I'm not sure I can agree its 'noble'. Are the resulting digitisations going to be free to access for everyone? Is the OCR algorithm that I am helping to create? No.
While it may use your time to 'do something useful' - which is nice, that something is also to Google's competitive advantage - so its really more good business sense than noble (to me at least)....
Yes, the resulting digitizations are free to everyone, they are old newspapers like old NYT issues and books whose copyright has expired and are now in the public domain. How do you think you are able to search for so many old books pre-digital age on Google Books and read digital versions of old NYT news articles?
If this is true, why don't they say it on their website? why is there no link to the material created?
The only digitised versions of the NYT articles I can find on the web are on the NYT website, and you have to pay for them (at least, if you want the first paragraph)...
Can you provide me with some proof of what you say (links to free versions of the NYT for example)? Because I'm afraid I'm having a hard time believing it.
While it may use your time to 'do something useful' - which is nice, that something is also to Google's competitive advantage - so its really more good business sense than noble (to me at least)....