Google refuses to pay French privacy fine in a battle of company versus country

I don't agree with either of those things, but there is a point at which globalisation comes into conflict with sovereign nations.

The status of a company is one that is granted to it by a sovereign country, and sovereign countries establish through their legal and government systems how companies can act within their borders.

Once you're there... yes, Google should comply to any legal request. And in fact, they do... as requests for data issued under legal order are in fact complied with.

Companies are not above the law (and laws tend to exist at country level or through treaty across many countries). And if the law of a country says pay, then Google need to pay unless another law can trump it and says not to pay.

There's no two ways about it, companies must comply with the laws of whatever land they operate in.

Google are suing France because they conform to EU Law rather than French law, and would like European courts to resolve the issue.

The thing to know is that, since it is very difficult to quantify how much damage (in €) would be implied by the displayed apology, the CE would certainly not have maintained this punishment if they weren't almost sure that the "juge de fond" will take the same decision (otherwise France would have to reimburse an uncomputable amount).

¹ no idea how to translate "juge de fond" in English, but the idea is that this time it was a fast-track procedure in which Google asked to waive the sanction while waiting for the "deep" procedure to take place. This is what have been rejected by the CE.

This chain of events happened during the pirate bay trial, in which Swedish courts did not approve of suspending sentences while waiting for an European court decision. The suspects still sent in their request, but any decision the European could had made would be after the fact.

It's not as simple as that. From what I have understood, there is a precise hierarchy of courts and the Conseil d'État is at the top of the administrative courts hierarchy. The only way to appeal their decision is to go one step higher which would be the European Court of Human Rights, and I don't see how Google could find a valid reason to get there with this issue.

that's more like it, if they cave now, there is a huge list of states that dream about taxing Google very hard. Google wont pay.

That doesn't necessarily help much as within each regions exist complex classification systems (e.g. Bordeaux uses Châteaux, essentially winemakers, while Burgundy uses an m:n mapping of domaines (a winemaker) to terroir (a geographical area), there's quite a bit of variation across winemakers (and within one especially on generational shifts) and price is essentially useless a data point. And then you've got to decide whether you want "drink" wine drunk within a few years or "keep" wine which you'll grow over 5, 10, 20 years or more.

[0] Bordeaux is bigger, Bourgogne has more controlled designations of origin.

I also quite like Bourgogne. Good red wine. If you like white wine you should try Chablis and Macon Village.

Alsace has Gewurztraminer, which is definitely sweeter than Riesling. You can try it with spicy dishes, if you like.

Also I'm quite fond of Spanish Rioja.

I find wine quite expensive in the US but you can find good valued wine, especially if you can afford to store some of them for a few years before enjoying them.