[Captain Bob]

all of our cherished reference books will be available for free to everyone on the internet, but the copyright holders, authors, photographers and illustrators, their heirs and assigns, will never see a dime from their being viewed. Only those outfits like Google which derive significant advertising income from running ads on the web pages where they will inform and entertain us by delivering this "free" content to all.

But there is already, and will be more so in the future, a price - a few weeks ago I was looking for information on cast iron bathtubs for a couple of rental apartments my brother and I have. I found a particular one, bookmarked it and returned to that site a couple more times. Since then almost every time I happen to go to any site which runs Google ads I have been presented with an ad featuring that particular bathtub and a link to that site. Having experienced this, one is left to ponder one's own conclusions...