AustLit

'The first time I went to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2008, I had an appointment with Google. Its stand in Hall Eight was a shiny white pod with no retractable banners or cheap shelving in sight. The pod made a perfect background for the primary colours of Google's then-serif logo set out on its outer shell. Hall Eight was the English-language hall, though perhaps there were replica Google pods in all the other halls; they felt, even then, omnipresent. At our meeting inside the pod I remember talking about the Google Preview function, of which NewSouth Publishing, my employer then and now, was an early adopter. Analogue babes in the digital woods, my colleague Nella Soeterboek and I also discussed the Google Books Library Project, about which we were far more ambivalent. That Google wanted to digitise every book ever published didn't seem like a utopian vision to us. It was more of a statement of intent, the intent being to take over the world.'  (Publication abstract)