Google's Sergey Brin has used old time media to talk about how blooming great e-books are.

In a one-off column in the New York Times - a newspaper - Brin said that the digitisation of media was important to the future of books that have already been forgotten by the passages of time, presumably just before going off to wash the newsprint off his hands.

Brin managed to compare e-books to unicorns while also being rather ranty about Google's much-delayed Books project, which is currently working its way through the courts - so a career in column and opinion writing could be a good choice for him.

"This agreement aims to make millions of out-of-print but in-copyright books available either for a fee or for free with ad support, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders, be they authors or publishers," he wrote.

"Nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organisation from pursuing their own similar effort. The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns."

A judge is currently debating the future of Google's plans to digitise old books and is expected to announce his final decision on 9 November.

We'll stick with our digitised unicorns for the time being.

09 Oct 2009