The head of French telecoms operator Orange said on Wednesday it had
been able to impose a deal on Google to compensate it for the vast
amounts of traffic sent across its networks.
Orange CEO Stephane
Richard said on France's BFM Business TV that with 230 million clients
and areas where Google could not get around its network, it had been
able to reach a "balance of forces" with the Internet search giant.
Richard
declined to cite the figure Google had paid Orange, but said the
situation showed the importance of reaching a critical size in business.
Network
operators have been fuming for years that Google, with its search
engine and You Tube video service, generates huge amounts of traffic but
does not compensate them for using their networks.
Richard put Google traffic over Orange's Internet networks at around 50 percent.
"That
is to say an important part of traffic is generated by a big
transmitter like Google, which is the subject of a discussion concerning
a form of compensation for the volume of traffic," he said.
The
Orange chief executive said that Internet companies and network
operators were interdependent and criticised a recent controversial move
by a French competitor, Free.
Free blocked Internet ads, drawing
strident protest from websites reliant on advertising that the move
would kill their business model, until the French government ordered it
stop the practice.
Google has also been faced with demands for
compensation from content providers such as newspapers, who charge the
search giant makes lots of advertising revenue from referencing their
material.
France and Germany are considering imposing compensation
schemes on Google as the company has refused to reach any deal with
media outlets.
French President Francois Hollande warned Google on
Wednesday that his government would legislate a so-called Google tax if
the company doesn't reach a deal with French media companies.
He said "those who make a profit from the information" produced by media companies should participate in their financing.
After
Google and French media failed to reach a deal following a month of
talks the French government extended a deadline for a settlement to the
end of January.