france

On the one hand, new data makes it surprising that Google doesn’t cater more to the French market.  On the other hand, perhaps the search giant doesn’t need to - in France, it already has a market share of almost 90 percent.

Google will hold a Press Day in Paris on June 19th. Marissa Mayer and CEO Eric Schmidt will be there, among others, and we can expect they’ll bring some product or feature announcements with them (Tony Ruscoe will go to Paris to cover this for us, and I’ll be blogging from Germany). One of those new services, as rumor has it, will be the launch of European versions of YouTube, like YouTube France*.

Consumer groups from France and Germany have joined a European coalition aimed at forcing Apple to make files downloaded from its iTunes music store compatible with digital music players manufactured by competing companies.

Jacques Chirac isn't experiencing a very good beginning to his new year. Data suggests that France is becoming even less relevant within the blogosphere, and now reports have surfaced that the nation's joint search engine venture with Germany is about to go under.

The Google Earth application allows bicycling fans to follow the latest version of the legendary race from their computers, a much easier task than biking up the Pyrenees.

Not to the get into the intricacies of French lawmaking, I'll defer to a source nearer to it (thanks ZDNet). French lawmakers have modified proposed legislation on digital rights management (DRM) that will make it legal for hackers to crack copyright protection and distribute the software at will.

Apple has made a tidy profit on its iPod music player, the only device that can accept music downloads directly from iTunes; the French government wants iTunes to be able to place music on any digital media player.

Yahoo has a double standard. A federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit by the Sunnyvale portal powerhouse, filed to try and keep a Paris court from enforcing a $15 million fine for displaying Nazi memorabilia for sale on Yahoo's auction site. This is a violation of French law and shows a different game than Yahoo dealing with China.