Paris
French intellectuals are complaining that Google’s plan to put millions of books online will entrench English as the dominant language on the Internet. The U.S. company announced recently that it will create a massive new database by scanning the library collections from Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library, and Oxford. Most of those books are in English. “This could lead to an imbalance, to the benefit of a mainly Anglo-Saxon view of the world,” said Jean-Noel Jeanneney, president of the French National Library. Google said it would help the European Union create a European “digital library,” but that proposal is already mired in bureaucracy. All 25 E.U. member states must agree on the details before scanning can begin.
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