6 ms·

This seems stupid to most sane people, but there's a kind of logic behind it. 1) This is clearly bullshit designed to distract from more pressing issues that t

by bane 12y ago

This seems stupid to most sane people, but there's a kind of logic behind it. 1) This is clearly bullshit designed to distract from more pressing issues that the French government can't solve or is unwilling to solve. 2) France's notorious protectionism, while immensely irritating to outsiders, does a reasonable job at preserving French language and culture, and creating a local vacuum for French native solutions. Trade and culture protectionism has a long-history of working quite well in many countries seeking to create national identity and industry when used correctly. These two riffs will continue to get played, with #2 reinforcing #1 while necessary, to try and encourage native French solutions. France is under tremendous economic and cultural pressure from better performing regional partners like Germany and the U.K., and globally by the U.S., China and Japan (pick whichever you think is better performing in terms of economics and cultural expansion). It kind of sucks, but it's also why, when you go to France, and even Paris, you know you're in Paris and not yet another cosmopolitan mega-city. It's also part of the reason why French culture and ideas continue to be interesting and exportable. Much of this of course is France's continued decline as a global power. London, New York and Paris used to be a given global triumvirate. And Paris's membership in the top-3 isn't a given any more. It's now in a mix of second-tier alpha cities with Tokyo, Beijing and Dubai. Outsiders look at this and say "of course Paris is in decline, this kind of behavior is why". Tighter global integration and more openness seems to be the way to the top and maintaining it. But for French leadership, losing cultural identity is not worth it. What if the world thought La Défense = Paris and the rest of the city was just some curious suburb? Is this [1] something that anybody cares about? 1 - http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2014/067/b/7/skyline_la_defense_02_by_eolneth-d79d8ck.jpg http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2014/067/b/7/skyline_la_de...

crdb 12y ago
As one of the more than 1.6 million French citizen living abroad [1] (2.5% of the French population [2]), I could tell you a lot about the actual effects of attempting to create barriers around the French market. I'm also not sure French culture is preserved that well in France. Sir Colin Davis was a better Berlioz interpreter than any French conductor I ever heard (and I was born 50km from la Cote St Andre), and even traditional Haute Cuisine is better abroad (particularly in Tokyo - see Apicius). On the upside, a castle in Normandie or the South West today [3] costs less than a 1 bedroom in the nicer parts of Sydney. And those mostly empty TGVs where first class can be cheaper than second are nice when you need to get between Paris and Geneva and avoid those awful Parisian airports. Acemoglu and Robinson [4] describe how the descendants of the world-leading Venetian Republicans now serve ice creams on their ancestors' plazas to today's "Venetians", visiting from Houston or Hong Kong. Sometimes, going home for Christmas feels like that. Luckily, London is only 45 minutes away with EasyJet. [1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_%C3%A9tablis_hors_de_France#Chiffres http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_%C3%A9tablis_hors... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France [3] http://www.patrice-besse.com/ http://www.patrice-besse.com/ is one of the best sites for castles. http://www.realestate.com.au/ http://www.realestate.com.au/ for Sydney prices. [4] http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8 http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-eb...
- crdb 12y ago
  As an aside/example, here is an entire fortress fortified by Vauban in 1692, a pillar of French royal power for centuries, practically a small village behind the walls, going for only 2.6m EUR: http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/paca/chateau-citadelle-montagne-a-vendre/ http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/paca/chateau-... Although my favorite is: http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/bourgogne/vente-chateau-de-la-rochepot/ http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/bourgogne/ven... - for only 3m EUR you get a moat with lifting bridge, gargoyles, and some real towers to shoot your crossbows from. You never know when the peasants might revolt!
- epsylon 12y ago
  > I'm also not sure French culture is preserved that well in France. Sir Colin Davis was a better Berlioz interpreter than any French conductor I ever heard (and I was born 50km from la Cote St Andre), and even traditional Haute Cuisine is better abroad (particularly in Tokyo - see Apicius). You can't drop assertions like that while hoping that being French makes you automatically right about French culture. You have a right to your opinion, but please just don't proclaim them as if they were universal truths.
  - crdb 12y ago
    I'm sorry for making a relatively snarky reply to your (genuine, and partially fair) criticism, but "trust only the qualified" is a particularly noxious part of French culture which is, like graphology as an important criteria for hiring decisions, thankfully slowly disappearing outside the civil service and CAC 40...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
realusername 12y ago
As a french guy living currently in London, I clearly agree. I hope Paris never becomes a second London. If you live there you will understand why. London just lost almost all it's culture in just a few years, the London you see in movies is long gone. Just the red bricks and a few cultural things from the past are remaining but all the rest is gone. There is hard consequences to accept to become a truly global city, it's clearly not only positive consequences for the city. For Google, it's quite complicated. The problem is that Google is representing more than 90% of all the requests in France (the usage is also the same for most of european countries anyway). So we can technically say that Google is in a monopoly position for search. The problem is that it's hurting local startups and businesses there. The solution would be to break Google into smaller parts (it's what you do normaly when a monopoly is hurting the free market) but since that's impossible due to the fact that Google is an American company, the government is taking some measures to limit Google's influence. This is one of the measures, the second one which is currently being voted would be to force Google to display competitors on the home page (a bit like Microsoft's ballot screen). I guess that given the current context, they have no other option.
- azinman2 12y ago
  Except here's the thing -- it's not a natural monopoly. There aren't physical wires with no alternative like Ma Bell. There aren't things that google is doing that prevents other search engines from coming into existence -- they can't prevent new web crawls. Even Firefox now uses yahoo by default, and the open crawler data even gives anyone a head start on crawling the web! Competition, if it were much better, could easily take away search market share. Having better localized results for France could be one of those ways. People aren't using google because they have no other choice, it's because google is genuinely doing a better job. That's not a reason to break up a company.
  - stretchwithme 12y ago
    Ma Bell was not a natural monopoly either. It was created by law.
    - 12y ago
squeeze 12y ago
so, google is forced to reveal how it affects and processes search results, at least to the french government (this part was unclear to me). i don't really see what's wrong with that. if google has to approach the market so as to encourage more competition from france, i dont see whats wrong with that either. i dont see why any european company would want to be dependent on an american-based search or really any type of data-handling company at this juncture in international politics. at the very least, reducing google's control on french markets is not a bad thing, and is something google could overcome if it played ball well. if it's not possible to do something fairly, legally, and respectfully, its not worth doing at all.

by bane 12y ago

crdb 12y ago

As one of the more than 1.6 million French citizen living abroad [1] (2.5% of the French population [2]), I could tell you a lot about the actual effects of attempting to create barriers around the French market. I'm also not sure French culture is preserved that well in France. Sir Colin Davis was a better Berlioz interpreter than any French conductor I ever heard (and I was born 50km from la Cote St Andre), and even traditional Haute Cuisine is better abroad (particularly in Tokyo - see Apicius). On the upside, a castle in Normandie or the South West today [3] costs less than a 1 bedroom in the nicer parts of Sydney. And those mostly empty TGVs where first class can be cheaper than second are nice when you need to get between Paris and Geneva and avoid those awful Parisian airports. Acemoglu and Robinson [4] describe how the descendants of the world-leading Venetian Republicans now serve ice creams on their ancestors' plazas to today's "Venetians", visiting from Houston or Hong Kong. Sometimes, going home for Christmas feels like that. Luckily, London is only 45 minutes away with EasyJet. [1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_%C3%A9tablis_hors_de_France#Chiffres http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_%C3%A9tablis_hors... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France [3] http://www.patrice-besse.com/ http://www.patrice-besse.com/ is one of the best sites for castles. http://www.realestate.com.au/ http://www.realestate.com.au/ for Sydney prices. [4] http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8 http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-eb...

crdb 12y ago
As an aside/example, here is an entire fortress fortified by Vauban in 1692, a pillar of French royal power for centuries, practically a small village behind the walls, going for only 2.6m EUR: http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/paca/chateau-citadelle-montagne-a-vendre/ http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/paca/chateau-... Although my favorite is: http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/bourgogne/vente-chateau-de-la-rochepot/ http://www.patrice-besse.com/chateaux-a-vendre/bourgogne/ven... - for only 3m EUR you get a moat with lifting bridge, gargoyles, and some real towers to shoot your crossbows from. You never know when the peasants might revolt!
epsylon 12y ago
> I'm also not sure French culture is preserved that well in France. Sir Colin Davis was a better Berlioz interpreter than any French conductor I ever heard (and I was born 50km from la Cote St Andre), and even traditional Haute Cuisine is better abroad (particularly in Tokyo - see Apicius). You can't drop assertions like that while hoping that being French makes you automatically right about French culture. You have a right to your opinion, but please just don't proclaim them as if they were universal truths.
- crdb 12y ago
  I'm sorry for making a relatively snarky reply to your (genuine, and partially fair) criticism, but "trust only the qualified" is a particularly noxious part of French culture which is, like graphology as an important criteria for hiring decisions, thankfully slowly disappearing outside the civil service and CAC 40...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

realusername 12y ago

As a french guy living currently in London, I clearly agree. I hope Paris never becomes a second London. If you live there you will understand why. London just lost almost all it's culture in just a few years, the London you see in movies is long gone. Just the red bricks and a few cultural things from the past are remaining but all the rest is gone. There is hard consequences to accept to become a truly global city, it's clearly not only positive consequences for the city. For Google, it's quite complicated. The problem is that Google is representing more than 90% of all the requests in France (the usage is also the same for most of european countries anyway). So we can technically say that Google is in a monopoly position for search. The problem is that it's hurting local startups and businesses there. The solution would be to break Google into smaller parts (it's what you do normaly when a monopoly is hurting the free market) but since that's impossible due to the fact that Google is an American company, the government is taking some measures to limit Google's influence. This is one of the measures, the second one which is currently being voted would be to force Google to display competitors on the home page (a bit like Microsoft's ballot screen). I guess that given the current context, they have no other option.

azinman2 12y ago
Except here's the thing -- it's not a natural monopoly. There aren't physical wires with no alternative like Ma Bell. There aren't things that google is doing that prevents other search engines from coming into existence -- they can't prevent new web crawls. Even Firefox now uses yahoo by default, and the open crawler data even gives anyone a head start on crawling the web! Competition, if it were much better, could easily take away search market share. Having better localized results for France could be one of those ways. People aren't using google because they have no other choice, it's because google is genuinely doing a better job. That's not a reason to break up a company.
- stretchwithme 12y ago
  Ma Bell was not a natural monopoly either. It was created by law.
  - 12y ago

squeeze 12y ago

so, google is forced to reveal how it affects and processes search results, at least to the french government (this part was unclear to me). i don't really see what's wrong with that. if google has to approach the market so as to encourage more competition from france, i dont see whats wrong with that either. i dont see why any european company would want to be dependent on an american-based search or really any type of data-handling company at this juncture in international politics. at the very least, reducing google's control on french markets is not a bad thing, and is something google could overcome if it played ball well. if it's not possible to do something fairly, legally, and respectfully, its not worth doing at all.