Tax Threat May Get French Sites Banned from Google

The government wants to force the search engine to pay for click-throughs

Google has claimed it will remove links to French newspaper websites from its listings unless a proposed tax on content is dropped by the government.

 A letter sent to several government ministries by Google informs ministers it will be "constrained" by any consequences of a new law and will "no longer reference French websites", according to Le Figaro.

French newspaper publishers asked the government in September to put forward a bill compelling search engines, mainly Google, to pay them each time a user reads an article by clicking through to their websites.