It's barely alive and it doesn't even resemble what it was supposed to be. Google Books was originally meant to scan - and make available online - all of the worlds books within 10 years. The New Yorker has a good article on how and why it failed [1].
I use Google Books. I hope it doesn't go away. My biggest gripe, though, is the inability to download books, even books that I've uploaded from a local file.
Google Books I can understand the argument against. There are actual copyrights to protect. In the case of research Elsevier does approximately nothing. The research and the peer review has already been paid for by every one of us. That we then don't get free access to it is a scandal.
States could solve this whole mess tomorrow by just passing a law that states "if you take our money to do research the end result needs to be available to the general public for free". The chicken-and-egg problem of everyone just moving to open-access journals for everything would be solved.
Agree about the legitimate copyright issues, and agree about the open access chicken-and-egg.
A law would be best, that way it instantly applies to all government grants, but it could just be terms of the grant money. "In accepting these funds you agree to only publish through open access."
I disagree because it's not even just about grants. At least in Europe most researchers are government employees so I don't care if your grant money is private, open access is still a basic requirement. If you want to publish research that requires me to pay 30$ an article to access you better not be doing that from a publicly funded job.
