Indeed, when the big powerful behemoths work to improve the world instead of stagnating and monopolizing it, great things can happen. This case is a great example where Google did something no startup would be able to get away with and fought a multi-year battle to make it work.

It's hardly the only example, though. IBM did hard work to defend Linux against Microsoft and SCO's attacks. Apple cracked the carriers' line against useful smartphones with unlimited data, 30% instead of 90% carrier cuts in app stores, and freedom from spyware and crapware; Jobs' sales pitch to AT&T was as big an innovation as any tech in the iPhone. Google fights for net neutrality, fair use, and free speech on the internet. All the big players were active in the effort to organize the users of the internet against SOPA, too.

But the big players can also be destructive. Smartphone patent wars are a danger and a disappointment. If the major players would turn their Washington efforts to our common best interests, we could have excluded software entirely from patent monopolies by now. It certainly would have saved them many billions to do the right thing. Instead they fight to a standstill in courts at great expense and leave startups endangered and exploited in their path.

So let's hope for more of this in the future and tip our hats to Google and Judge Chin this time.

I'm not so "thankful" to Google or Judge Chin as you, since you seem to be arguing that "if you're big enough to do whatever you feel like, do it!!!"

Just another example of the "taking economy" that seems so popular these days among the short-sighted.

this must truly be for the public good. I doubt Google can profit off the data from millions of books of well-written, gramatically correct writers of the english language.