I just read an article in the German newspaper FAZ (online ) on how much book publishers are scared of Google. This article is a classic case showing how much the Internet and its power house Google are misunderstood. Actually not only by book publishers but also by journalists like the one who was writing this article for a well known and otherwise highly respected German newspaper.

Let's look at the details line by line now to see where the problems are:

• "Google has no boundaries and shows god-like behaviour". Well this statement is a bit amusing. Google's vision is to make information findable and of course information not only on web servers but also from books, magazines, movies, etc. Now if publishers are scared of Google doing this, then they are actually not really scared of Google, but of electronic distribution and IP rights for it. Google is just a means to find it and that should be - assuming publishers have figured out electronic distribution rights - a blessing since many more people can very conveniently find it and then decide to get the whole book. (I mean buy it of course).
• "Google collects all sorts of data and not all of these are kept secret." The author refers to GoogleDesktop, which has been the subject of some controversial discussion lately. Subsequently Google changed its policy and no-one really talks about it anymore. Local search indices are only uploaded if and only if the client opts to do so. As an example of how evil Google is, the author mentions that Google would recognize the birthday and show a birthday cake on the day when that person goes to the Google site. It did not happen to me yet, but would I freak out because of it? And how bad would that really be? Anyone can find out my birthday if they want to. Even easier also if I opt to publish it - which I would not - on the Internet like on a personal website. Now the article says about this Google "evil" behaviour: "A first milestone on the way to customer transparency and Orwell's Big Brother is nothing compared with that." My immediate thought: and who protects us from FAZ authors not having a clue what they are talking about? What would my mother think if she read such an article? Would she be scared of something that is really pretty harmless?
• Now one other - for once strong - point was that Google put digitized books on the web and is asking publishers to opt out of it if they don't want that to happen. One can argue whether this is bad but it for sure speeds up the digitization process if one has not to wait years for replies from publishers until they have figured out, if they ever do, whether or not the Internet should be used by them.
• The fact that a German publisher group started a lawsuit against Google is seen as a good step although a late one since Google has 90% market share.
• Then the last one is particularly funny: the author asks if it is still a good business model to publish good books. Well it is about making good books and then being able to let the world know about it within seconds by using search like, well, Google. Or even better let the world find it whenever and from wherever they look for it. Now what is bad about this? Do they want to have Gutenberg back setting print letters for making the newspaper, or do people have to go to the library and use microfiche readers to find a book using some very limited search capabilities?

It is not about all that, but simply about the fact that the publishers need to embrace the new world before they are replaced. Same is true for newspaper authors actually too, unless they want to be replaced by blog writers or lose all their readers to them...
Now one final hint for Larry Page. He should not wear such a white dress when pointing to the world map, otherwise my dear mother might really think of him as running a sect or something.