Less than one-third of the largest businesses in France have a Web site.

By the end of 1998, only 27 percent of the 1,500 French firms had set up a Web site, Benchmark Group found. Benchmark visited over 400 sites and interviewed 100 site managers during the last quarter of 1998. The complete results are available in Benchmark_s report "Les Grandes Enterprises Francaises Et L_Internet." The communications industry was the best represented on the Web, with 59 percent of its companies having a Web presence. The agribusiness sector was the worst with only 16 percent of its firms on the Web. Eighty percent of French business sites cost more than $82,000 to develop. Eight percent cost more than $164,165, Benchmark found. Three-quarters of the French sites are hosted on company servers. One-third of the sites in the study are updated on a daily basis. The most efficient sites in terms of speed and content were in the commerce and transportation sectors, Benchmark found. Finance firms have the most elaborate sites, and the automotive industry has the most sophisticated. Benchmark found that chemical-pharmaceutical concerns have the best corporate communications, and agribusiness sites have the poorest development.