Good. Now... Google is a business. They live from selling a product. And not, the product is NOT their search engine. The product they're seeling is their audience. When you sit in front of your computer, YOU are the product, since Google is selling your presence to advertisers. One way or another: google.fr can't afford to loose Oranges customers.

We're talking Google seeling ads to French corporations -- those ads appear on French websites and they are seen by French customers. Google made some 2 billions euros in France last year (that's about 2.6 billions dollars) and the controvesry is the government says Google paid 5 millions euros taxes -- that's just 0.25%. Google says they operate from Irland so they pay taxes there (in Ireland - where their offices are) on the money thay gather from their French activities. Now, you can replace 'France' with 'Germany' or with practicaly every European country.

More precisely: they installed some "adblock" filter as an opt-out service. Then they canged it and they made it an opt-in service. One way or another it's the same idea: the customers of Free (I am one of them) now decide if they want to get Google ads - or not.

If you're google.com you can do that and you won't quite notice. But if you're google.fr ... you want to think twice before you do that.

As a French customre: I use Youtube (not a lot) but the day they charge I will use their French equivalent which goes by the name of DalilyMotion. Wikipedia says: +Dailymotion is the world's second largest video-sharing website+

You write that "Google should just ignore them" and you ask "What will the telecom do?" -- The ISP do not block Google, of course, they just make some of their services less available. One good example of that is Youtube. Here in France Youtube doesn't work very well with my ISP, because of the size of the pipe between Youtube and that ISP. Everybody agrees both sides should build a bigger pipe, but they disagree about who should pay for that pipe. If you're thinking as google.com you can just ignore the French ISPs, the French market and the French as a whole if they don't play by your rules. But if you're google.fr you have to find a compromise.

This is how it works here in France: customers pay a flat rate without limitation other than technical. They can use all the bandwidth there is.

The point is some companies have an income in France even thought they have no offices in France. Google for instance sells ads for the French market but they sell it from abroad. Then they say google.fr is an Irish company and they won't pay their taxes in France.

They USED to be a monopoly - that was one generation ago, and internet did not exist back then (at least not for 99.999% of us). Now, they still have a significant share of the market as their share is like 43% of the internet customers.

I am French -- My ISP is FREE (that's their name) and I pay 36 euros a month. I get all you mentioned above PLUS they sent me a SIM card that provides two hours a month of voice (including call to 40+ foreign countries) and unlimited SMS, also, I can access the net throught that SIM card using wifi... wherever an open (unlocked) wifi net is caught.