Google Announces Plans to Digitize the world’s books — And Then Delete Them.

Sebastian Carlos
2 min readJan 1, 2023

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Photo by Ujesh Krishnan on Unsplash

In a move that has been described as “just like ‘1984’, if that book still existed,” Google has announced plans to digitize the world’s books, only to delete them once they have been scanned.

“The problem with physical books is that there’s no environmentally safe way to dispose of them,” said a Google spokesperson. “We care about preserving our planet and all its data centers. By digitizing all books, we can make sure they’re gone for good. In a few generations, no one will remember disturbing tomes like ‘Free Software, Free Society.’”

Google insists that they have no plans to censor books, they are just creating a world in which book censorship doesn’t exist, as all censurable books will, for all intent and purposes, never exist at all.

The company is currently seeking volunteers to help with the project, promising “fun, free t-shirts, and a sense of accomplishment,” for anyone who wishes to assist them.

This article, and every other textual description of Google’s plan, will be compiled into its own book, aptly titled “Delete this one last,” which will be used for administrative purposes until the end of the project.

Dick Philips, author of acclaimed books such as “What Would Google Do?” and “In Praise Of Big Tech,” is not concerned at all. “The idea of deleting books is no different than deleting data. We’ve done it for years. In the end, it’s just binary.”

So, if you’re a fan of the written word, I hope you are a speed reader. Because soon, books will be a thing of the past.

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Sebastian Carlos
Sebastian Carlos

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