The French authorities are considering introducing a tax on the use of Internet search engines, in particular, Google, MSN, Bing and Yahoo, as well as on social networks like Facebook.

The proceeds were supposed to send the funds to representatives of creative professions, whose copyrights in the digital age are violated most often: the musicians, writers, publishers and so on.

Introduce a tax on profits from advertising in France is planned for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, regardless of whether they are representative of the country or not. The European headquarters of Google is based in Ireland, but it is planned that the search engine will pay tax each time someone clicks on a sponsored link or banner on your site.

According to Jacques Tubona, a former culture minister and justice of France and one of the sponsors of the bill, the purpose of this initiative - to curb the unlimited wealth "of the leading players online market. Only in France the annual income from Google advertising exceeds 800 million euros. In a country increasingly hear the appeals addressed to the Anti-Monopoly Service to investigate the compliance by the company rules of free market and does not violate any laws in the field of Internet advertising.

Now the bill got the unofficial title of "tax Google", is considered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and his condition are studied by the Minister of Finance. It is expected that the new tax would annually generate France 10-20 million euros.

One of the leaders of the French subsidiary Google Olivier Esper said that he was against the imposition of the tax. "I do not think that the imposition of additional taxes on Internet advertising - the right way, because it will impede progress", - explained Esper. He urged the French government to cooperate, rather than "contrast between the worlds."