Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google has dropped a little sweetener to the French media as Google's legal tussle over "a link tax" rumbles on. Schmidt announced a 60m euro fund for "innovation" in French journalism and "help" for French publishers using Google's advertising tools, in a joint announcement with the French President …

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Monday 4th February 2013 17:47 GMT Phoenix50

Buy your way out of trouble

Sorry for a moment there I thought I'd stumbled across a story about Microsoft.

But no, it seems all that glitters in Mountain View is merely fools gold, as only a fool (and a French one at that) would not be able to see through this one.

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1. Tuesday 5th February 2013 03:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Buy your way out of trouble
  
  <France> You're ruining our country by using pull quotes to entice millions of visitors to French media sites.
  
  <Google> Oh, what - what the? Really? This again?
  
  <France> Pay us a bunch of Francs. Euros. Euros, pay us Euros. It will make up for le outdated media business, non?
  
  <Google> All right, all right, here's some Euros. We might be able to help you out with the whole media, thing, too. We've got experience and everything.
  
  <French Media> Ah, magnifique. Now we will not go out of the business. But ah - we cannot ever out of the business go, because by Monsieur Hollande it is not allowed! Ha ha ha!
  
  <Google> Yeah, that's pretty funny. Good luck with that.
  
  [later]
  
  <Reg Poster> BLARGH EARHGL GOOGLE EVIL EVIL MONEY MONEY EVIL GOOGLE DIE EVIL MONEY DEVIL GOOGLE MONEY DIE WHAT IS MY POINT I'M NOT SURE BLARGH EVIL DEVIL MICROSOFT MONEY MOOGLE
  
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Monday 4th February 2013 18:09 GMT jnffarrell1

Fair use of snippets is central to free discussion of ideas everywhere and not just on the worldwide web or in Google Search. Just because a writer phrases an idea slightly differently does not mean that his company owns the idea.

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1. Monday 4th February 2013 20:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Maybe Google should change the snippet
  
  Just use Google translate to translate to Chinese and back. Then it is a brand new text not quoting the article, so no copyright issues. And half of the time, it will have a completely different meaning; should be hilarious!
  
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  1. Monday 4th February 2013 21:29 GMT Magani
    
    Re: Maybe Google should change the snippet
    
    @AC 20:05
    
    See also: "My hovercraft is full of eels."
    
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Monday 4th February 2013 22:42 GMT Jim Ettles 1

Jetts

Le Monde has the best web site of all the newspapers I read on line. Don't know about the rest of the French press but if Google is so concerned they might start their improvement plan elsewhere.

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Tuesday 5th February 2013 10:35 GMT Tim Worstal

Hmm.

The way I read this agreement the €60 million is to pay to put Adwords on all French newspaper sites.

Sounds like pretty much a win for Google to me.

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Wednesday 6th February 2013 20:39 GMT Tex Arcana

A perfect example of French corruption...

Hey, Google! Thanks for showing us that corporate and governmental corruption is alive and well!

And you silly Frenchies! Why would ANYONE want to trust you now, since you've just proven that anything French can be bought with enough cash. If I ever have to have anything to do with you or your people, I'll be sure to turn and RUN the other way! I don't want to have anything to do with anyone who has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that I can be stabbed in the back by the party I'm dealing with, if someone else shows up and flashes more cash than I have.

Dear grenouilles, please keep your shit-covered corruption over there. Thank you.

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