 |
 |
|
+33 |
White Pages.fr  |
|
1878 |
1889 |
1946 |
1979 |
1986 |
1990 |
1996 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
| Telecom History in France - France Telecom slow to understand arriving Internet |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
France Telecom´s rising Internet activities are reorganised
and in a french version
Honestly would you think about going to the Zoom Pages.com or to the Pages Zoom.com ?
The name "Pages Zoom" doesn´t seam to be the best.
All over the World Telephone Directories are called White Pages and Yellow Pages it is an International Standard which came up in the US over 120 years ago ... Some non english speaking countries use the English term Yellow Pages others a translation into their respective language: French = Pages Blanches / Pages Jaunes Spanish = Paginas Blancas / Paginas Amarillas Italian = Pagine Bianche / Pagine Gialle German = Weisse Seiten / Gelbe Seiten So the Wanadoo people decide to rebrand their Directory from Pages Zoom.com to Pages Jaunes.com There is only one problem a lot of time has been lost between 1996 and 1998 ... very valuable time in what concerns the registration of great Internet Domains. While the first Internet Domain was registered in 1985 it took about a decade for companies to realise that they could register domains, mostly US Technology Firms were among the early birds but in 1995 /1995 the very good .com names go very quickly ... fo a couple of dollars anybody can register whatever name he wants followed by .com
And when Wanadoo wants to register pagesjaunes.com in 1998 the big surprise ... the domain pagesjaunes.com is already registered ... since april 9 1996
It is the Internet pioneer Jean Noel Frydman from Miami, editor of yellow pages for french speaking people in the US, who owns the domain. The marketing people from Wanadoo are 2 years late, much too late
by the Internet pioneer Alex Algard from Seattle, a student that build and still owns America´s best Internet Telephone Directory. See the Whitepages.com timeline.
by 3 friends from from Los Angeles, Dane Madsen, Bill Povodonra and Roland Oister. In fact the name had already been registered before but the first owner forgot to pay the domain renewal charges. In November 2004 SBC and Bell South (both later AT&T) bought the website. See the Yellowpages.com story. April 12 1998 France Telecom registers the domain pagesblanches.com. In july 1998 Wanadoo completes negociations with Havas to buy all remaining shares of ODA (Office d´annonces in charge of selling advertising in French phonebooks). France Telecom has no difficulties to register the .fr domain as registering .fr domains is very difficult and restricted (until mai 11 2004) november 25 1998 is registered pagesjaunes.fr and december 30 1998 pagesblanches.fr not clear if pageszoom.fr was ever registered but oda.fr was at a very early time ... january 1 1995. The rebranded Pagesjaunes.fr Directory goes online in 1999
July 2000 It is also the company name ODA which gets rebranded to Pages Jaunes The new company is integrated into Wanadoo which enters the French stockmarket july 18 2000.
The only problem is the domain pagesjaunes.com But the management of ODA / Pages Jaunes in Sevres is too proud to buy the name - instead he try everything to get it for free via their lawyers. Fights over .com internet domains are handled by the Internet Arbitration and Mediation center at WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (which is like the
The Case N°D 2000-0489 is decided by 3 panelists Francois Dessemontet, Clive Torne and Christian Andre Le Stanc The domain pagesjaunes.com was defended by the famous trademark lawyer Andre Bertrand, like his French compatriots Corinne Fajgenbaum or Isabelle Prévost Desprèz, a kind of an icon in the world of law. Jean Noel Frydman can keep the domain pagesjaunes.com
Some months earlier January 2000 ... in an Internet Cafe in the center of Paris called Cybercafe de Paris. A computer illiterate, expatriate French housewife, Brigitte von Boch walks in and wants to know if it is possible to use Internet to find phone numbers, in particular phone numbers from France. She has had all her life difficulties to access the French "Renseignements Telephoniques" ... as the number 12 was only accessible from inside France. She is from the same generation as her compatriote, the famous BB. Sitting in front of a compture for the first time she tries everything what seams logic to her: Pages Jaunes.com Renseignements Telephoniques.com Renseignements Internationaux.com Annuaire.com Annuaire de Telephone.com Annuaire de la France.com Phonebook of France.com Numero de Telephone.com but nothing works ... In fact she did not know the expressions Wanadoo, Pages Zoom, Voila. She did not even know that next to .com each country has it´s local Internet code like .fr for France.
After hopeless explanations about the "special French" Logic of the Internet the Internet Cafe ends up registring all the domain names (exept Pagesjaunes.com ... already owned by Jean Noel Frydman) and suddenly was born the
a worldwide portal for telephone directories ...
Also nobody at the old France Telecom ever thinks of "English Thinking" People, see birth of Whitepages.fr in may 2004. |
 |
 |