» Tue Oct 30, 2012 3:48 pm *Note: This is pretty much the whole article at the moment.*
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.
Hollande discussed the topic with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, during a meeting in Paris on Monday.
Hollande says the rapid expansion of the digital economy means that tax laws need to be updated to reward French media content.
Google has opposed the plan and threatened to bar French websites from its search results if the tax is imposed.
Germany is considering a similar law, and Italian editors have also indicated they would favor such a plan.
Hollande discussed the topic with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, during a meeting in Paris on Monday.
Hollande says the rapid expansion of the digital economy means that tax laws need to be updated to reward French media content.
Google has opposed the plan and threatened to bar French websites from its search results if the tax is imposed.
Germany is considering a similar law, and Italian editors have also indicated they would favor such a plan.
Personally, I am willing to side with google in baring/banning all French related material if they do this kind of crap. In my opinion, this is just a shoddy attempt at deriving more money to stuff slowly dwindling coffers. If this were a digital tax for purchased products I wouldn't be too against it, but this is just complete bull.
I'm just going to wait for imposed "taxes" against text services like skype where users are charged 1 penny per word sent in a chat message.
