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Comment by evv | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody know why Google didn't refuse these charges? This sets a really awful precedent.

Orange has a very strong presence in Africa. It leveraged this presence to have Google pay for their Internet trafic in France and Europe: Orange is pivotal to Google's success in Africa.

According to Orange's CEO, Google just can't do without Orange in Africa - and that's likely to be true.

Sources (in French, sorry!):

http://frenchweb.fr/trafic-france-telecom-se-fait-remunerer-...

http://pro.clubic.com/entreprises/orange-france-telecom/actu...

So this is essentially a textbook case of monopoly abuse, with the twist that because it's across borders they're getting away with it?

I'm a little surprised the response wasn't to delist every Orange property from the Google search engine and block access to any Google property for any Orange customer. It seems to me that doing so would effectively render Orange's mobile broadband offerings dead globally, for the five minutes the discussion would last. Presumably someone at Google decided that such a strategy was too risky legally and/or in terms of poisoning relations with ISPs more generally.

Orange does have a strategic position in Africa where Google (for the moment) doesn't. I'm not saying Google needs Orange, but it is indeed a strategic partner.

Orange is also an highly trusted ISP in France, and (unlike Free) counts many corporations among its clients. Google probably would not risk alienating those clients by engaging in an open conflict with Orange.

All in all, I don't think any other French ISP would have been able to wrestle such a deal from Google.

I'm not surprised at all, they've backed down to almost everything confronting them in the past and this is certainly not out of character. I guess it's more profitable to simply pay up than fight. Which sucks, because Google is in an incredibly powerful position to change the world for the better (and in many more instances than this alone.)

I really do not understand why Google accepted this. Orange needs them far more than Google needs Orange.

They could have let Orange stew or force the French government's hands by proposing legislation that would have created a huge popular and technical uproar.

It seems to serve no purpose, other than some unknown short term motivation - which has never been a characteristic of Google - to accede.

There is no way French media companies or French government will back down now they have forced Google to draw first blood on itself. It also sets a global precedent against them and other Internet companies.

I've been searching for that because it's really a strange decision.

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