3 replies to this topic

[Novek]

The best things in life are meant to be free, or so the song goes. Unfortunately for Google the French courts don't agree.

Bottin Cartographes, a for-pay map company sued Google for giving away the Google Maps application and associated API. They claimed that Google only provides the free service to ruin the market for their competitors and that they plan to charge for the services once they've destroyed the competition. Shockingly, the court granted a judgement against Google of €500,000 (£415,600) plus a €15,000 (£12,470) fine.

From our experience with Google this seems very, if not extremely unlikely. Even if you don't believe their 'do no evil' motto, the way Google monetise their services through advertising and their approach to other areas should disprove such claims.

As you would expect Google is appealing the courts decision.

Jean-David Scemmama, lawyer for Bottin Cartographes said:

"This is the end of a two-year battle, a decision without precedent,"

"We proved the illegality of (Google's) strategy to remove its competitors... the court recognised the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed. This is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application,"

Source: boingboing

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[3shirts]

"Waah, someone has made a service better than mine and free".  Boo frickin hoo.  Have your service justify the price or GTFO.

Surely the courts would have been better imposing a sanction to say Google cannot start charging for the service in its current form at any time in the future.

[Chris Jenx]

For such a frikken socialist country, I would of thought, free for the people would appeal to there sensibility. Very strange judgment, looks like it was biast from the start, this should probably of never gone to court.
@3shirts is right, if it was about monetization of the service then they should just embargo all paid versions of google maps.. (if they ever were to charge, which I doubt)

[cjp666]

It was a French court for a French company, how is that not biased

Maybe Google should have just said, if we cut France out of our maps...