Is Google the Competition?

LIBRARIANS, PUBLISHERS, and aggregators alike often call Google their main competitor. Google, or similar web search engines, is the information finding tool of first choice for many users--far ahead of proprietary online services or libraries and light years ahead of print sources.

The 2004 annual meeting of NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services) asked who would win the "battle for mindshare" in the year 2010. Will libraries, A&I (abstracting and indexing) services, and traditional publishers still exist, or will Google become the only information resource?

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