And by the way…being french doesn’t always mean that we like wine !

I hope an independant publisher will find the courage to translate your book Jeff….if not then I will read it in english and others will do so.
This ;ight be good advertisement for you, censure is very good appear interesting to people.

PS: Sorry if I made mistakes

Most of the reaction I’ve seen in France actually comes from the market share: there isn’t a big difference between 91 and 63%, but there is one between 9 and 27%; more over, there has been no alternative to Google for a long time, especially for ad brokers — and it’s not a socialist take to fear monopolies. Although, it’s quite typically ‘colbertian’ of the big print publishers ask for a goverment-enforced salvation plan. Like for Iraq, it’s a situation we’ve been into for a longer period, and you might want to take our advice for want it is (experienced if not informed) rather then what is sounds (arrogant if not clumsy).

Search/ad-engine appears to be a very strong natural monopoly: no investment (be it Quaero or Live) seems to counter-balance and you might want to think about all the non-search competitors to Google, like Zoho, who simply won’t make it, in spite of having great ideas and a killer cost-structure. Apparently, the first company who did something better then Google and then was crushed by a me-too soon afterwards is Netvibes, a French company. It’s far from dead yet, but that issue has been resonnating for quite some time here.

A few angry people over-reacted (mostly because they missed the internet turn and feel stupid about it; intellectual pride runs at statospheric levels in French print business) but you might want to temper what I understand to be a management book with some competition policy issues.

I haven’t read it, and I’ll read with pleasure (I live on top of the best English bookshop in Paris, so don’t worry: I’ll have no problem getting your book); after that, I might want to come back to you with comments on those issues. I’m finishing a PhD on the subject, actually — so I really hope to be able to be concise. In the mean time, please be like a good doctor, or a good shrink: a patient is litterally someone who is in pain; he shouldn’t yell and cry, because it certainly doesn’t help either him to cure, or help you to find a diagnosis — but there generally is a reason behind all that screaming; painkilllers aren’t addressing that. Old media types are most likely wrong about the big picture, and they happen to be more vocal here than there; there is more to their pain then demands for appeasing subsidies.

Regarding your book: some at RWW France (Fabrice Epelboin’s blog) mentionned a possible User-generated plan to translate and distribute your book outside of a publishers’ control. I’m sure it’s a bad idea for a million reasons, but if you want to put your opus where you mouth apparently is, I’d love to contribute.

To those who criticize French innovation,

Please remember the centrality-based search result (the principle behind PageRank) was actually first implemented in AltaVista, by a French IT professor named Louis Monier. He then joined Google: proof that his ideas were better of with a US company managing the business; he recently joined Cuil, yet another disappointment; he went to Silicon Valley soon after his graduation: more proof that France is not the ideal ground for entrepreneurs — but don’t confuse those with innovation. HTML and the WWW never made a buck, and I’m not sure about MP3’s revenues either.

Also, please remember without that clumsy Minitel project, a modem would be a $15k device; don’t think about DSL either (developped by the same lab); there would therefore most likely be five servers in the world (just like that All-American IBM planned); four of which would be US-military. France didn’t invent the internet; our geeks simply though that the “to every home” part would be useful, so unless you’ve worked directly with Vint Cerf, you might want to be grateful.

Yes, Europe doesn’t like monopolies like Microsoft, and we tend to regulate them into being competitive and not bullies; we socialists tend to pay long studies to slackers like Linus Torvalds; we *are* bad at hoarding money when open standards might be a better option. When companies seem to be a better idea (distribution, industrial design, luxury) Europe seems to do not that bad, though. So don’t judge people too quickly and do what a good journalist would do: call the person and ask about his opinion.

I’m french and I’m sorry about that.

Anyway, reading your book will be an oppotunity for me to improve my english!

See an interesting comment from one of the most succesful online journals in France:

http://www.rue89.com/2008/12/12/entre-google-et-la-presse-francaise-la-guerre-est-declaree

When talking of “the French” press, you might differentiate between the journal owners who are friends of the president of France and the other media, particularly on-line media. You migt just think in less comemrcal terms and more political terms and you would probably have clue about the reasons behnd the attack of large media groups –who seek the money of the state to save them from a real collapse– against google.

Bush said word, not work. Its Sarkozy who sez there is no work for the French…

to the author:

You write:

American publishers told me that they have a French rule: If a book succeeds in France, it won’t anywhere else. So they told me to be just as happy that the French haven’t bought it. What is it about the French?

Stupid publishers probably… We translate and publish more American and English literature in France than the other round, knoweing that the market is much wider in the US and English speaking world. What’s about this attitude of thinking american subject matters are the world’s matters?

I consider we should make a difference between Google as a content distribution partner and the touchy discussion on ads and revenue share and, yes, the global question of market regulation. I m not sure that discussion doesn’t take place in the US too. I keep reading Jeff Jarvis for years and I agree with him most of the time but I think Jeff really underestimate the question of ad revenues, market regulation et some side effects of Google monopoly. I think it’s a very valuable discussion and you can’t just restrain it to a french bashing game.

I have no love for the French; in fact, there is some animus for a public that elects and supports such things and government actions as Chirac (“mon ami, Saddam!”), LePen, uranium mining in Niger, facilitating Rwanda’s massacre, Pacific nuclear testing, educates Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh (and Kim Jong-Il’s kids), lets Ayatollah Khomeini keep agitating from safety in France, supports Emperor Bokassa, etc.

“Life without Google? No sweat. Google’s reputation is inflated. All the major search engines deliver excellent results, and most if not all of Google’s hit-and-miss offerings in other areas are easily duplicated.”

This is the key point. Most of Google’s success hinges upon a loyalty that’s based on nothing concrete–popular preference. Right now people love google, but I predict in 5-10 years we’ll be reading “What Would Google Have Done.”

And I can find, french journalmists that likes Google, perhaps the pmajority of fr

It is you Jeff by ASSIMILATING some behaviour of some french with the whole French population who is activating this flame War.

And the cause is self evident.

Plus I did not say that your post was racist, but the COMMENTS were.

Normal…
Your article is enticing people to declare their heinous repressed thoughts against the French, because you went a bit too far in your script in saying that the part was a whole.

Please do not play with me, not even Sergey Brin or Larry Page or Eric Schmidt made such allegations on the French people…
Guess what ? THEY are in charge of Google strategy and not you.
Surely a question of elegance, smart attitude, and great intelligence too…

Which IS incorrect reasoning.

Now I am asking myself, is Jeff Jarvis a tolerant person, capable of understanding what is at stake for the Network’sfuture, by not expressing the universality or the national neutrality of its greatest contributors ?
I believe not, and this blog’s post is alas sufficient proof of a narrow mind that reacts badly to frustration.

Life without Google? No sweat. Google’s reputation is inflated. All the major search engines deliver excellent results, and most if not all of Google’s hit-and-miss offerings in other areas are easily duplicated.

http://live.com”

Hmmm….work for Microsoft, do we ) Actually, I have to say you have a point. I used to have a few search engines I used to help find information, but I found Google to almost without exception give better results. Infoseek (morphed into go.com) , hotbot.com, lycos.com, altavista.com, and yahoo.com were at one point competing sites for search. Now, though, a number of these companies have given up or basically run off another’s search engine technology.

Actually, taking a quick look at live.com, it looks ok, so I might try it a few times searching to see how it does. The thing about Google, though, is that compared to all the rest of the search sites above that I used in the past, it always has performed better. And when it didn’t, I learned to use the more advanced search syntax, so my Google-fu overcomes any weakness in the basic search by words. Google really hasn’t given me a reason to not use them almost exclusively.

“PARIS — In the hope of stimulating local technological, industrial and economic development, President Jacques Chirac of France announced Tuesday (April 25) a 2 billion euro (about $2.5 billion) plan to back a series of projects including one on a Franco-German search engine intended to rival Google.”

Just Google (heh!) “Quaero” for more information about what socialism does to search.

They all decided to go with the various wire services once upon a time to save on costs. And they did save cash by not needing to have a reporter everywhere. But now, with the internet, the consumers can quickly see that the Local Town Rag has nearly the same content as the Nearby City Gazzete, which is the same content as Foreign City Journal.

And so they are all going to have their milkshakes drank by google and other services like that.

http://live.com