of “nerd” and “smarty pants” did him in.

Also, while sharing the excitement over one of my friend’s companies that made it into the TechCrunch50, I came across an interesting post about Google’s newspaper archives, which is also awesome.