It’s hard to fathom what the two-day e-G8 meeting in Paris, which starts tomorrow, will offer us. It’s received only minimal coverage, despite the fact that the attendees include such high-profile people as Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and Jimmy Wales, along with scores of other technology company managers, entrepreneurs, political leaders and journalists.
The quasi-governmental sponsorship of Nicolas Sarkozy may explain part of the reason why the event hasn’t received many headlines. He asked Maurice Levy of Publicis to host the event, which is entitled “The Internet: Accelerating Growth.” The aim is to bring technologists and policy-makers together, “to discuss the challenges and opportunities, which they believe relevant to the future of the Internet, offering their opinions on a wide range of issues, including for example human rights, intellectual property and technological investment.”
However, we all know that the Internet actually accelerates creative destruction: something France and other countries in Europe are less keen on. That has many wondering whether the real policy objectives of the e-G8 have more to do with additional regulation and control, rather than more freedom, innovation and economic incentives.
The French have an uneasy relationship with the Internet on both an economic and a personal level. Economically, the ability for companies, particularly Google (GOOG), to be able to extract large economic value out of the French economy is troubling in a model in which the government provides large subsidies (billions of euros) for foundation technologies like broadband. People in France are just a little less comfortable with the online model, and Internet business, than some other cultures in the developed world. For example, PriceMinister, a French web commerce company, was acquired by a Japanese firm. According to an insider at the French company, “there are no natural French buyers for Internet companies because they don’t really believe in it. They pretend to care about the Internet, and
