The Bibliothèque Nationale de France's imminent four-year deal with Google Books is being mocked as a humiliating surrender — and that's by the French themselves, reports the Times of London:

Pierre Assouline, a writer with a popular Paris literary blog, pronounced an acid verdict on the surrender: "It will thus have taken four years for the BNF to pass from resistance to collaboration."

France's official Google killer, Quaero, has yet to launch, and a parallel effort go build a Google Books competitor called Europeana has gotten off to a "shaky" start, according to the Times. It would appear massive government efforts simply cannot move as quickly as private corporations. Thank goodness the United States' nimble companies don't need any of these debilitating subsidies to compete with foreigners.

(Pic: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, AP)

The information that can be collected includes addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, physical appearance, behavioral traits, fiscal and financial records, and details about people who have personal ties with the subject.

Funny, because that's exactly the kind of information most of what Americans willingly share about themselves on social network sites like Facebook.

When 28-year-old politician Arash Derambarsh joined an unofficial Facebook group called "ePresident," he apparently thought he was running for a real position at the company. He then went to the media, who didn't bother checking the story before introducing him as the country's Facebook president. Which is silly! Facebook would never hire above age 25.

Anyway, French bloggers went nuts, the press retracted, and the Internet once again danced on the corpse of old media, because of course bloggers never get stories wrong.