France eyes 'Google Tax' for French websites

[rachel1]

Source: Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — French President Francois Hollande is considering a pushing for a new tax that would see search engines such as Google have to pay each time they use content from French media.

...

Hollande says the rapid expansion of the digital economy means that tax laws need to be updated to reward French media content.

Google has opposed the plan and threatened to bar French websites from its search results if the tax is imposed.

Germany is considering a similar law, and Italian editors have also indicated they would favor such a plan.

Read more: http://www.wlfi.com/dpp/lifestyles/consumer_tech/France-eyes-Google-Tax-for-French-websites_71389369

---

Well, that's interesting idea and it certainly seems to make some sense.

[msongs]

1. yes we all access french, german, and italian sites...hundreds of times a day lol nt

[JDPriestly]

9. I read French, German and British papers now and then, sometimes pretty regularly.

Taxing Google for using those sites would mean that we Americans would be even more cut off from the rest of the world and the viewpoints of others in the world than we are now. That is a horrible thing.

I have very, very little confidence in the American media.

[dipsydoodle]

17. If it became EU wide

it would include the BBC and the Guardian amongst others.

[MADem]

2. It won't be such a fine idea when they start taxing us to access google...

They'll find a way to pass the costs on.

Hell, half of the good sites are behind pay walls. You get a paragraph or two, and have to find the piece on a blog somewhere or pay to see it.

[Egnever]

6. I highly doubt Google would pay this

When sites see their readership start to die off because Google no longer indexes them the negative reaction will come swiftly.

[MADem]

7. I don't think they'll pay it either... nt

[Lithos]

3. So, umm

One can only think that they have seen the referrals to their sites from Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc.

So, they want to monopolize this revenue, more power to them.

So,... have they stopped to think about why people are using Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc. in the first place and not accessing their sites directly? Oh, yeah, most of their traffic probably comes from search engines.

Lesson: Content is only valuable if someone can access it. Walled gardens, (and this is one caused by audience unawareness) are not worth very much unless you already have a captive audience. Rather than enact the NYTimes model, they want to charge Google, Bing, Yahoo! for their own short comings.

L-

[w4rma]

4. It's anti-democratic to restrict information, artificially.

Government should help information spread, not tax it like commerce.

[Egnever]

5. This is stupid

How is Google using their content? By providing a link to it?

This seems very short sited to me.

[NYC Liberal]

8. So Google removes all French media websites from search results.

Then we'll find out who really needs whom.

They could block Google *today* with their robots.txt file. But they won't. Because they know full well they need Google more than Google needs them.

[SkyDaddy7]

14. Exactly!

I think a tax like this is a clear sign of desperation & an attack on the internet as a whole. I remember the days when the internet was suppose to be a sales tax free shopping zone but that is no longer the case either.

[Democat]

10. Imagine every country taxes every link on the internet

What a dumb idea.

[harmonicon]

11. How in the world does this seem to make sense to you?

Others have already written most of the criticism of it that I would have had. If there is any possible contrary argument - one that makes any sense, I mean, not just "ugh... we want moar money" - I'd like to hear it.

[SkyDaddy7]

15. Yes, I would too!

I like many things the Europeans do but I am not one of those who simply agrees with everything they do for political reasons...Which I would imagine is why the OP said they think this makes sense. But I could be wrong & would love to hear the actual reason why one might think such a thing makes sense.

To me, this is an attack on the internet itself & will only result in hurting the French people & anyone else wanting to access French websites or businesses from around the world.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. It seems to me it's the aggregators who are getting copy for free, not search engines

(well, I'm not sure if aggregators are passing on money in any form to the content providers). Google, and, as far as I know, other search engines, show you just a headline and a quoted sentence or so from an article. I'd have thought that few people looking for news are satisfied with that (it's the equivalent of reading out a sentence or two on the main stories at the start of broadcast news), and the media sites then get the visit from the person looking for a story.

Sites like Huffington Post, on the other hand, may be different - their rewriting of stories with extensive "the Daily News reports that ...." may be enough to stop people visiting the source.

[krkaufman]

16. doubleplus

Right, that's my thinking/perception pretty much exactly, as well.

[begin_within]

13. Who uses Google any more anyway?

It's tired, lame, nosy, and makes it difficult to find good stuff. It's about as useful as a phone book.

[SkyDaddy7]

18. Whatever!

Google is still the number one rated search engine on the web...And regardless, Google is anything but "tired, lame, nosy, and makes it difficult to find good stuff. It's about as useful as a phone book."

Consumer Search:
http://www.consumersearch.com/search-engine-reviews

"Here are the 15 Most Popular Search Engines as derived from our eBizMBA Rank which is a constantly updated average of each website's Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and U.S. Traffic Rank from both Compete and Quantcast. "*#*" Denotes an estimate for sites with limited Compete or Quantcast data.
http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines

Google ranked #1:
http://www.listofsearchengines.info/


What did Google do to you to generate such a hyperbolic comment? ...Did Google street view take a pic of you nude sunbathing or something?

[begin_within]

20. No, Google is tired, lame, useless and nosy. And their results are different on

every computer. Try a specific search on one computer, then try the same search on a different computer. You will get a different page of results. Their "results" mean nothing. It's pointless and useless and it's just an advertising vehicle. It's obsolete.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. What news search engine do you use personally?

I don't think the Yahoo News search results look significantly different from Google News, for instance.

[Occulus]

23. Your claim is absolutely false

You could not BE more wrong than you just were.

I just performed a search for "new release movies" on www.google.com from both my desktop PC and my phone. The results were identical, even though my desktop PC and my phone are using two completely different IP addresses.

You FAIL.

[onehandle]

19. Good. Tax the ad spamming data spys. nt

[NYC Liberal]

22. Google News doesn't have ads.