Considering that there where quite some similar ventures around Europe and DailyMotion is the only one still standing, I wouldn't downplay that.

I sighed hard when they tried to play the pride card with this. Considering I get cold sweat everytime I have to watch a video on dailymotion, it's slower and clunkier than the worst youtube beta redesign. Poor Montebourg.

Maybe because the french encourage healthy competition [1] rather than US-style 'free-market' monopolies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast...

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/business/France-Takes-Aim-...

From the first line:

>French lawmakers on Thursday took aim at Amazon to protect local bookshops by voting through a law that bars online booksellers from offering free delivery to customers on top of a maximum 5 percent discount on books.

Now as I understand it, competition is supposed to help the consumer, and the French government essentially did something anti-consumer. I understand your need to go on your "anti-US" soapbox, but your post is outrageous. In what was is Google a monopoly? Last I checked Bing had a 20% marketshare.

Besides, Google won the search market due to a massively superior product. The race wasn't even remotely close, they demolished the competition with an easier, faster, better offering in every possible respect. What alternative is thisiswrong proposing one wonders: that the government should have forced dramatically inferior products on consumers at gun point? Quotas on how often consumers can use Google? It'd be laughable if it weren't such a dark perspective.

I certainly agree there are a lot of good ideas and neat projects starting in France -- what I mean is they have trouble growing into big successes.