To Charles de Gaulle, computer logic was politically straightforward: France, he insisted, must develop a home-grown computer industry capable of competing with the American giants, particularly IBM. For nearly nine years the French government followed his Plan Calcul. Last week France abandoned its pursuit of that chimera and approved the merger of the Compagnie Internationale pour I'lnformatique, a 24% government-controlled computer company, with Honeywell Bull, the Paris-based subsidiary of the U.S. computer maker Honeywell Inc.
The deal marks the second time in two decades that a French computer firm has been taken over by an American one. In 1963 General...
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