Information itself is a commodity. An encyclopedia doesn't have value have because it costs money but the vice versa. Wikipedia is free, yet it has done more for the world in 20 years than the Brittanica has in 250.
I'm not suggesting Google gives away information as a purely altruistic endeavor. However, Google's ulterior motives, should they have any, are irrelevant to the value of the information itself so long as it hasn't been edited or tampered with.
Comments
Information itself is a commodity. An encyclopedia doesn't have value have because it costs money but the vice versa. Wikipedia is free, yet it has done more for the world in 20 years than the Brittanica has in 250.
I'm not suggesting Google gives away information as a purely altruistic endeavor. However, Google's ulterior motives, should they have any, are irrelevant to the value of the information itself so long as it hasn't been edited or tampered with.