A Risky Gamble with Google

Siva Vaidhyanathan, friend to librarians, has a lengthy piece in today's Chronicle of Higher Education called A Risky Gamble with Google (the link goes to his blog where the full text of the article is reproduced).  The piece is mostly a discussion about the copyright implications of the Google Book Search project (this post describes his anguish over Google changing the project name right after he submitted the piece to the Chronicle).   It's full of interesting thoughts, and his conclusion surprises me a little bit, but I can understand it.  Basically he concludes that we're making a mistake by allowing Google, a commercial entity, take on this mass digitization project.  Siva argues that it should be a library project, and while I agree at heart of course, I just don't see how it's ever going to happen in libraryland.  Who's got the money?   Siva raises a question I hadn't considered before, "What if stockholders decide that Google Library is a money loser or too much of a copyright-infringement liability?"