The telecoms billionaire is called France’s Steve Jobs by some and a ‘peep-show man’ by others. In Paris, he talks to Simon Kuper about blocking Google’s ads and battling Sarkozy
Some
in France thought Minitel was the future; Niel was shrewder. In 1993,
he founded WorldNet, France’s first internet service provider. Nine
years later, his company Iliad launched the “Freebox”, an ingenious
set-top box that brought internet, TV and telephone into your home. A
monthly package cost just €29.99, undercutting competitors. There was a
hiccup in 2004 when Niel was briefly jailed after a four-year judicial
investigation into one of his businesses; he received a two-year
suspended sentence and a €250,000 fine for embezzling about €200,000
from some sex shops he co-owned. (“I did stupid things, I paid for
them,” he has said.)
Recently,
Niel has graduated from irritating the French elite to irritating the
global elite. For several days in January, Free changed its default
settings to block online ads. The move was aimed chiefly at YouTube,
which Niel says refuses to pay for the online traffic it generates.
Fleur Pellerin, French minister for the digital economy, ordered Free to
remove the block.
When I mention this, Niel retorts: “You think we went to sleep when the
minister told us to stop?” What will he do then? “We’ll continue. We’ll
cut the ads from time to time, and one day we’ll cut them for good.”
