messaging and social networking tools that enable real-time conversations online. Google is also playing a significant role in producing digital versions of sources that would otherwise be confined to archives and museums. Google Books is a project, carried out m conjuncdon with a range of universities and libraries, to digitize millions of theu- books and make them available on the web. All are fully searchable: texts that are out of copyright are often available in full, with many copyrighted texts partially accessible. As a result, historians can search for key words or phrases in over 10 million books, from the earliest printed texts to the present day. However, in the wake of a far-reaching legal judgment on a class action brought against Google by organizations representing authors and publishers, Google will now start selling access to digital versions of books that are in copyright but out of print. As a result, Google Books hasbeen criticized for what some have seen as the pnvatizadon of knowledge: there is no serious competitor trying to produce a comparable digital repository of texts. Robert Damton, an expert on the history of the book, has caUed instead for a nonprofit, open-access repository of digital books to be established. What Google's increasing monopoly on digital information will mean for historians is uncertain. Its search engine alone is revoludonizing the way we approach primary and secondary sources: searches that once relied on detailed knowledge built up over years will soon be conducted almost instantly. Yet the means to access that information is falling into the hands of a single private company. The public benefits of making such information accessible to all may not always ovemde the need for Google to make a profit from its investment. Histonans Uke Damton, who have studied how information was stored, spread and understood in the past, will offer important perspectives on how Google may change things in the future.