France seeking back tax from big Web firms: minister

France, which is studying ways of curbing legal tax avoidance by big Internet firms, has decided to go after all of them to seek payment of back taxes, Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg said. The government had decided, Montebourg said, "to launch tax retrieval procedures covering all of the Internet giants." He did not elaborate and it was not clear whether the comment, made in a wide-ranging interview about French industry, referred specifically to existing tax investigations of the Internet search engine and retail giants Google and Amazon, or was suggesting a broader campaign.