I've complained several times that Google was changing blog entries to add information or correct errors without acknowledging the change with strikethroughs, footnotes or an errata page. I'm sure my feeble voice had nothing to do with it, but when Google changed a blog post today they included an acknowedgement and clear explanation of the update.

Google posted last night that they would allow publishers to opt out of the Google Print library book scanning project, and would put the entire project on hold until November to allow publishers time to opt out.

Google then updated that post this afternoon to explain how they arrived at this decision, and to compare the Google Print opt-out to a webmaster excluding a site from the Google crawler with a robots.txt file.

But Google didn't just weave this explanation into the original post and pretend that's how it was from the beginning. They didn't flush the original down the memory hole. Google actually flagged the post as "Updated," timestamped the update, and called out the updated portion with an asterisk. Very nice.

It seems like a small thing (and in isolation it is), but it's important for the would-be keeper of the world's information to show that they value the integrity of that information. Once published, that information should not mysteriously change, or we won't know what information can be trusted.

It almost feels like a real conversation is developing! Thanks, Google.