http://www.wlfi.com/dpp/lifestyles/consumer_tech/France-eyes-Google-Tax-for-French-websites_71389369
PARIS (AP) — French President Francois Hollande is considering a pushing for a new tax that would see search engines such as Google have to pay each time they use content from French media.
This is hilarious. Hollande is really getting desperate. So - when Google excludes French media sites from its search results, will that help the French economy?
Heh. If there was ever a case study for a Laffer curve, it’s France.
What’s next? A tax on berets, tongue kisses, and french-fries?:dubious:
They could make a fortune on two out of three of those.
From reports of Eric Schmidt’s visit the proposal does not seem to concern a tax but rather a levy distributed to content publishers, modeled on the proposed legislation in Germany (which is currently in the draft-bill-circulated-for-discussion stage). What is at issue is the use of news story snippets by Google News and similar aggregators (which is currently free to the aggregators; the legislation is about giving the originating news sites a right to being paid for use of the snippets).