France: Google Maps is Guilty of Being a Free Resource

  You got to love France.

A French commercial court has found Google guilty of abusing the dominant position of its Google Maps application and ordered it to pay a fine and damages to a French mapping company. 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. The court ordered Google to pay 500,000 euros ($660,000) in damages and interest to the plaintiff and a 15,000 euro fine.

Bottin Cartographes’ webpage is sparse on what actually they do that people want.  Rule number one of failing, sue the rich competitor when your own stuff  falls flat.  Clearly Europe has it’s eye on Google and I suspect we’ll see many more of these “judgements”.  And god forbid, don’t let Bottin find out about OpenStreetMap.  They dump just about anything on the market for free.