Google chief to meet French president amid pay row
27 OCTOBER 2012 -
16H37
AFP - Google's executive
chairman Eric Schmidt will meet with French President Francois Hollande on
Monday as the Internet giant wrangles with Paris over a bill that would force
search engines to pay for content, a government source said.
Schmidt's meeting with the
president will be preceded by one with Communication and Culture Minister
Aurelie Filippetti, the source said on condition of anonymity.
Google has warned that it
would exclude French media sites from its search results if France adopts a
bill that will force search engines to pay for content.
A letter sent by Google to
several French ministerial offices this month said it "cannot accept"
such a move and the company "as a consequence would be required to no
longer reference French sites," according to a copy obtained by AFP.
Google said a law which
would require it to make payments to media sites for displaying links to their
content, would "threaten (Google's) very existence".
Leading French newspaper
publishers last month called on the government to adopt a law imposing a
settlement in the long-running dispute with Google, forcing it and other search
engines to share some of the advertising revenue from user searches for news
contained on media websites.
Their demand follows the
German government approving in August draft legislation that would force search
engines to pay commissions to German media websites.
The culture minister
Filippetti told a parliamentary commission last week that she was in favour of
the idea, calling it "a tool that it seems important to me to
develop".
She said she was surprised
by the tone of Google's letter, telling AFP that "you don't deal with a
democratically-elected government with threats."
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