A report by Reuters says that France is considering ways to tax Google for their advertising revenue, which is currently by-passing the tax system through the billings being made through Eire. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has apparently asked tax authorities to explore whether online advertising revenues of major search engines could be taxed in France as well as their home countries. He also said he wanted the French antitrust body to determine whether Google enjoys a dominant market position in online advertising.

These issues are nothing new and France has a long-held concern about the dominance of the US-owned Google search engine and several years ago had looked at developing a more Euro-centric search engine. The tax issue is also a concern in countries such as the UK and Australia, where the revenue from AdWords advertisers is billed through Eire and therefore avoids the local tax systems.