France Begins to See Google as a Nation State
November 22, 2009
“The Digitalization of Literary Works: Is Google above the Law” is one of those articles that reveals how far out of touch journalists and Google pundits who talk about the Google Foosball tables and the Google stacks of snacks. Google is 11 years old and has meticulously documented exactly what it has built and what that infrastructure’s capabilities are. Google, in my opinion, figures that if a person is too lazy to read a technical paper, why should Google “connect the dots” for anyone.
The French daily l’Humanité seems to be on a more fruitful path than the folks who explain that Chrome is really not new or that it is no match for Windows 7 or Mac OSX. Whatever. Google is now packaging innovations that are in some cases seven or eight years old. Chrome is being productized to further waterboard Steve Ballmer. I am tired of explaining this misperception about Google. Read my monographs. You won’t learn how those wild and crazy guys figured out “search” from me.
The big news in this story is that Google “gets its hands on Lyon’s public library.” (I thought that another vendor “had its hands on” the Lyon library, but as most Google competitors learn, Google doesn’t have hands. Google is an environment and one day folks at a place like the Lyon public library say, “Hey, we’re Googley.” Believe me, vendors have a tough time selling against an outfit that doesn’t return phone calls or try particularly hard to win accounts. Most Googlers are blissfully clueless about “traditional sales methods” by virtue of Google’s wacky hiring process.
l’Humanité reported:
There is a precedent in France: the City of Lyon signed an agreement with Google in 2008. Over the last few months Lyon’s public library, the second largest in France, has given several interviews. In the columns of Le Monde, the library’s manager indicated that the contract signed with Google extended over several years, and on France 2 (French national television network) put the cost at €60 million, or €120 per title. This information comes as a surprise given that the amount is two or three times higher than that announced two years ago by the president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Furthermore, according to a report from Lyon city council, the contract with Google is set to run for…..twenty-five years! The same mystery surrounds the benefits accorded to the Californian giant, which claims it merely wants to transmit culture! The aforementioned report stipulates that Google will have full ownership of the digital books.
Okay, so people in France don’t know what deal Lyon cut with the Google. Then the article revealed:
In order to find out the truth, we asked Lyon city hall for the documents pertaining to the deal concluded with Google, documents which should normally be public. And surprise, surprise, they refused to communicate this information. We also posed several questions to Google France, in particular concerning the number of French titles available on Google Books. The response was negative! Google claims not to know how many books are in French!
The capstone of the write up appears in this passage:
the Californian company has announced that the location of the centre responsible for digitizing books from Lyon’s library is a secret! Anyone would think we were in a James Bond film! This refusal is, however, legal. That of Lyon’s city hall poses a more serious question. According to city hall, a clause was signed forbidding them from giving access to the contract documents signed with Google. They even refuse to reveal information that the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents has stated can be communicated without reserve!
Dealings between diplomats from France and Germany in World War One were less convoluted. In my opinion, France is realizing that Google operates like a country, not a company. See how far off the mark the “Sergey and Larry eat pizza” analyses are.
Check out those Google technical papers. The Google is quite an interesting company and it just now making public accessible technology that is quite old. The question is, “What’s Google working on now?” The betas are like looking at Google in a rear view mirror of a car speeding away from the Googleplex.
Stephen Arnold, November 22, 2009
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