Reading articles like these always remind me of the Winer quote, “If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web.”

Google is beginning to have a subtle, but noticeable effect on research. More and more scholarly publications are putting up their issues in PDF format, which Google indexes as though they were traditional Web pages. But almost no one is publishing entire books online in PDF form. So, when you’re doing research online, Google is implicitly pushing you toward information stored in articles and away from information stored in books. Assuming this practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you’re better off publishing a PDF file on the Web than landing a book deal.

Of course any researcher who employs Google as his main tool is not conducting serious research. For real research, a trip to a good library is still required. But the quote subtly suggests the distinction between merely getting an idea into circulation (via the web, without a large marketing budget) versus trying to keep your media or publishing company profitable. It’s hard to do both. Amazon is attempting a similar strategy by planning to make the full texts of books available to user searches, but limiting the amount of text accessible to the user.

Now take search topics where users who are feeling lucky on Google are directed to Contact Sheet, however irrelevant (in Kottke fashion):

#1 - contact sheet - even though I’ve never discussed the concept of contact sheets or talked about photography in length on these pages. Someday I will; Google seems to be pre-empting me.
#1 - scott steffens - duh
#1 - ransom note
#1 - omaha sugar daddy
#1 - milton bradley simon shockwave
#1 - nyt news tracker

A selection of close seconds and other notables:
#2 - make friends
#2 - frank gehry talks about seattle
#3 - times iraq altered photograph
#3 - tour de france elevation map
#3 - rem koolhaas design process
#5 - how long does freshly squeezed orange juice last?
#7 - smut magazines
#7 - quit vegetarianism
#7 - creative direction vs. art direction
#17 - underlying issues of the control freak
#17 - sexy 50-year-old woman
#21 - etiquette wearing white shoes before memorial day

All the smuttiness that Google tracks and directs over here (there’s a lot more, from looking through the dregs of referral logs) makes me feel like a politician who’s been quoted grossly out of context.