News aside (whether true or not), this guy is definitely more evil than Jeff and Zuck combined.
Now, he's said to be pretty ruthless in a business setting, but it's because he's basically the only self-made billionaire in France (all the others have inherited) and he couldn't play by the rules because the rules were stacked against him.
Thanks to this guy I pay less than 40 euros/month for 1Gbps unlimited fiber at home, with a fixed ipv4. I pay 16 euros a month for my mobile plan, with unlimited everything, including while roaming in Europe or North America.
He didn't do that by exploiting his employees like Jeff, he did it by not taking part of the telecom oligopoly who used to milk customers (surprisingly they had no problem to align with his prices to keep their business).
He didn't do it by selling out his users data to third party, on the contrary he provided adblocking tech right in the broadband router you get with your subscription.
I'm not saying he's a saint, you can't become a billionaire without screwing a bunch of people, but he's clearly better than most billionaires especially the ones you cited.
Now, their customer service, while not awful, is no better than the other operator, which is a shame.
Their fight with Google for the Youtube bandwidth was really not putting their customer first also. Their problem was maybe justified, but being a Free customer, you were paying the price for it with Youtube being sometimes barely usable. Same happened, and still happen sometime with Twitch and Netflix. Their 4g coverage is still garbage in a lot of place also and definitely worse than any other operator.
Overall these days, they are not so much better than the other big telco. But I have to agree that they really shook up the market and that was really beneficial. And they are still pushing and innovating, arguably less than before, which keep the competition going.
(I absolutely don't blame them for settling in, I just feel it's fair to paint a proper snapshot of what the situation is today)
He spends a lot of his money on giving back: 42, a free programming bootcamp (https://www.42.fr/), Station F, a huge co-working space in Paris which hosts entrepreneurs for free (https://stationf.co/)
He also has a very active VC/Business Angel fund (he funds 2 early stage startups every week out of his own pocket). His telecom company (free) helped divide by 2 the average price of mobile plans in France.
All in all, his impact seems very positive, I'd love to understand why you think he is evil
- control the #1 French newspaper, "Le Monde" (extremely poplar on the Web, too), is buying up other media (Nice-Matin, most recently), is/was also influential in opposition media (e.g Mediapart)
- his spouse is the first daughter of Bernard Arnault, the 3rd richest man in the world, and together they form the most powerful couple in the country
A big issue with the book was that, even though some claim look legitimate and really not surprising for any French people (Macron being helped by a few powerful people was no surprise, he came out of nowhere and had suddenly more press coverage than any other candidate), it was also making a lot of heavy, and sometimes weird, accusation about some people, one of them being X. Niel, with nothing to back them up.
It also didn't help that the author was writing in a way that really looked like he was settling some scores with people instead of actually doing a journalistic investigation (he seemed to especially bare some hatred toward X. Niel). It helped even less that he started beef with anyone criticizing his book, especially respected journalist and news outlet.
In this book JB explain how rich peoples invest the political side in various ways to keep their benefits high. XN is one of them, specially because he was self-made and have no relations.
JB say the problem is not that rich peoples try to keep their influence, it's that noting prevent (and punish) them to do so.
It's not about being evil or not, it's about how evil can be part of the game (because political campaign funding).
Our politicians generally turn once in their lives, often rightwards, but this guy is thirty and has already bounced between so many attempts at becoming "important" ASAP, within unrelated and ideologically incompatible currents, abandoning them or being forced out almost immediately. Clearly, he has a lot more ego than resolve, probably needs psychological help, and I hope he won't be another psychopath getting into meaningful power.
Most of the other french billionaires are more like oligarchs and aristocrats, they are not from the same world as Xavier Niel.
He said he "got around" something, so that goes in the same direction.
I cannot be sure of anything, but that would be pretty dumb (and discredit them) from the French President's comms techs to just say "that's impossible" while anybody could hack it.
So, the working hypothesis is that, yes, there seem to have been mitigation in place.
At the very least, to be considered more evil than either of your examples, you need to have the word “controversy” on your Wikipedia page.
Xavier Niel has a history of pro-consumerism, democratization of technology, and streamlining of venture investments.
Among several others, I think there was Steve Jobs.
When the company moved out, to settle in its current buidling, the portraits stayed behind
This has nothing to do with criminal activity. Running an erotic chatting service was a perfectly legal activity in France at the time. It was latter refrained and maybe the reason Xavier Niel changed his business activity.