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the upper house of parliament yesterday voted to support an amendment to a draft economy bill that would require search engines to display at least three rivals
by purringmeow 12y ago
the upper house of parliament yesterday voted to support an amendment to a draft economy bill that would require search engines to display at least three rivals on their homepage
That's just absurd. Can someone acquainted with the situation shed light on why they are doing this? Simple populism and lobbying from local businesses or something else?
- vinay427 12y agoNot the answer you're looking for, but French protectionism (agriculture, film, etc.) is consistently stronger than the Western norm in the rest of Europe and the US. In those cases it is to protect domestic interests, which of course comes with its own consequences.
- ptaipale 12y agoConsequences, like that the last time France had annual budget surplus was in 1974.
- aikah 12y ago> Can someone acquainted with the situation shed light on why they are doing this? Hard to explain, even for a french person. That's why I basically want to move ASAP, at least abroad I'll care less about politics. It tragically funny, there is like 10% unemployment rate in France right now, and instead of trying to give businesses some air, ie less laws and regulations, they keep on coming with ridiculous ones.
- bane 12y agoI've found that whenever the media or lawmakers get caught up in some absolutely useless bullshit, they're almost always trying to distract from something more important that they can't address (or caused). It seems to hold no matter what country it is.
- glass- 12y agoNo more or less absurd than Microsoft being forced to advertise rival web browsers.
- plorkyeran 12y agoA bit more absurd. A closer analogy would be if Windows was required to ask you on first startup if you wanted to install Linux (i.e. advertising a competitor to the thing you're using vs. a thing bundled with the thing you're using).
- oh_sigh 12y agoNot only on the first startup, but on every use.
- protomyth 12y agoThey did it to Microsoft in Windows to do the browser selection, so its a pretty small step in their minds to do it to Google. Its still absurd, but it fits their thinking.
- higherpurpose 12y agoLobbying from local businesses? Ha! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/technology/microsoft-once-an-antitrust-target-is-now-googles-regulatory-scold.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/technology/microsoft-once-... Microsoft is the puppet-master in all of this, it seems.