On the one hand, new data makes it surprising that Google doesn’t cater more to the French market.  On the other hand, perhaps the search giant doesn’t need to – in France, it already has a market share of almost 90 percent.

We’ve balked at France’s attempts to shortcut Google in the past, down right made fun of them for it. But the latest search share numbers in the Land of Baguettes and Snarls (gimme a break, had to get at least one in there) show that Google is near to surpassing the 90 percent threshold.

AOL France scored a deal with Neuf Cegetel to provide content, marketing, and advertising for its portal websites.

Since servers for the addictive Blackberry wireless mail service reside in places like the United States, some government workers in France have been told to eschew using those devices.

I think pretty much everyone is aware of Britain’s BBC, but France Televisions, a public national television broadcaster, may not be as well-known in America.  Now France Televisions is in talks to join the European version of YouTube, though, so perhaps its profile will rise.

Google will hold a Press Day in Paris on June 19th. Marissa Mayer and CEO Eric Schmidt will be there, among others, and we can expect they’ll bring some product or feature announcements with them (Tony Ruscoe will go to Paris to cover this for us, and I’ll be blogging from Germany). One of those new services, as rumor has it, will be the launch of European versions of YouTube, like YouTube France*.

Consumer groups from France and Germany have joined a European coalition aimed at forcing Apple to make files downloaded from its iTunes music store compatible with digital music players manufactured by competing companies.

The next president of France may owe the blogosphere a debt of gratitude after toiling in “la toile,” the fabric of the Internet.

Jacques Chirac isn’t experiencing a very good beginning to his new year. Data suggests that France is becoming even less relevant within the blogosphere, and now reports have surfaced that the nation’s joint search engine venture with Germany is about to go under.

Media groups in Norway and Denmark have begun, like several others before them, to protest Google News’s practices. The Norwegian association objects to the reproduction of certain images and photographs, while the Danish faction is asking Google to make separate arrangements with each publisher.

Now that “the cup” is done with… talk about a lame finish… sports enthusiasts might want to track the tour de france using google earth with some very cool 3d fly-throughs.

The Google Earth application allows bicycling fans to follow the latest version of the legendary race from their computers, a much easier task than biking up the Pyrenees.

Not to the get into the intricacies of French lawmaking, I’ll defer to a source nearer to it (thanks ZDNet). French lawmakers have modified proposed legislation on digital rights management (DRM) that will make it legal for hackers to crack copyright protection and distribute the software at will.

France’s Trade Minister Christine Lagarde visited technology executives in Silicon Valley, and brought plenty of European attitude along on the trip.

US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez made it known that the government supports Apple’s contention that forcing it to open its DRM scheme, Fairplay, will promote widespread piracy.

Apple has made a tidy profit on its iPod music player, the only device that can accept music downloads directly from iTunes; the French government wants iTunes to be able to place music on any digital media player.

Yahoo has a double standard. A federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit by the Sunnyvale portal powerhouse, filed to try and keep a Paris court from enforcing a $15 million fine for displaying Nazi memorabilia for sale on Yahoo’s auction site. This is a violation of French law and shows a different game than Yahoo dealing with China.

Is it just me or do blog search engines deliver horrible results? Possibly someone out there can point me to a blog search engine that doesn’t include so many spammy blogs in their database.

Last Friday evening, MSN took their search toolbar to the International community by releasing an updated version, which increases the amount of language support given to foreign countries.

Just about to unplug the PC from the net so I can get going. Off to Paris on the Thalys where I’ll be participating …

In February, I wrote about what some French newspapers are doing with blogs – Le Monde with its reader blogs and Libration with its journalists’ blogs.