Publishers get directly into the snippet business

Random House and HarperCollins have launched web-services that provide snippets of their books, trying to compete with Amazon and Google Books and to advertise their own titles a bit more directly.   It doesn't surprise me that the publishers are trying to get into this line of content provision, but it does surprise me that they seem to be willing to invest a significant amount of staff time and resources to do so.  Users do not think to go to individual publishers websites to find book snippets or previews.  Most people don't even know who published their favorite books--they don't care.  Instead, they go to aggregators to find what they can all in one place.  I don't think the publishers' headlong approach to this will last long.