The French problem with Google paying
to digitize millions of books in English libraries, is not the
obvious problem of leaving the French out. They can always digitize
their own libraries.
The problem is that the overwhelming amount of global writing about France and the French, including translations, is by non-French and will present a non-French position.
When searching for material about
France or the French the researcher will find five times the amount of
material written by non-French writers. France will exist in the
digital world mostly from the perspective of the non-French.
That is one problem which the French can see. The other two problems are ones that the French cannot see.
France is not and never has been an
hospitable place for intellectual genius. In the 20th
Century one of France's greatest minds was forced to flee to America
because the social climate in France was so hostile to him: Raymond
Aron. In the 16th Century the same was true of France's
greatest mind: Rene Descartes. Descartes was forced to live most of
his life in Amsterdam, where his books were published and translated
into many languages.
The other problem is the French believe that they made an historic contribution to democracy. Ou contrarie, intellectuals living under a tyrant fear the French form of democracy. They know about the Jacobins, Robespierre and the guillotine. The modern heirs to French democracy are the Iraqi-Sunni terrorists.