It looks like the Internet Service Providers of France have a good friend in that country's Minister of Industry and the Digital Economy, Eric Besson. Monsieur Besson is reviving an idea that will doubtless inspire the nation's ISPs: La Taxe Google. This would boil down to a tithe upon the search engine giant and its social networking brethren, especially Facebook, to make up for the alleged fact that they don't help pay to keep France's broadband pipes in la manière to which they have grown accustomed.

"Some well-known services, like Google or Facebook, are ever-growing," Besson complained to his Parliament this month, "without contributing in any way to finance infrastructure or creation."

Even worse, these companies come from "foreign countries" he added, pay no taxes in France, and enjoy near monopoly status on the French market. "This situation is unprecedented in the history of our economy," Besson warned.

But here's the good news: a "working group" has been established to devise ways to help them contribute their fair share—"to consider the modalities to help Internet service providers to deploy networks and cultural creation," in the minister's words.

We have every confidence that the French will come through with an ingenious scheme in this regard. The Google Tax concept has been around for more than a year, but its ultimate objective remains in flux.

Passing the buck

A government report released last July suggested that Google and other hegemons of the 'Net pay fees on their online advertising revenues. This would subsidize a universal music site offering inexpensive downloads for impoverished Sorbonne students, obviating their need to turn to isoHunt and other frowned-upon portals.

Now the idea seems to have morphed into a care package for France's poor, starving ISPs. Besson says he's in favor of imposing some kind of net neutrality rules that require transparency from them—although he also says priority access deals are fine. But services like YouTube can't just keep "passing the buck" on costs to the networks.

There are a couple of problems with this stance. First, Google and Facebook pay for network access already, a detail that seems to endlessly escape the notice of politicians around the globe. The other is that French providers are enjoying their own little Belle Epoque, as far as we can tell.

Capital.fr reports that it's a very cozy time to be in the ISP business over there. The average operating margin of leading providers like French Telecom's Orange is around 17.4 percent—"comparable to that of the luxury giants Hermes and Dior."

Despite this, Orange reduced its investment in networks by about six percent in 2009. "Does France Teleco lack ideas?" the article wonders out loud.

We're just hoping that these brilliant schemes don't migrate over to "foreign countries" like the USA, where our struggling network providers might perk up their ears. After all, AT&T's profit margin is a mere 15.98 percent. Comcast's is a meager 9.58 percent.

Imagine what the latter outfit might do with a Google/Facebook pass-along tithe—buy another TV network?