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Nowhere was the anger at Google’s original digital books plan greater than in Germany, where it was seen as blatant cultural imperialism.
So you’d think that Friday night’s news that German books (along with most of the world’s non-English language publications) would now be excluded from the vast digital library would have been greeted with joy.
Not a bit of it. According to this report, the head of the German publishers and booksellers association now thinks that being left out will only increase the global dominance of the English language. “Progress is now passing us by,” he is quoted as saying.
David Gelles, Joseph Menn, Chris Nuttall and Richard Waters in the FT's San Francisco bureau upload their views - plus tech insights from writers in New York, London, Tokyo and Taipei. The blog includes a separate section on personal technology.
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