…and they’re all on the same side. Their common enemy? Google, of course. In a settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, the Mountain View search superpower obtained the right to scan and sell online out-of-print books, with Google keeping 30% of the profits. (Google would also be able to sell ads on sites providing currently copyrighted material, giving them something of an end-around on the copyright.) Naturally, the settlement set off alarms among open-information and consumer protection advocates like the Internet Archive (a non-profit that maintains a digital library of old web sites) and antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, who instigated the government antitrust lawsuit against…Microsoft! Thus was born the “Open Book Alliance,” Take heart, though, information advocates: You now have friends in the big boys. Having seen the error of their ways, Microsoft is now all about open source and open info–as is Yahoo, who will be Microsoft’s new search partner if they can make it past that pesky antitrust probe.Finally, the Bezos crew feels the same way: Private corporations just shouldn’t have such control over our content. Unless it’s just to delete copies of George Orwell books you already paid for.