Google has been ordered to pay a fine and damages to French mapping company Bottin Cartographes because it makes Google Maps available for free, undercutting companies that offer similar services for a fee. Bottin Cartographes had filed an unfair competition complaint against Google, claiming the search giant was abusing its dominant position in the Internet search market to achieve a leading position in the digital mapping market. The Paris Commercial Court agreed, ordering Google to pay a €500,000 to Bottin Cartographes as well as a €15,000 fine.
Bottin Cartographes argued that Google’s strategy in the mapping market was to swallow the full costs of providing mapping and location services until it gains control of the market. Once Google had eliminated the competition, it would be free to charge anything it wanted for the service.
“We proved the illegality of (Google’s) strategy to remove its competitors,” Bottin Cartographes’ lawyer Jean-David Scemmama told the AFP. “The court recognized the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed.”
Google has indicated it planned to appeal the ruling, but did not respond to further requests to comment.
The fine itself is almost negligible to Google: the company has very deep pockets. However, the ruling could set a precedent for Google’s ongoing regulatory struggles in France and the EU. Google is the subject of another antitrust challenge in France (this one over AdWords) in which a preliminary ruling has already found Google guilty of abusing its dominant position in Internet search. Google also faces a similar complaint in Brussels, although Google did have a challenge to Google Maps by Euro-Cities dismissed by a German court last year. Google has also faced scrutiny in Europe for the privacy implications of its map-related Street View service, leading Google to abandon Street View in Germany.
[Update 03-Feb-2012: Germany's Hot-Maps Medien Gmbh and Euro-Cities indicate that their antitrust complaints in Germany over Google's free mapping products were not dismissed; rather, they have been rolled into the European Commission's broader antitrust investigation of Google.]
Well, this is phucking stupid. Figures, it’s France. Google maps are free to ANYONE with a computer. DUH!
France the other Socialist Capital. Food sucks too.
The service in their restaurants is lousy, too.
Well it’s their choice on whether or not to charge for it.
A few years ago the Google Street View car came through my little town and caught my home at it’s worst. I am disabled and things had been neglected for several years. Did I get mad at Google? NO I did not. It was my fault that it had gotten that way. The thing that I do get mad about is when governments do things that restrict anybodies right to take a picture from a public place. It seems to me that there are people that want laws preventing Google from doing this and there are politicians who are more than willing to comply. All I can say to that is that they had better be careful what they ask for because laws have to be applied equally. That means that the folks who complain may just get fined too if they take a pic in public and accidentally get their neighbors property in the pic.
Is my property still a mess? Yes it is but it’s not as bad. I used the Street view pics to fuel my stubborn determination to get it cleaned up. My wife and I during the course of one summer went out and slowly cleaned it up. I’d work for 10 minutes and rest for 30. On the days that I thought the pain was too much I’d just go to Street View and look at the pics of how our place used to look. I lost 80 pounds that summer and my wife lost 18.
I made some Christmas cards and gave them out to people for free. Am I going to get fined by card shops?
So now mapmakers could anyone who put out free maps?
Assuming they are going after Mapquest, Bing and Yahoo next?
Fined for giving something they own away? wow… How ass backwards is France? Clearly, this is protectionism.
This is a clear shot across the bow against the free/open source software community as it sets a terrible precedence if it is illegal for free software to displace commercial software. Does this seem obvious to anyone else? This goes to show that true capitalism is dead. Winners are picked through cronyism any more rather than merit. And everyone wants you to think Europe is so progressive. Pfft.
Agree completely. How does anything function in France when there are laws like this that restrict companies from competing to offer the best product for the least cost? To be fair though, it’s hard not to draw parallels to monopoly laws in the US that got Microsoft in hot water for bundling Internet Explorer (FOR FREE) with Windows.
I agree about the MS IE fiasco. I’ve never been a huge MS fan and they have clearly been anti-competitive, but attacking them over bundling the browser was completely contrived and the wrong way to go about it. They should’ve been called out for bullying CTO vendors rather than offering people software they were gonna download anyway. It’s all a red herring to satisfy populist outrage without actually solving the problems.
I hear ya, but how is this different than Microsoft offering features like Paint, their own anti-virus/malware, video player etc into Windows which effectively put Real Networks and others out of business. I see Frances view….
I would have to argue that putting out a complete s**t product that bordered on malware lead to RealNetworks’ (virtual) demise, but hey, that’s just me.
That’s part of it. But a ton of Real Networks revenue came from being pre-installed on systems back in the day.
Why are they in the wrong for providing something that users want. An operating system with no software is kind of useless, it’s like having a car but no road to drive it on. It’s their prerogative to bundle whatever they want and charge whatever they want for it just like its my prerogative to not use it or not pay for it if i think it doesn’t meet my needs. If a paid alternative has more merit than a bundled free option then there will be demand for it provided the free option is not ‘actively’ preventing the paid alternative from being available (note i didn’t use the word viable). It’s up to the commercial company to make their product viable, it’s not the government’s responsibility. I personally never used Windows Media Player but i didn’t use Real Player either (sorry Dan) because I didn’t like using the software. I used winamp and then Foobar2000 because I felt they better met my needs. I never had any desire to see Microsoft punished for bundling Windows Media Player nor did I pity Real Networks. While I find myself to be a fairly progressive thinking person, I personally believe there is far too much protected entitlement when it comes to competition in the market. This is the reason why I believe software patents should be abolished – if you want market share then quit fussing with the courts and just make a better product and market it better.
I agree with you. And I think Real Player sucked, I never used it either. Just saying that the general populous would use WMP over Real Player since its the default player, just like IE is for web browsers.