IIRC, under EU VAT regs Google Ireland will charge and remit French VAT rates to the French treasury for digital content sold to consumers in France, so there'

IIRC, under EU VAT regs Google Ireland will charge and remit French VAT rates to the French treasury for digital content sold to consumers in France, so there's no imbalance there. The big issue is that digital services, particularly advertising, are so insanely profitable that most governments would also like to get their hands on a proportion of the profits accruing from sales of digital services in their country. They see the fact that Ireland / Luxembourg are able to book all the profit in one jurisdiction as unfair. There's probably not a huge likelihood of that happening any time soon at an EU level, so France has gone with the next best option from their POV. (Tax avoidance strategies that allow a large multinational to not pay much tax to their host country is a different kettle of fish, since most of the benefit of tackling those would probably accrue to the country of incorporation not France - e.g. the Apple settlement)