The part about him doing it "for the lulz" was never officially acknowledged. With that said, French media have nicknamed him "le Trublion" which means roughly "the troublemaker", and he clearly likes it.
An example of pure trolling from Niel: as a justification for why he invested money in a newspaper in financial trouble, he said "You're asking me if I have 35 million euros? Don't take this the wrong way, but this amount is roughly equal to the daily variation of my fortune on the stock market" - "Si je dispose de 35 millions d’euros ? Je ne voudrais vexer personne, mais cette somme correspond à la variation quotidienne de mon patrimoine en Bourse."
Now I agree that businessmen should be judged on their actions. He is smart, he is good, and I like his way of dealing with things. But he was always and will always be a Troll at heart, a well-intentioned one maybe, but "very decent ethics" clearly does not accurately describe him.
- sorry for the mix-up I messed up my reply earlier.
I skimmed the first couple of articles, but other than his beginnings in porn (not a business I'd want to go into, but to be sure there are more and less ethical people there!), he doesn't strike me as someone who's either a troll or very unethical.
Your definition of trolling isn't how most people think of it. Trolls tell lies, make personal attacks, and make outrageous & false claims solely to upset other people and waste their time.
Your quote from Niel (about investing in a newspaper) shows ego, but is he lying? And even if he's exaggerating, who does that upset?
Personally, I don't like the porn history, but he gets many extra points for "causing trouble" in corporate France. I've wasted many hours of my life dealing with France Telecom/Wanadoo/Orange, SFR, and Bouygues (been through them all), and know monopolistic abuses when I see them (how about the whole concept of customer support phone calls that are more expensive than a normal call?), and I really, really do not feel sorry for them being forced to actually compete a little.
If you have better examples of "trolling", that'd help perhaps...
The thing is, you need to remember that in France, you can't talk about personal fortune/money without raising public outrage. We have an extremely special relationship with money, it is absolutely taboo to talk about how much money you make or have, and not only in public, in private too, one has to make amends when they reveal that they earn more than the minimal or (god forbids!) average wage.
Likewise, comparative advertising is illegal in France. You can't be the French Coca-Cola and feature the French Pepsi in your ads.
Anyway, let's drop the troll word. I have more quotes to provide though, maybe these will better carry the reputation of "Troublemaker".
"The thing that surprises me is that our concurrents have done nothing yet. They micro-reduced their prices by a few percents, this isn't reasonable! They have to get at it for real, they have to lower the prices for real! Start to cut right now, before we arrive! (...) Ready your communication, build some aggressive marketing plans, then maybe you have a chance to keep on existing! Right now it's a joke, you didn't lower your prices! This isn't serious!"
"I invite you to go and visit their work places, their desks, their lifestyle, look at the leaders of these companies all with their car with driver. As for me I have my cab waiting for me outside! When they no longer have all that, management in these companies will begin to improve!"
Around 7:12-7:45 in the linked video:
"This struck me as a lack of courage, I had hoped they would, at last, offer unlimited phone calls from their box. [smiles ironically] But you see, we have to deal with copycats who don't go all the way with their copying philosophy. And that's it... actors who are bad, and who even when they copy become bad because they stop copying as soon as there's something good, I personally find it very disappointing. I believe that we're in a market that has always copied us, so companies need to be brave and copy us all the way."
About Orange:
"We have a relationship of tenderness with Orange." (I'm not sure it translates the right way: he implies a relationship that's akin to a kid and his grandmother)
Illustration of his audacity & engineering background, and, well, ethics: in 1996, he launches a minitel service that would become extremely profitable (while not being related to porn): a Reverse Phone Number Lookup directory. At that time France Telecom provided a phone directory to everyone, with the first 3 minutes of connection being free. He simply wired a hundred minitels and browsed the service 3minutes at a time until he had every single person in France on his own database. There was a public outrage. There was a trial, which ended in 1998. Iliad lost and had to pay 100,000,000 Francs in fines (roughly 15 million euros, which was a lot those days) to France Telecom.
I understand your points, I think -- you're talking far more about taste than about ethics.
"Ethics" is about right and wrong -- what actions harm people on the whole, and what actions help them, why and how.
It's not directly related to obeying the law, or following rules. Making decisions that greatly help the general public at the expense of a massive corporation, especially if those actions carry risk (like the risks that come with breaking laws)... that's easily interpreted as highly ethical. I certainly don't know enough about Niel to make any judgements about his ethics either way, but your examples here don't show unethical behavior.
It's actually more ethical if he lowers his own image (by breaking strong taboos) to talk about things that need to be talked about (I'm thinking of his comments about executive lifestyles...).
As a counter-example -- think about the ethics of being a corporate industry leader, and always acting perfectly refined, but still actively screwing your customers as much as you can -- charging far more than your costs, tricking them with hidden & confusing charges, making it extremely difficult for them to get customer support or even to end their contract... is that ethical?
