
Fleur Pellerin, the French junior minister for digital economy, did not mince words when she addressed the Apple (AAPL)-AppGratis controversy on Thursday. She called Apple’s decision to kick AppGratis out of App Store “extremely brutal and unilateral.” France is now planning to demand tighter regulation of “digital platforms” after long seething about the distribution power that American companies such as Apple, Google (GOOG), Twitter and Facebook (FB) have gained over the past five years. France is Europe’s biggest developer of software, but its companies are increasingly being reduced to creating applications for platforms owned by Americans.