Google Book Effort Draws French Ire

BetaNews | Google Book Effort Draws French Ire

The president of the National Library of France is worried that Google's decision to place books onto the web will lead to a dominance of American culture at the expense of the rest of the world - chiefly France. I'm not sure that what Google is doing is really problematic and there is no reason why France couldn't do the same with its libraries. Some countries obviously do not have the resources necessary to do the same and it might be helpful to assist these countries make their intellectual resources better known - perhaps the United Nations could do this. Still, I don't think that there can be any doubt that American culture currently dominates the internet for good or for ill.