The French first criticized Google’s book scanning project for promoting the domination of American culture. They announced their own plan to digitize millions of European literary works.
Now, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, another member of France’s cultural elite has criticized both the Google project and the French plan as serving only the interests of “rich countries with big libraries,” according to an English translation of his speech on the Web site euro/topics. More background on the Google Book Search Library Project can be found in a good article in the Washington Post. Harvard’s partnership with Google is outlined here. Google’s presentation is here.