In France, Google's plans to digitize 15 million books from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and the New York Public Library immediately raised the kind of ire once directed at the perceived cultural imperialism of Disney. The head of the French National Library, Jean-Noel Jeanneney, writing in Le Monde, called the plans "confirmation of the risk of crushing American domination in the way future generations conceive the world".
But experts in search technology say that such objectors are shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted. "The technology already makes quality judgments on things all the time -- that's the nature of a search engine. No matter what they do, they'll always come in for criticism," contended Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch.
Macklin said the Ask Jeeves technology already contained a bias towards more authoritative sites for its results.
Sullivan said another dimension would be added to the debate once search technology started second guessing users' preferences by analysing their online activity and even their hard drives. Microsoft is planning to put tools based around a concept known as "implicit query" in its next version of Windows, due to be launched next year.
"It will be interesting to see when they make that further jump into modifying the results based on your behavior. People don't think about the fact they have a search profile, but they do," said Sullivan. "You'll do the same search and suddenly realize it's different to your friend's because you've got different histories. It will be a problem for some people. But if it's useful, people will believe in it and use it."
As religious leaders will attest, belief in your version of the truth largely depends on faith. Google's company motto remains "don't be evil". How long before that becomes "the way, the truth and the life?"
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