May 06, 2005

More European Whining...About Literature?

While some here in America worry that the people behind Google lean a bit too far to the left (they may, they may not...it's not the subject of this post), it seems Europe is worried that Google is ready to take over the world! (Cue ominous music...)

According to Newsmax, a new project by Google, called Google Print, involves the scanning of millions of books from Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan, along with the New York Public Library. Scanning the books and putting them online will take years to accomplish.

So what's Europe doing about it? Are they planning to undertake their own book scanning project? It doesn't seem likely, since the elite seem to spend more time complaining about it than anything else.

Jean-Noel Jeanneney - who as president of the French National Library oversees a collection of 13 million books - presented a vision of Google potentially hijacking "the thought of the world" in a book he published this week entitled, "When Google Challenges Europe."

"I think that this could lead to an imbalance to the benefit of a mainly Anglo-Saxon view of the world," Jeanneney said in a telephone interview. "I think this is a danger."

He noted that French cinema thrives only because the government took steps to ensure its survival against an American onslaught.

In other words, French cinema doesn't survive because people want to see it, but because it's subsidized by the French government. That's not exactly a reason to run out to see the latest flick starring Gerard Depardieu.

But Google is reaching out:

Google said it is eager to work with libraries all over the world so that even more books can be included in its search engine index.

"We are supportive of all digitization efforts because we believe everyone benefits when more information is available online," said Susan Wojcicki, the company's director of product development. U.S. libraries already are contributing a significant amount of material written in foreign languages, Wojcicki added.

So why all the carping?

It seems that, rather than working with Google or coming up with their own scheme (which would face criticism as well, according to the Newsmax article), many Europeans are doing what they do best: complaining in cafŽs and journals, while postulating that anything American is culturally inferior by default.

From our humble beginnings, Americans have always been innovators. We've had to be, otherwise our forefathers would never have made it in the oft-harsh climes of the New World. We've also always taken our freedoms very seriously.

Europeans, on the other hand, have always either been stifled by monarchies or some other form of government that smothers creativity and free markets (Communism and socialism come readily to mind). It's no wonder that they lag behind America when it comes to the marketplace, and only by banding together to form the EU has their new currency been able to trump the dollar (although unemployment rates continue to soar in places like France and Germany).

It's time Europeans stopped lashing out at America and come up with real solutions to their ever-decreasing relevance in the 21st century.

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