Wow!

That's the kind of sentence that most blogs can only dream of hosting. In fact, it's not as glamorous as it sounds - I went along in a humble role as a representative of the Society of Authors [working on YOUR behalf, authors! Join now!]. The meeting had been called by various Google plenipotentiaries, some of whom had swept in specially from California, all as part of their mission to spread the good news to their outlying European satrapies that they were fully committed to taking over the world, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. Or as they expressed it - they are continuing with their project of digitising millions upon millions of books, and this is good news for authors, because we will stand to make a bit of pocket-money too. Put like that, it's fair to say, their manifesto sounded thoroughly convincing. Mind you, I expect lawyers tend to be employed by Google because they have a certain talent for sounding convincing.

I am so habituated to using Google now that meeting people who are actually responsible for it was a bit like meeting people who are responsible for the weather. All the same, it was the kind of working environment that I had wanted to see ever since reading Microserfs, Douglas Coupland's wonderful portrait of life in Silicon Valley. I didn't actually see anybody on a space-hopper or throwing bean bags about, but there were brightly coloured chairs everywhere, and even a yellow sun hanging from the ceiling, all of which looked as though they had been lifted from the Teletubbies. There was also a lot of Diet Coke. No sign of any books, though...