Google's effort is only "dominated by the English language and American culture" because Google is a US company which, because it is based and run in the US is almost certainly "dominated by the English language and American culture".
And nothing at all to do with the fact that Google is for searching those interweb doohickeys, and interwebs are overwhelmingly in English, what with it being the language of international business and all that stuff. Google generates relatively little content of its own.
whats stopping him from volunteering and starting to scan/digitize other works?
He's a French civil servant. A senior one at that. We are talking serious chef avec cheveux aux points territory. I doubt he's ever seen a computer. He'd probably tear the pages out, fold them and stuff them in the CD drive.
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We can be thankful that it's not possible to ram anything on IM. Yet.