For those of you who are confused about what Google actually hopes to accomplish by digitizing more than 12 million books, and what the implications are for copyright holders, the Open Book Alliance has published a very interesting analysis of the proposed Google Books Settlement, which attempts to parse rhetoric from reality. The article can be found here.
I am a commercial litigator and intellectual property lawyer in Orange County. Although my practice encompasses a wide variety of business disputes, I have a particular fondness for, and am prone to wax philosophical on, the subjects of copyright and trademark infringement in music, literature, art, and film.
Thanks for the link to that PDF. Not exactly a transparently unbiased explanation, but it nonetheless does sum up some areas of the Google deal.