Of course, we are some way off GAC becoming the go-to platform for cultural analysis. It seems more likely people will continue to use plain old Google for a while longer. Mr Sood tells me GAC is simply a PR exercise, but if Google’s monopoly on search is anything to go by, then a cultural monopoly cannot be ruled out. Another arm of the company, Google Books, has already proven an invaluable tool for scholars. Eleanor Stephenson, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, says she finds many primary and secondary sources through the website, “all of which have been OCR-scanned”. This allows her to find “crucial passages using keyword or date search” and has “transformed the work of a historian or researcher,” she says.