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Article published the Wednesday 01 February 2012 - Latest update : Wednesday 01 February 2012

French court fines Google maps for unfair trading

By RFI

A French court has found Google guilty of abusing its monopoly position by offering Google Maps free of charge.

The court ordered the US-based company and its French subsidiary to pay a fine of 15,000 euros and 500,000 euros in compensation to Bottin Cartographiques, the French company that brought the case.

Bottin Cartographiques argued that Google Maps was guilty of unfair competition by offering their service free, while its competitors had to invest to develop their product - maps and itineraries on sale to companies.

Google says it will appeal, arguing that its free map services is of value to web surfers and site owners and that it does face competition in France and the rest of the world.

tags: Court - Economy - France - Geography - Google - Internet and new technology - Law - Maps & charts - Trade
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Reward for the dumb

Submitted by OVL (not verified) on Thu, 2012-02-02 02:12.

Errr. I know it is kind of fashion week for beating up the big Google nowadays, but : what ??
Is there something missing in the story ?
Because frankly I can't get it.
So now we have a court that reward companies for not doing their basic technological watch job, for not having the spirit to invent smarter business model than the big competitor, well, for not managing properly their own business. Is that so ?
Plato, in The Republic, said that it was a very bad sign for a society when you have more and more people going to see the doctor or the judge.
Here we are in France, in that country where we always prize ourselves for “not having petroleum but have ideas instead”… suiting smarter ones. What a shame, honestly.

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