France takes a leaf out of Google's digital book

France and Google have never had a smooth relationship, especially as it stokes the fire of national identity RUADHÁN MacCORMAICParis Correspondent

IF THERE WAS one moment during the current debate about Google in France that brought home just how fully the company’s messianic, world-conquering image of itself has set the terms of its critics’ counter-attack, it was culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand’s likening of the battle with Google to the space race between the US and the Soviet Union.

Asked how France’s own book-scanning project could come from behind and beat Google to create a global digital library, Mitterrand remarked: “The Americans were very much behind the Soviets in the conquest of space when they sent the dog Laika into orbit. Then they overtook them.”

Google’s relationship with France is lucrative and fraught. The tech giant controls about 80 per cent of the country’s online search market – more than it does in the US – but it’s that sort of dominance that arouses suspicion among the cultural elite and helps explain how Google has found itself in the firing line here in recent months.

The major battleground is Google’s plan to digitise the world’s books, which has met passionate resistance. “We won’t let ourselves be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is,” President Nicolas Sarkozy declared last month before allocating €750 million to France’s own book-scanning project, called Gallica. The government has threatened an anti-trust investigation into the company, and in December French publishers won a court ruling that blocks Google from scanning books that are under copyright (the company is appealing).

But just as the book-scanning row was fading from public attention, a new controversy pitched the two sides against each other when a commission set up to examine how to support media industries that have been hit by the digital revolution suggested the online advertising revenues of major search engines could be taxed in France as well as in their home countries. Under what has become known as the “Google tax”, a levy of about 2 per cent would be imposed on search engines’ advertising revenues generated in France, raising up to €20 million a year that would then be distributed to French media websites and to online book and music publishers.

Supporters have argued it’s unfair that Google pays so little tax on its income because its European headquarters is in low-tax Ireland. Sceptics say the idea is totally impractical.

“Imagine foreign companies agreeing to say: we earn this much in this country. It’s science fiction,” says Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, head of PriceMinister.com, an e-shopping site.

Yves de Kerdrel, a columnist in the pro-Sarkozy daily Le Figaro, urged the president to stop "treating Google as Satan". President Sarkozy has asked the finance ministry to look at the viability of the proposal.

While Google’s dominance means it has borne the brunt of French criticism, the debate is less about the company itself than a response to the searching questions the internet poses for France’s creative industries, which have been particularly badly hit by consumers’ drift towards the web. As Mitterrand’s cold war analogy suggests, there is also a deeper, ideological dimension, some of it sustained by fears that internet giants have too little regard for the sensibilities of non-English speaking countries (Amazon launched its e-reader in France last October – before it had made any books in French available on it).

In Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge, published in 2005, the former head of the national library, Jean-Noël Jeanneney, expressed the concern that Google's selection of books would privilege English-language sources over other cultures, that its choices would be informed by a single perspective and that the company's presentation of texts based on keywords decontextualised them in culturally damaging ways. But, above all, his critique was informed by unease at the idea that a country's literary heritage should fall under the control of a private company rather than an elected government.

Recent signs suggest the French government may be adopting a more conciliatory approach to Google on the book-scanning row. Mitterrand has spoken of hoping to move beyond the “passionate reflexes” that can inflame French attitudes towards the company, and has sounded keen on a suggestion in a report by an expert panel in recent weeks that a public-private partnership on book digitisation might be the best strategy.

The new proposal would use taxpayers’ money to scan books from the national library and other public institutions and make them available on an upgraded version of Gallica (Mitterrand says the name will change to something more universal and less Astérix). To add other works, the report suggests collaborating with private companies such as Google, whose archive of 10 million titles is by far the world’s largest. Books could then be made available on both sites.

The message? France will work with Google, but on its own terms.