Pay To List French News Sites? “Non,” Writes Back Google To France — It’ll Just Drop Them

Google has sent a letter to the French policy makers about a proposal to charge Google for linking to their content.

France 24 reports Google threatened French publishers by telling them they will not pay to link to their content and if they are forced to, Google will simply stop linking to them.

The official letter, written in French, doesn’t appear to be written in such a direct tone. The letter describes how this proposal can hurt the internet as a whole, can hurt French readers and most importantly – hurt French publishers. Google says they send four billion clicks per month to publishers and 1 billion of those clicks comes from Google News. Google News is free, there are no ads on Google News, but yet Google has an AdSense program that paid out over $6.5 billion to U.S. publishers from in 2011. So Google believes they are doing their part in helping news publishers remain financially fit.

French news publishers obviously feel otherwise. Google does make it sound that if the law is passed, Google will not participate and remove all French publishers from their index.

Meanwhile, Brazilian publishers may boycott Google News.

Google and France have not always seen eye to eye, here are some headlines on Google and France:

• Google Instant Costs Google $65,000 In France
• Google Convicted Again In France Over Google Suggest
• French Court Fines Google $660,000 Because Google Maps Is Free