The University of California, Harvard University, University of Michigan, The New York Public Library, Oxford University and Stanford University have teamed up with Google to offer users the ability to download books whose copyright protection has expired at no cost.

Google is being very careful about this, where they have set special terms of use for this digitalization of classic books. In their disclaimer they state, "Make noncommercial use of the file. Refrain from automated querying. Maintain attribution. Keep it legal." In addition, and to prevent others from profiting Google has added a watermark to the bottom-right corner of every PDF page which states "Digitized by Google".

This project will surely effect the way users can now search for historical and famous quotes, where instead of just pulling up a site that has a bunch of quotes, they can now actually search for the full text serounding the quote. If a publisher does not want their out of copyright book to be scanned and converted to a PDF for the world to download, they can opt out of the program. However, the legal community has been rather critical of Google for this practice, where a favorite legal target, Microsoft and their search engine, MSN are now offering a similar service, except they offer an opt in, where a publisher must take a proactive step, rather than a reactive step.