Recently, there’s been quite a lot of news surrounding Google and the control individual countries and the EU have (or do not have) over Google. With the idea of the Right To Be Forgotten and the recent antitrust charges brought against Google, it is somewhat unsurprising that France are now making further attempts to regulate the search engine.
As reported by Search Engine Land, TechCrunch commented last week on the bill which, reportedly, “would require search engines to display at least three rivals on their homepage. And also to reveal the workings of their search ranking algorithms to ensure they deliver fair and non-discriminatory results.”
According to the Financial Times, and quoted by SEL, “The French senate is likely to adopt a bill this week which would allow the country’s national telecoms regulator to monitor search engines’ algorithms, with sweeping powers to ensure its results are fair and non-discriminatory.
If approved, the proposal would give Arcep, France’s telecoms regulator, powers to scrutinize any search engine that had sufficient power to “structure the functioning of the digital economy.” Google would be required to provide links to at least three rival search engines on its homepage, and disclose to users the “general principles of ranking.””
The idea is, of course, to try and make search results more ‘fair’ – which seems to be a running theme at the moment with the antitrust charges picking similar problems with Google.
Similarly, also, Google could face the same penalty – 10% of gross revenues – if this bill becomes law and Google does not comply.
As reported by Search Engine Land, this bill reflects “a new aggressiveness on the part of national governments to try and regulate non-European technology companies and Google in particular.”
What do you think? Should Google be regulated?
