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Title:

Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe

Review:

In 2004, California-based Google announced plans to digitise and make available as many as 30 million books as part of the so-called Google Library Project http://books.google.com/. In the slim volume 'Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge', Jean-Noel Jeanneney - himself the president of the Bibliotheque nationale de France - frames a cogent, if oftentimes overtly and overly political, argument that entrusting the literary treasures of the world to an American for- profit corporation has a number of pitfalls and could be considered a dereliction of duty by the world's libraries charged with the preservation of books.

Jeanneney explores Google's famously opaque algorithms designed to bring the web pages with the most overall hits to the top of a search result, 'a system in which success breeds success, at the expense of newcomers, minorities, marginals'. (p.45) The financing of the Google Library would only exacerbate these inherent imbalances. 'Books will necessarily be hierarchised in favour of those best suited to satisfy the demands of advertisers,' Jeanneney frets. 'Chosen according to the principle of the highest bidder.' (p. 31)

Just as disconcerting to Jeanneney is the prospect that allowing an American company to take - or maintain - the lead in digitising a World Library would naturally skew literary resources in an Anglocentric direction. Jeanneney cites the lack of availability on the Google site of the works of Victor Hugo or Cervantes in their native languages as well as justifiable concern that American perspectives on American and world history would be far too limiting a lens.

Of course, someone has to choose the hierarchies of a library collection or literary canon, and to some, Google and its advertisers may seem no more of an arbitrary arbiter than the college faculties who have dictated curricula for centuries. Google may also seem no more arbitrary than state-controlled institutions. Intriguingly, the solution that Jeanneney proposes is the formation of a government- sponsored European library that would rival - if not displace - Google's supremacy. Jeanneney tours a number of digital library projects undertaken by different nations, including France's own Gallica http://gallica.bnf.fr/ and imagines a confederation that would provide a more multinational and thoughtful version of a Digital World Library. Although Jeanneney mentions similar projects being undertaken by India or China, they do not seem to be an aspect of his envisioned Google-rival. It's almost as if a centuries-old struggle for world supremacy is being shifted on to a literary and digital stage. (The original title of the book for its French publication was "When Google Challenges Europe: A Wake Up Call".)

While it's tempting to dismiss Jeanneney for his own very obvious French bias (he is apparently still smarting from Bob Hope's jokes about the counter-revolution, p.41), he adroitly argues that the growing dependence upon a centralised corporate repository of information could have significant negative long-term consequences. Jeanneney cites a Pew Internet and American Life Project study which concluded in 2005 that, '92 percent of users of search engines have full confidence in the results of their search.' (p.32).

For Jeanneney, it explains why he's comfortable dismissing Wikipedia and the wiki-influenced Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page as incapable of protecting the Internet consumer due to its lack of central oversight and central standards. However, as studies like this make clear, the true wake-up call should be directed not at Europe but to all of us. As scanning technology becomes more affordable, perhaps the best World Library should reside not in the hands of governments or corporations but in the hands of the Internet community that they claim to serve.

FreePint Reviewer:

Matt Chapuran is a writer, actor and affordable-housing analyst living in Boston. His work regularly appears in Lowe's For Pros, an online journal with technical and business advice for plumbers, electricians and property management professionals. He can be seen selling wrap sandwiches (and rapping) in a commercial for the Maine Lottery. He can be reached at mattchapuran@yahoo.com .

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