Innovation

Philippe Torres, Head of studies and consulting at L'Atelier BNP Paribas, analyses this new kind of bank branch in the making and the innovation it represents.

Google Books is a project that predates the founding of Google

The scanning and automatic indexing of written works are a part of the intellectual quest that fuelled the creation of Google. When they founded the company in 1997, both Larry Page and Sergey Brin had already been involved in scientific research into these matters. From the outset, their work focused on resolving the question of how to scan and index the entirety of data produced by mankind. This unique vision, together with the unfailing support of their university and of local industry, propelled them far beyond their competitors and led them to outperform a number of state-of-the-art computer engineering technologies. The company pioneered the creation of gigantic Data Centers(1) dedicated to internet applications.
Systems, processes and technologies put in place by Google more than ten years ago are in large part the starting point for the development of Cloud Computing(2).

In a similar way, the Google Books project will revolutionise the standard for scanning paper books. In 2002, the total number of books in existence was estimated at around 32 million. Given the techniques available at the time, it would have been impossible to scan and index them all: some libraries estimated that scanning their entire collections would take more than a thousand years. But Google's vision was to achieve this in just 10 years. As of 2009, five years after the official launch of the project (2004), Google had scanned more than 10 million books. Microsoft abandoned its own project at the end of 2007 after having scanned 500,000 works.

Google Books: a scientific and economic revolution

The standards for scanning books on a large scale have been redefined, even if the quality does not yet meet the high level required for ensuring the conservation of rare works.

Google Books is also an economic revolution. In part, this is the result of Google's decision to scan the works loaned to it by libraries at its own expense. This investment in R&D, which no other player in the field has been willing to assume, has given Google a head start on its competitors. It is clear that those responsible for the company's economic growth expect this innovation to turn a profit in the long run.

But the main reason that Google Books will cause an economic upheaval is that scanning books threatens the traditional book industry's financial interests. Accordingly, Google is facing resistance – primarily legal – from the big publishing houses. The traditional industry is in a state of technological paralysis in the face of the digital revolution, which is being driven by entirely new players, drawn primarily from the computer and internet industries.

Google: the archetypal internet barbarian

Without prior agreement with holders of copyright or the related civil law-based author's rights, digital copies may be considered to be illegal. But some laws – or the lack thereof – have left Google a certain amount of freedom of action, including the freedom to provide its service, free of charge, to libraries – which consider digital scanning to be strategically important. Bearing in mind that globalisation creates intense competition between university research centres, an online library is both a showcase for attracting top talent and an important means of generating revenue (i.e. sales of books online). By taking this approach, Google is a step ahead of its competitors and its detractors. The top universities, which are engaged in global competition for the knowledge economy, probably had no serious alternative other than accepting Google's offer.

The discrepancy between copyright and author's rights will be exacerbated by the digital revolution

Although the terms of copyright – the dominant concept for protecting author's rights in Anglo-Saxon countries – can be satisfied through revenue sharing, this economic compromise does not fully meet the requirements of the alternative concept of author's rights which exists in a number of European countries. In the context of globalisation, the question of the co-existence of copyright and author's rights is likely to be more charged than ever.

By acting like an “internet barbarian”– beating the regulators to the punch by creating new ways of using previously published materials and driving the mass acceptance of these new uses – Google may be able, even in Europe, to dominate the market sufficiently to impose a “de facto” standard for information access and for the new legal and economic models for access to knowledge and the use of books.

The best allies of the Google Books project are the people who will use it for free. This means not just librarians, but readers: teachers, students, researchers and, eventually, all internet users. These are the people who, by voting overwhelmingly in favour of the service, will legitimise its existence in the eyes of the government and, sooner or later, in the eyes of publishing professionals, uncomfortably caught between the dual challenges of the need to preserve their traditional business models and the opportunity to seize new possibilities for growth.

This cultural revolution is one of a multitude of social revolutions that have shaken the media world since the invention of digital technologies.

(1) Data Center: a centralised facility for storing and calculating computer data
(2) Cloud Computing: using the internet and central remote to maintain data and applications

November 2009