Does Google To Be An “Instant” Publisher?

So Google has these big book digitization projects going. The project seems to violate copyrights. So what’s the point? “Some in the industry wonder whether Google’s long-term aim isn’t to set itself up as a sort of instant publisher; that once it has all those books in its index, it could generate a print-on-demand shop that would bypass publishers, shipping a book to you even though it is officially out of print.”