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Although France doesn't exactly hold the same leverage as China when it comes to market size...

• moe 12y ago
  It is not in Google's interest to flash the true power balance here by cutting off France anyway. They couldn't care less about french revenue, but it would be a global PR disaster, likely resulting in new EU-wide regulations that would then actually hurt Google.
  • shubb 12y ago
    Ah that's a really interesting part of the picture - Google clearly doesn't pay adequate tax on the sales it makes in the EU. Google are pretty obviously not paying tax like a normal company. To put that more explicitly, they are probably committing massive tax fraud, taking billions in local money and not paying tax on it... that isn't unusual for a mega corporation, and they need local government to continue cooperating. So, the UK gets a big Google office, it's government keeps quiet. I guess France needs one too...
• shubb 12y ago
  China has 66M google users, while France has 44M. However, if we split HK google users from mainland Google users, it would be pretty clear that Google is toast in China just like Excite in the US. There are a lot of people in China. Only about half of those use the Internet, and only a small percentage of those want to consume silicon valley internet product. People say excitable stuff about the size of the Chinese market but forget that customes are only customers if they are buying your stuff.
  • sbw1 12y ago
    s/want to consume/are willing and able to work around government censorship to consume/ Google explicitly decided not to play ball in mainland China years ago. It will be interesting to see the reaction if this goes through-- both exposing ranking algorithms and pulling out of France seem pretty improbable.