They should, and when they come back asking for it all to be undone they should say no. Let them swim for a little bit so france does not try this again. This was tried in spain, and quickly reversed.
No it wasn't, Google News is still not available in Spain.
So yeah, I want Google to be able to say "I don't want to list papers that won't do this for free", yes.
That's up to the french people to decide. Google negotiating with nations as if it was a trade agreement between equals would mean we're living in a cyberpunk dystopia.
And I'm pretty sure the French people don't get to decide what I want. Only I get to decide that.
Great. You don't get to decide what the French people want either.
For another, it seems clear that one of the key lessons of the 21st century is that democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's essentially government by the majority of a population that's almost evenly distributed on the IQ bell curve. In a stark contrast to the membership of the National Assembly, those on the left side of the intelligence distribution can be brought to consensus far more easily than those on the right.
With their history, France should understand that better than most other countries. The input of their government, democratic or otherwise, should not be a factor in Google's decisionmaking process.
There is ample justification. They are dealing with french citizens on french soil. Google could have chosen to block all of France instead, thereby losing all the revenue it derives from the french people. It didn't.
If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days.
You don't want to go down this path, believe me. It will destroy the Internet in mind, body, and spirit.
Same logic applies to things like ad blocking. Publishers send me their content free of charge and then complain when I refuse to "pay" by looking at the noise. They should have returned HTTP 402 Payment Required instead.
Google News doesn't come looking for you, you have to go looking for it. Analogies to unsolicited advertising are not applicable.
This isn't a gang war for turf, France does not "have a beef" with Google. They have made laws for their country, and are enforcing those laws. Google has the freedom to comply or GTFO, simple as that.
Something, something, something, once you pay them the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane...
This has already happened, thanks in no small part to Google, Facebook, Cloudflare, and a few other large players. Centralization killed the libertarian dream of the internet as the great equalizing force. Instead the internet is just a massive rich-get-richer surveillance panopticon.
Well, that is nothing new. The idea that major threat to freedom in modern states is not from detached power elite but from the society itself is a major theme of "On Liberty" from J. S. Mill.