5 ms·

When you owe someone 10'000 Eur you have a problem. When you owe someone 1 Billion Euro, they have a problem. With the european regulation protecting intersta

• abolibibelot 14y ago
  You're conflating two entirely different issues here (though you're not alone in that, the French government itself is likely to play one issue as a leverage to the other). The French newspapers that are whining about google indexing their content, are already heavily subsidized by the government and have missed every conceivable opportunity to offer something worthwhile online or on dead paper. There are a handful of very vocal op-eds who keep advocating censoring or curating the internet, coming from the hurtful realization that anybody can express its not so special opinion on the internet - thus levelling the field (in France, like in most places I suspect, celebrity journalists mostly offer vapid copycat opinions). So, I agree, they're despicable. Now, there's an entirely different issue: how big companies can get away not paying taxes. This is what this news item is about.
  • guylhem 14y ago
    You're right, they are different issues. It's just the timing of bring such issues to the attention of the public that seems suspect to me - especially after I noticed how the downs in google stock suddenly became newsworthy. IMHO, it's not a coincidence.
    • abolibibelot 14y ago
      You're right it's not, and that's what makes it infuriating since both Google and the French government storytelling benefit from lumping these issues together ("look at ze seellee control-freaks French" vs. "we raise high the light of Justice and Equality for Humanity as a whole").
    • anigbrowl 14y ago
      That's conspiracy theory logic. The tax issue has been bothering multiple governments, and many non-European media companies have problems with the news aggregation. Google is a very large entity, just because it is challenged on two different fronts does not mean that there's a coordinated assault.
      • guylhem 14y ago
        You know the saying - once is bad luck, twice is a coincidence, thrice is usually an enemy action. I see the google news strongarm with france and germany, the tax issues with other european countries, the reports about the stock lows in the french press, anger against youtube allowing the diffusion of anti-religion movies - with protests in the uk and continental politicians explaining it is hurting sensibilities - it just seems more than pure randomness to me. I make a judgement call. Call that conspiracy theory if you prefer. Maybe google is just a very large entity, but it's a) profitable, b) non european and c) advocating free speech, which makes it a good target for populist european politicians.
        • anigbrowl 14y ago
          A hole in your theory is that France is among the least tolerant European countries as far as Islam is concerned. Head-to-toe Islamic garments for women are forbidden by law, for example. So I don;t think they'd be bent out of shape about an inflammatory video on YouTube to the extent of wanting to punish Google; any more than they were bent out of shape about French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo publishing cartoons of Mohammad at the same time. As for the stock lows, that was worldwide news in the financial press because it surprised everyone.
• thwest 14y ago
  The production of news content -- like aid to the destitute or the military -- might be an obsolete business model but is still an essential social good worth protecting.
  • guylhem 14y ago
    says who?
  • TruthElixirX 14y ago
    Production of news content is happening without the news papers. It is happening without taxing Google 1 billion Euros. Who says it is outdated? Do you have stats on that? I get more news content now than ever before. There clearly must be money in it, or enough that people haven't stopped producing content. Also, who says it is a societal good that we must protect? If society no longer values news and refuses to pay for it, who are you to decide we still should? There will always be demand for news, it just depends on where the demand is.
  • civilian 14y ago
    Just because we don't want newspapers subsidized by the government doesn't mean we don't value news content. This is a fallacy that statists have been making for centuries-- you're confusing the values of society with the values of government.
    • esrauch 14y ago
      The issue is that without the state to subsidizing it and if the content is freely available through other intermediary companies, then there is no apparent way to cover the costs of media production. When you write what appears to be "I think all currently viable options for funding serious news production are inappropriate", then it doesn't sound like you value news content. That is honestly an attempt to not strawman you, just a (perhaps confused) understanding of your seemingly untenable position. If an alternative to state funding is viable while still allowing free aggregation and distribution by arbitrary third parties, I am definitely interested in it.
• narrator 14y ago
  As Putin and the Chinese have so deftly showed, you control a country's major media, you control the country. There is a lot of political power bottled up in the news monopolies that Google is disrupting so it would be natural for the people who rely on that power in the government to act to protect it.
  • guylhem 14y ago
    E. Schmidt meeting Hollande, France's president, is therefore quite interesting.