French officials say Google, Amazon (AMZN), Apple and Facebook (FB) are able to sell to French consumers while not paying the 19.6 percent French VAT.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin pointed out that half the Google Print engineering team is French.
Google has threatened to exclude French media sites from search results if France goes ahead with plans to make search engines pay for content.
In addition to the creating the Digital Publishing Innovation Fund, Google has agreed to give French media access to its advertising platforms at a reduced cost.
Second, Google will deepen our partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using our advertising technology.
That the Google News search and index of the French newspapers is just fine.
FORBES: Explaining This French Thing About Google And Newspapers
But the French newspapers are demanding that Google should pay the newspapers for the privilege of sending traffic to them.
But the quid pro quo seems to be that all of the French newspapers will now run Google Ads on their pages.
Google recently settled their differences with the French press, as we know.
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Mr Sarkozy also called for an inquiry by French competition authorities into whether Google abuses its dominant position in the internet-ad market.
The background is that the French newspapers were insisting that Google should pay them for including their pages in the search index results.
Google responded by threatening to remove all French news sites from its index, which would presumably eliminate the 4 billion clicks it sends to those sites every year.
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For the actual settlements with the Belgian and French publishers were not that Google hands over a pot of money in return for spidering their sites and showing the results.
FORBES: Once Google Pays The Danegeld Will The Danes Ever Stop Asking For Money?
In January, the head of the French national library system said Google's plans would facilitate the hegemony of the English language since it planned to scan libraries in English-speaking countries first.
To what degree the French ruling will apply to Google and Dailymotion's operations isn't clear: User-generated video sites in the U.S. are protected by the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1999.
At least in America, we do not follow the archaic lead of the paternalistic French, who recently fined Google, on competition grounds, for making Google Maps free to users in order to protect legacy publishers of printed street maps.
At the Google Factory Tour media event last week, French journalists brought up the issue repeatedly.
The newspapers, backed by the French government, are arguing that Google should be paying the newspapers.
FORBES: Explaining This French Thing About Google And Newspapers
French publishers had been pushing for Google to pay them licensing fees for listing headlines and snippets of articles in its search engine results.
But reader and investor Walt French responded that behind the scenes Google had managed to create a near monopoly of mobile search, and presumably therefore a certain type of mobile ads.
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Google and Google News send a lot of traffic to the French newspaper websites.
English case, this means that Google will label text from any language as either French or English.
The French government had threatened to tax the revenue Google made from posting ads alongside the results.
The dispute was settled in February after Google agreed to create a 60m euro fund to help French media organisations improve their internet operations.
BBC: French MPs use tablets in parliament (19 February 2013)
"After this period has expired, Google has not implemented any significant compliance measures, " said French data watchdog CNIL in a statement.
When a poll asked French teenagers which company they would most like to work for, the top three responses were not, as in the past, French state enterprises, but Apple, Microsoft and Google.
Google Inc must extend its offer made last week to pay French publishers for use of their content to all media companies across Europe, the head of the European Publishers Council said on Thursday.
FORBES: Once Google Pays The Danegeld Will The Danes Ever Stop Asking For Money?
One refinement of this argument being used by the French newspapers is that yes, this is true for Google News.
FORBES: Have The French Gone Completely Insane Over Google News?
For at the moment Google appears to be sending 4 billion clicks a year through to the French newspapers.
FORBES: Explaining This French Thing About Google And Newspapers
"France is proud to have reached this agreement with Google, the first of its kind in the world, " the French president's office said on Twitter.
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