So the answer to a monopolist commoditizing a market is... to introduce a cartel? Because this is basically what this judgement argues: Google should charge something in line to what its competitors do, and forget about any downward pressure on prices.
I'm not a free-market zealot, but this sort of ruling is really bad for small players. Googlers understand the internet and so they make money while lowering prices for consumers, why should we punish them for this? Then we might as well say the copyright mafia is right and the internet should be tightly regulated and controlled by cartels.
"In a ruling Tuesday, the Paris court upheld an unfair competition complaint lodged by Bottin Cartographes against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses."
It looks like the issue isn't that it's free; it's that Google provided free maps services to some businesses while charging others. That's the gist I got from the article, anyway.
If Google is forced to charge the same prices as small mapping companies, those companies should have less of a disadvantage. It's not really a cartel if anyone can join. There are plenty of reasons why this is a bad idea, but at least I understand why France is trying it.
I'm not a free-market zealot, but this sort of ruling is really bad for small players. Googlers understand the internet and so they make money while lowering prices for consumers, why should we punish them for this? Then we might as well say the copyright mafia is right and the internet should be tightly regulated and controlled by cartels.