Shortly after Google's announcement that they have calculated that there are about 130 million books in the world, comes Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart's plan for one billion ebooks.
To quote the Los Angeles Times...
"Hart's grand plan is centered around one number: 1 billion. He scratched his math, based on various premises, down into an e-mail. His vision for a larger digital reading ecosystem includes all e-books, whether from his own organization or others or from for-profit ventures including Google's.
There's the total pot of public-domain books, which Hart estimates is 25 million. If all the scanners rack up at least 10 million of those and then translate them into 100 languages, there you have a billion e-books."
To quote the Los Angeles Times...
"Hart's grand plan is centered around one number: 1 billion. He scratched his math, based on various premises, down into an e-mail. His vision for a larger digital reading ecosystem includes all e-books, whether from his own organization or others or from for-profit ventures including Google's.
There's the total pot of public-domain books, which Hart estimates is 25 million. If all the scanners rack up at least 10 million of those and then translate them into 100 languages, there you have a billion e-books."