Are you litigating the boeing v airbus thing? didn't the WTO rule that airbus is receiving billions in illegal subsidies?
And are you suggesting that france doesn't subside specific industries?
If you're complaints are exclusive to the aviation and defence industries then a US complaint regarding the EU and france could include that and every other industry.
If my math is correct then most of the companies are American, and by far most of the potential revenue.
Considering the rhetoric leading to this tax and the french government's many raids and failed investigations into US companies and their taxes it's difficult even with careful wording for the french government to deny the actual target of this tax in a WTO type setting.
Even with recent tariffs, US tariffs are still generally low, it's hardly a poster child for "protectionism", the EU has other barriers in addition to tariffs and much of it is due to french protectionism.
If you think that these "loopholes" should be closed then close them for all companies and countries, don't enact discriminatory laws and then act indignant about it.
Shouldn't be a long inquiry, this tax is textbook discriminatory trade barrier.
If you look at EU policy as france and germany protecting their perceived interests by targeting US tech companies it
starts making sense, I think a rule of thumb there is: "if it hurts google it should be law".
The laws are fine, what we need is to not tailor laws according to selfish political whims or to the whims of publishers and all other inferior competition.
Luckily for Google in the US the grievances of a company's enemies/competitors don't count for much.
I'll credit the WSJ for counting themselves among those enemies, but what I find vexing with all these reports is the constant and casual mentions of "breaking up" these companies as though it's a viable and realistic outcome which it isn't and any self respecting publication should present things in the proper context.
I always thought the name had something to do with it, "google plus" doesn't sound right specially for a social network, also "Hangouts" is a terrible name, it doesn't internationalize well nor does it work for an enterprise setting, and "keep" is a good app but it should be called "google notes" nevermind they already used that name on a now defunct product.
Google has been worse at naming products than they have a right to be.
The author keeps conflating the "hate speech" talking points with what this investigation is actually about, it's like they can't help but pad the article with all their google grievances.
It sounds like this is due to COPPA complaints because a lot of kids watch youtube videos and apparently they are not supposed to, but if youtube was found culpable then everyone would because COPPA is a mess.
"Although the Financial Times’ sources don’t explicitly lay out Google’s argument, it’s not difficult to imagine how it would go."
That's hilarious, a fourth party in speculating about what might have been said in private as reported by a paywalled publication, you know: journalism!