Competing With Google: Catch Us If You Can

Michael Hedges February 24, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Everybody, it seems, has Google on the mind. Every company at the top of its game attracts critics, whingers and lesser humans. That Google is rich attracts all sorts.

Google’s size is impressive; 80% of Europe’s search traffic, more money than some can count. Yet the company’s push into new businesses draws ire. Competitors are fighting back, occasionally aided by friendly politicians.

The European Commission and American anti-trust authorities approved (February 18) a merger of Microsoft and Yahoo! search advertising businesses. Two Google competitors entered into an agreement on combining algorithms and sales strategies in Europe and the US. Microsoft and Amazon inked a deal to share intellectual property with respect to the Amazon Kindle, the ebook reader.

Google Buzz, Google Chrome and Google Android are the latest Google wares offered to broaden the company’s scope. And with each new venture, successful or not, Google collects a new trophy. In true to the Silicon Valley, high tech, venture capital mantra, there are no mistakes, just learning experiences.

European publishers, lawyers and politicians view the vast Google Books project - digitizing books by the millions and offering them on-line – as an affront to cultural heritage, not to forget a potential loss of revenue. The search giant’s main crime is building the technology and, then, getting on with it. Google has digitized about 10 million books so far but has avoided the out-of-print and ‘orphan’ works that pose difficult copyright questions.

Some of those books are of European origin. Google scans 5,000 volumes each week from the Bavarian State Library, works not covered by copyright, in an arrangement that began in 2007. A similar project with the Lyon, France library drew a storm of protests from the cultural protectors but the work continues.

The European Parliament (EuroParl) has funded its own massive digital archive project, which includes books, art, music and video. The on-line library – Europeana – depends on the largess of individual Member States for material and, notably, understandings on copyright. The Europeana portal, launched in 2008, is housed in the Netherlands and offers free access to about 5 million items. Out-of-print works and so-called ‘orphan’ works are not included in the Europeana scannings, rights issues remaining thorny.

EuroParl’s Culture and Education Committee (February 22) gave Europeana a moral boost, approving a draft report with a wide variety of recommendations. The Culture Committee report – drafted by Rapporteur Helga Trüpel (Germany, Greens) – did, however, focus on the project’s shortcomings. Contributions from Member States have been “uneven” as French, Germans and Dutch works currently comprise more than two-thirds of the Europeana content.

Europeana should become, say Culture Committee MEPs, “one of the main reference points for education and research purposes.” (See Culture Committee statement here) The draft report “urges the Commission and Member States to take all necessary steps to avoid a knowledge gap between Europe and non-EU countries.” MEPs support “the Commission's intention to establish a simple and cost-efficient rights clearance system.”

A digital scanning robot at the Bavarian State Library’s Munich Digitization Center is sucking up more than a thousand pages per hour, reported Der Spiegel (February 19). There’s special treatment for material on original parchment. A trial version of Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, or DDB will, hopefully, go on-line next for a restricted set of users. Eventually the German DDB project will integrate with Europeana.

These digital scanning projects are ambitious and largely under-funded. The German DDB portal will need €165 million, according to the German Library Association. German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann called it “the project of the century.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to come up with €750 million. Loss of historical and cultural works from fire, theft and physical deterioration is priceless.

But these are not merely preservation efforts. Former President of the French National Library Jean-Noel Jeanneney called his country’s digitization project an “anti-capitalist model to counter Google’s power play.”

“To avoid putting itself at a competitive disadvantage,” said MEP Trüpel, “the EU must be able to hold its own against other digitization projects and offer a tangible counterbalance to Google Books.” By contrast, EC Commissioner Viviane Reding, with a keen sense of reality, spoke of cooperation with Google.

Google’s proposal for a Book Rights Registry has reached US courts (Authors Guild, et al. v. Google Inc). Last week (February 18) dozens of aggrieved parties – including French and German governments, as well as every virtual competitor - appeared before Judge Denny Chin of the Southern District of New York federal court to argue their positions on the settlement reached between the Authors Guild and Google. Judge Chin, known famously for sending American ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff ‘up the river’, said he’d not be in a hurry rendering a decision.

While many of Google’s forays afar from its core search and ads business seem daring and remote, Google Books is far closer to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hearts. As Stanford University graduate students both worked on the school’s Digital Library Technologies Project. That was at least a couple of years before they let Google rip. The original, very basic idea was a world-wide digital library.

When asked about Google’s projects beyond the search engine, CEO Eric Schmidt drew a simple line. “The goal of the company is not to monetize everything,” he said. “The goal of the company is to change the world.”

For some, a provoking thought.

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