Gary Price points to an article on the BBC News site and said it just might be an online bookstore for ebooks. This idea was floated past reporters and other invited guests in a post keynote backstage press conference last Friday night.

From the BBC story :

Google has suggested it may consider setting up an online book store.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that this would depend on permission from copyright holders.

The web giant has been electronically scanning thousands of volumes and has put some online.

But its plans to create an index to all the world’s books have run into opposition from publishers and authors.

Those ‘damn’ publishers and authors… where have we heard that before?

Nathan quoted Publishers Weekly on November 19th 2005 :

“AAP’s Allan Adler said if Google’s theory of fair use was adopted, it would put Google in control of other people’s content that it downloaded onto its own databases. While Google says it will use the scanned book content in a limited way, that could all change, Adler said.”

And indeed. If this bookstore rumor comes true, Adler just might be right on top of it with his prediction.

via [SearchEngineWatch]