Via Dan Cohen I found that google has started an official blog about the book search service. Dan has a concern though:

In particular, it would be nice to have more open access to the text (rather than mere page images) of pre-1923 books (i.e., those that are out of copyright).

I agree that would be nice if google provided this. I’m not sure if they will in the future or not. I’m not as concerned, however, since at LibraryCamp one of the UofM people mentioned that they are getting the OCR back from google. This means the library could provide the text and/or even submit it to the Internet Archive. This means even if google doesn’t provide it there is still a likely chance that it will be provided by someone. I’m hopeful that the libraries can work with the Internet Archive to make this possible (the OCR will likely be far from perfect) and make this information available in a timely matter. I think it also brings libraries back into the picture though still probably not easy to find.