However, from what we can tell after looking at cached versions of OpenLibrary.org, material has been available here for some time. Here's a cached page from Gigablast (2005) and The WayBack Machine from January 4, 2007. The page and content that's live today is the same as what we see with the cached versions of the site. In fact, some of the books were also added to The Wayback Archive in late 2006. Example.
Does it really matter? No. It's likely today what the official launch and the ars technica article is a worthy ready.
Of course, don't forget that MANY public libraries offer access to services like NetLibrary (full text NEW books) and ebrary. In fact, ebrary also offers a service with free full text access to over 20,000 books. You just pay to print a page or save it to your hard drive.
Postscript: How could we post about ebooks and note mention the following AMAZING resources:
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