French Internet Trifecta

I've been spending some time with my good friend Olivier Moinecourt who runs OMWave, a firm that makes a sleek all-in-one digital entertainment device.

Olivier is an incredibly smart, ambitious, forward-thinking Frenchman, and has been explaining to me lately the reasons why France is the #2 paid search market in Europe after the UK. The reason, it turns out, is that telecom deregulation in France has proceeded much faster than in the U.S. or any other major country for that matter, resulting in competing trifecta offers from the likes of Iliad and others for ~$25/mo bundled high-speed internet access, 200 TV channels and unlimited IP telephony.

That helps explain why Google gets more revenue from France than even Germany, and why the average French internet user conducts ~72 searches/month to 45 in the U.S.

I think there's a misconception in the U.S. that the French are far behind, but the reality is they're in almost all respects further developed in search and ecommerce than the U.S.

Allez les bleus, les bleus, les bleus!!