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This is a bit scary. I hope it doesn't give any other countries some ideas. Would there be anything Google could do to counter this?
by ntumlin 14y ago
This is a bit scary. I hope it doesn't give any other countries some ideas.
Would there be anything Google could do to counter this?
- guard-of-terra 14y agoThe thing they did with China? Move their french "operations" to Monaco (domain and stuff), serve their audience from "there" and sit on that.
- antr 14y agoI'm pretty certain Monaco goes online via France, no submarine cable available. I guess this would be a futile move.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoI don't think that network topology is terribly relevant here. International law is.
- antr 14y agoIf law is the tool to tackle this issue (which I agree it is), the EU should really handle this. What Google and other corporations are doing is avoiding taxes on economic activities going on in EU territory. This is the real problem, paying no taxes while creating a trade balance deficit. These two is what make governments angry.
- outside1234 14y agoI agree - and this is a clear import duty on a product. Hence France should be referred to the WTO to remove it.
- outside1234 14y agoYes - they make the point of sale in Ireland (I suspect they are already doing this) so that no money ever lands in France.
- nraynaud 14y agoyeah, they tried, now they are asked €1b by the French State.
- martinced 14y agoWell... They could give France the finger and stop to provide any Google service to any french citizen. They could replace GMail, Google Apps for domain and Youtube for all their non-paying users with a page explaining that they cannot continue to operate in France seen how unreasonable the requests from the french government are getting. But don't forget there's the EU and France is part of the EU and all it takes is one EU directive to put Hollande back on reasonable tracks. There are already a lot of other domains where the french government would like to open its big mouth but has to shut up thanks to Europe being in power.