French President Pushes For 'Google Tax' | Hacker News Reader

French President Pushes For 'Google Tax'

eweekeurope.co.uk

25 pointsmiles29 comments

>The proposals are aimed at helping to save French creative industries from the 'free-for-all' Internet culture.

Let them die please, they produce nothing worthy.

Also i find it fun to see them speak of multi-million euros industries who have done more to kill creation than any other, like if they needed to be saved. This is so typical of our actual government in france. Actually protect the wealthy by pretending they're poor, and do nothing for people who actually needs help.

Also see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007048

How can the French do this without falling foul of EU laws?

It's not at all clear that they can. According to German news media (e.g. http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,670897,00....), the European Commission doubts that Google's alleged "dangerous dominance of the market" is real, and says they will check whatever the French propose for legality. And a concrete proposal hasn't even been made - so far, it's all just some big talk.

Can we all calm down and look objectively at the situation ? This may help :

President Obama has thrown his weight behind a plan that could see foreign firms such as Chinese Global Internet Services being taxed for doing business in USA.

Known as the Chinese Global Services Tax, the controversial proposals will force foreign Internet firms to pay a new tax on their online advertising revenue in USA.

Thanks for re-balancing the view.

The big picture behind this is scary. If every nation starts taxing internet companies from every other nation for revenue generated off their own population (regardless if said company has a presence in that country), it'll slow down growth tremendously and kill a lot of business models.

I'm trying to remember the last week a new tax was not introduced in France... I can't find, someone to help ?

I might be a bit cynical, but the truth is that this has nothing to do with culture, the French internet, or anything similar: this has all to do with France abyssal debt and chronically unbalanced budgets (the last balanced budget was in the seventies...), and the need for the government to get more money.

So why Google ? Because it's easy to explain citizens that you are going to tax a foreign company. Easier than telling them that they will have to pay yet another tax. And if it doesn't work because of the EU, the government will have someone else to blame for the need of a new tax on the French taxpayer... et voilà.

This, or they are really stupid and think that taxing Google will somehow have a positive outcome on French economy. I don't think they are stupid.

I wonder what this means for smaller websites that also use advertising (I run a games site, for example)? I think this has the potential to grow into a very complicated situation if it works out for France and other countries follow suit.

Seems like if you start making money off of people in France, you'd have to pay a tax.

Well - we already do :)

Just wait, google not available in your region unless you pay $4.95 per month

There should be a tax on every player in every industry other than the smallest player in this industry if this logic holds.

It would be funny if google responded by not allowing the French to use it's services. =]

On the other hand. It's not a bad idea for America. If we taxed advertisements I /might/ see less of the ones I find annoying. And we could funnel that money into education or health care. Reducing the US' carbon footprint. Bleh. Lots of uses.

But a tax that citizens aren't paying (in this context) is a great idea in my opinion.

Such an idiotic claim: "stop enrichment of the world's leading internet players." Why not? I mean, if the would tax google, what, a new french service will pop up overnight? So odd...

The French are still smarting over the irrelevance of Minitel to the wider world. You know, they were once the leading players in getting consumers to adopt network services. Now the world has passed them by.

Just curious (really) - where do you see French smarting over the Minitel ?

I'm French and around me (including friends who are living outside France) nobody seems to be bragging about the Minitel these days (maybe 10 years ago, but now, no really).

We consider it mostly some outdated device that had its importance a long while back.

Any links or feedback to provide ?

I think you may have misunderstood. "smarting over" is somewhat idiomatic English. It means to be embarrassed by something. In other words, you and the person you replied to seem to agree.

Haah - thanks for the clarification.

"Smart" also means, umm, "a stinging sensation" I guess. The physical manifestation of embarrassment, or the physical equivalent of the emotion of embarrassment. You might say, "ow, that smarts". I didn't realize it wouldn't translate :-)

Yep, that's exactly what I mean. We British had Prestel of course, but the loss of that was no dent to national pride, since Tim Berners-Lee is a Brit.

My impression is that the early wide adoption of Minitel created an 'online mindset' that also fueled adoption of the web in France. Pride of people in power may be another story, but everyday usage seems to come pretty natural to them.

It looks like they came little late to the internet party, but caught up quickly: http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=3030

The world has passed them by? They have caught up you know - France has higher bandwidth at lower prices than, say, the U.S.

This makes sense. When economic transactions occur over practices that diminish the quality of life, they should be heavily taxed, like cigarettes or television.

Why the fuck so much pussies voted for Sarkozy ? He is trying to create an internet less free (free bear AND free speech) than real life. What an asshole. I can't remember how many times I wished someone would have killed him, rather than insulting him in public, medias or anything.

Wow, I think you win. This is by far the worst comment I have ever seen on Hacker News.

Y'see, this is why I don't like the fact that comments can no longer go below -4.

On the reply page to a comment, there's a flag, so just flag it.

Please, get out of this place.

Ha! "Free bear", this is excellent

To all who really dislike this comment:

For all comments that should be flagged, click "link", and then you get that comment's page, with a flag link.

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