Libreka Poses European Threat to Google Book Search

By Angela Natividad | Published Oct 15, 2007

With its Book Search feature, Google smugly drives home the point David Bercovich tried to make when he called the company “the world’s largest content management system.” (We totally called that, by the way.)

What could demonstrate that ambition more soundly than trying to index the world's libraries?

But for those getting skittish about Google's ever-blossoming ECM-savvy, there are always other alternatives.

A new program called Libreka hopes to do for Germans what Book Search hopes to do for us. And instead of appealing to the Library of Congress to copy an oeuvre that some struggling author somewhere worked so hard to write, it boasts a democratic opt-in feature. This means you have complete control of what parts of your book searchers can access.

The launch occurred last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Ars Technica observes that it's only got a few thousand titles under its belt so far, but zee Germans — as Turkish from Snatch would say — are optimistic about the success of the project.

To fully comprehend the relevance of German optimism, it's worth noting that Google lost its claim over the name “Gmail” in a trademark suit there.

Where else?!