Liste Newsletter

Index Performances
EPITEX, EPITA’S INDEX, Dec. 14, 2004: 82.87 (EPITEX set at 100 on Aug. 31, 2001)

News

MARKET FOCUS

U.S. stocks rallied on Tuesday, cheered by Oracle’s takeover of enterprise software rival PeopleSoft in a $10.3-billion deal.

The Federal Reserve also helped the market’s positive tone, as the U.S. central bank raised the benchmark fed funds rate for overnight inter-bank lending to 2.25 percent from 2.0 percent, which had been widely expected.

Symantec is also said to be eyeing data storage firm Veritas Software.

OUTLOOK

In other merger news, Sprint and Nextel Communications are expected to announce a $36-billion deal to create a strong No-3 wireless company offering comprehensive wireless services to businesses and consumers.

THE NUMBERS

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 38 points, or 0.3 percent, to 10,676. The Nasdaq composite index added 11 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,159 while the Nasdaq-100 index of large capitalization tech and biotech stocks ended up 0.3 percent at 1,627.

Profile

Google is working with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Oxford as well as The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them in Google.

“Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online,” said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of Products.

The Google Print program enables users to find matches within the full text of books, while publishers and authors monetize that information, as part of Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information.

Google is now working with libraries to digitally scan books from their collections, and over time will integrate this content into the Google index, to make it searchable for users worldwide. For publishers and authors, this expansion of the Google Print program will increase the visibility of in and out of print books, and generate book sales via “Buy this Book” links and advertising. For users, Google’s library program will make it possible to search across library collections including out of print books and titles that were not previously available anywhere but on a library shelf.

Users searching with Google will see links in their search results page when there are books relevant to their query. Clicking on a title delivers a Google Print page where users can browse the full text of public domain works and brief excerpts and/or bibliographic data of copyrighted material. Library content will be displayed in keeping with copyright law.