Google Books, originally named Google Print, was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. Just a few months later, on January 22, 2005, it came under attack as a threat to global cultural diversity in an editorial in the French newspaper, Le Monde. The editorial, entitled “When Google Challenges Europe,” was penned by Jean-Noël Jeanneney, who at the time was the President of the National Library of France. He expanded his views into a book entitled, “When Google defies Europe: A Plea to Wake-Up.” Jeanneney’s writing sparked a global controversy about possible unintended cultural side-effects of the Google Book’s project. Jeanneney raises the following concerns:

Google Book Search will be skewed towards English language volumes
            Jeanneney’s most famous concern about the Google Books project is that the books that are scanned will be skewed towards American and British literature. As Google Books becomes a more popular research tool internationally, the reading of books from other cultures and languages will suffer, because Google Books’ search results will be skewed against them. Several responses can be made against this argument. Andrew Herkovic, who works for Stanford University’s library, points out that the libraries with which Google has partnered represent major research institutions, which have enormously diverse collections. Another argument against Jeanneney’s criticism is the fact that Google has partnered with libraries in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and Japan. However, Google’s pursuit of foreign libraries may itself be a response to Jeanneney’s criticism. Another argument against the idea that Google Books will reduce global cultural diversity is that the process may one day soon be integrated with Google’s auto-translation, which could greatly expand an individual’s access to untranslated works in foreign languages.

Books decontextualized from their culture and a culture-free ranking system
            Jeanneney also argues that Google’s search strategy for keywords in books decontextualizes the works in a way that is culturally damaging. This argument, however, does not really explain how Google Book Search is any worse than existing card catalogues in decontextualizing works. According to Google, the purpose of the project is to help people find books, not to help people access excerpts from books they don’t intend to read, so Jeanneney’s concern stems from a different interpretation of how the application will be used. Another concern Jeanneney raises is that the search strategy Google employs ranks the books in a way contrary to how they would be ranked by scholars from the cultures in which they were written. The counter to this argument is that the people, not scholars, should decide

what they read.
The world should not entrust its literary cultural heritage to a profit-seeking, American corporation
           Jeanneney also argues that placing the digital copies in the hands of a for-profit corporation is an irresponsible archival plan for the world’s libraries. A counter argument would be that each library that works with Google retains the write to perform its own digitization project. In addition, by taking advantage of Google’s infrastructure and financial resources, more people will be able to access these books sooner. Jeanneney is not the only one, however, who is concerned that such an important task of digitizing the world’s books is in the hands of a corporation. According to a 2007 New York Times article on libraries refusing to make deals with Google, the Smithsonian and the Boston public library have decided to have their books scanned by a nonprofit effort named the Open Content Alliance. They will make their scanned materials available to any search service including both Google and Microsoft. Their reasoning is that both Google and Microsoft place restrictions on the institutions they work with and public libraries should not engage in deals with corporations that restrict them.

Google’s aggressive stance on copyright issues may lead to legislation which hampers existing digitization efforts by libraries
           Google’s opt-out and legally incendiary approach to copyright threatens the achievement of a universal digital library. Rather than work with publishers to come to a mutually beneficial agreement, Google has decided to battle them in the courts, which could lead to publishers finding new methods to protect their works that would disallow currently legal forms of book use.
           
Conclusion
           Jeanneney’s criticism and political influence have had a number of effects. First, Google’s efforts to scan the contents of international libraries are probably, at least partly, in response to Jeanneney’s criticism and the bad publicity it gave Google in Europe. His concerns also led to the creation of the European Digital Library and a European R&D program into search technologies. However, there is a certain level of superficiality in these developments, as neither of them have the scope or planning to compete with Google in any realistic way. In addition, Google translation software may one day make the world’s literature available to individuals in their native language. Although, many scholars may argue that an algorithmically translated version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet into Chinese, is more damaging than educational.