[HN Gopher] Google loses challenge against EU antitrust ruling, ...
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Google loses challenge against EU antitrust ruling, $2.8B fine
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 397 points
Date : 2021-11-10 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Thomas Vinje, a partner at law firm Clifford Chance and who
| advises several Google rivals, said Vestager should expand her
| investigation into other areas.
|
| >"Today's judgment gives the European Commission the ammunition
| it needs to tighten the screws on Google in other areas where it
| is throwing its weight around, like in online advertising, app
| stores and video streaming," he said.
|
| Great idea. Search isn't the only area Google has done bad
| things. And Google isn't the only big tech company which has done
| bad things.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Where does the $2.8 billion go?
| chaoskanzlerin wrote:
| Member states' contributions to the EU budget get decreased
| proportionally
| morsch wrote:
| The EU budget, according to https://ec.europa.eu/competition-
| policy/antitrust/procedures...
|
| Also https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-googles-27-billion-
| fin...
| kerblang wrote:
| Mostly tangential: I find it amusing that I got served 3
| different ads for Google Fiber on that reuters page (2 of them
| were the same ad). Of course this is because I looked at Google
| Fiber a week ago to see if it was in my neighborhood yet, but it
| isn't and at this point probably never will be.
| amelius wrote:
| The cost of doing business.
| rm2040 wrote:
| A fine doesn't solve the issue. Could it be the EU is taking
| their cut? and will repeat for the other techcos every X years?
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| Adding this for some context.
|
| While it's not clear to me if the fine accounts for Google's
| total revenue from Google Shopping while the infringement
| occurred it at least is based on a percentage of revenue which
| increases with each reoccurrence.
|
| According to [1] "the starting point for setting the fine will
| take into account a percentage of the value of sales to which
| the infringement relates, multiplied by the number of years of
| participation in the infringement. Under the fines Guidelines
| in force since 1998, the starting point of the fine is based on
| a lump sum, depending on the degree of gravity of the
| infringement, to which a 10% increase is added per year of
| infringement." and "The Commission's fine of EUR2 424 495 000
| takes account of the duration and gravity of the infringement.
| In accordance with the Commission's 2006 Guidelines on fines
| (see press release and MEMO), the fine has been calculated on
| the basis of the value of Google's revenue from its comparison
| shopping service in the 13 EEA countries concerned."[2]
|
| 1: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
| release_MEMO-06-256_en.htm?loca...
|
| 2:
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I wonder why the EU won't sink these huge fines back into the
| process of keeping the companies in check rather than just
| disbursing it to random cost centers. They could do even better
| work if they doubled or tripled their investigators and lawyers.
| That would really send a chill through those who love to rob us
| of our privacy.
| Jensson wrote:
| Making fines fund the people who determine the fine is a really
| bad incentive structure, you will see a lot more fines for sure
| but the system would be much more prone to corruption.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Google contributes so much to open source that news like this
| makes me react ambiguously.
| krageon wrote:
| Maybe if they contributed a little more to an open internet
| they wouldn't have this problem :)
| schleck8 wrote:
| This is the new "you can't be a bad person if you are an animal
| friend" equivalent I assume?
| marcodiego wrote:
| No. This is simply the same felling I get when someone that
| has helped me sometimes get caught doing something wrong.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Got to fill that Brexit budget gap somehow..
| kache_ wrote:
| ugh
| corrigible wrote:
| I'm sure they'll appeal again
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Let them lose again then
| schleck8 wrote:
| They have the right to appeal in front of Europe's highest
| court, the ECJ. That decision is final.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Good. Now, do the same to Apple and force them to allow
| installing third-party apps (and sign up for alternative push
| notifications services).
| Fckd wrote:
| Google the new Evil
| elwell wrote:
| Not agreeing or disagreeing, but how exactly is Google evil?
| ajuc wrote:
| Abusing their monopoly to destroy competition for example?
| This is why they were fined.
|
| Then there's censorship and working with authoritarian
| regimes like China.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| They haven't replaced anyone, they complement the list of Evils
|
| Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple
|
| They all share a same trait, born from the same place, operates
| globally, there is a weird pattern over there
| adamc wrote:
| Good. Google has been dominating search for a long time. At the
| very least, it is important to constrain how they can use that
| advantage. (I would rather see search de-monopolized. Not holding
| my breath...)
| kerng wrote:
| Fine should probably much higher honestly.
| Permit wrote:
| I haven't been following this case, what makes you say it
| should be higher?
| cbg0 wrote:
| Plenty of people don't understand the concept of fining
| corporations, which is to punish them and get them to correct
| their ways, not to destroy them financially to the point
| where they end up firing people, which will now be out of
| work, which is a pretty big problem.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Only if a fine is so low it effectively has 0 impact on
| their revenue it's not punishing them, is it?
|
| Doing so much that they are impacted financially IS.
| nathanyz wrote:
| Fining is because you can't put a corporation in jail. It
| is basically an alternative meant to speak the language of
| profit/loss that corporations live and die by.
|
| So in this case if you don't make it so that the bad
| behavior is "unprofitable", then there is really no
| incentive to change as profitable business practices will
| not be discontinued and fines just become part of the
| operating costs.
| riffraff wrote:
| but this fine is exactly based on making _this_ bad
| behaviour unprofitable, the amount is proportional to the
| estimate of the advantage that google got from its base
| behaviour.
| nathanyz wrote:
| That is for this instance where they were caught and it
| took a huge amount of resources, willpower, and luck for
| that to be followed through on to get to the fine.
|
| Basically in this case it was breakeven minus lawyer fees
| if they get caught which only happens X% of the time.
|
| That is why there are usually punitive premiums so that
| the business calculus never makes sense as the cost of
| doing it x risk of being caught is always a negative
| compared to potential profit.
|
| TLDR: Fine should be 2-10x times benefit gained or higher
| to prevent even thinking about trying to get away with
| it.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I think people want a bigger fine that will force Google to
| change behaviour, not one that will bankrupt Google.
| [deleted]
| tremon wrote:
| And it can. The legislation has the option to keep increasing
| the penalty for repeat offenders.
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Google has another $7 billion in fines working through the EU
| court.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Assuming they don't appeal and lower them.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Still pocket change for a multibillion company like Google.
|
| I hope EU will keep hammering them with fines until they change,
| or until they start noticing the loss.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| It's like robbing a bank for a million dollars and the penalty
| for doing it is paying back 100K. Why would I ever stop robbing
| banks?
| AnssiH wrote:
| Do you believe Google benefited over $2.8B from showing its
| shopping comparison results above those of their competitors
| in the 13 affected EEA countries?
|
| I doubt it.
|
| The fining rules EC follows are intended to ensure the fines
| exceed the benefit received.
|
| There are more details about the calculation of the fines in
| the original EC decision of the (AT.39740), section 14 Fines
| starting from page 207: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/anti
| trust/cases/dec_docs/39...
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Absolutely, lol. They've been doing this for 8 years and
| are the masters (regardless of ethics) at ad revenue.
| Considering Google's market share has quadrupled (low
| estimate) since 2014, I have no doubts that google could
| have profited 350M year over year. When has google ever
| done anything in good faith or something that wasn't
| profitable for them long term?
|
| "The Commission concludes that the proportion of the value
| of sales to be used to establish the basic amount of the
| fine should be [...]%."
|
| If it's not 100%+ percent, Google profited, even if it's a
| penny. This doc is missing way too much data (table 29) for
| it to make any real sense.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Because the penalty doesn't stop at 100k for repeating
| offenses?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Until it stops being profitable, it really doesn't matter
| what you fine them. Stock price is up 5.82% over the last
| 30 days...
| edgyquant wrote:
| It seems to me you're just regurgitating something you've
| heard a million times. Stock price is irrelevant, the EU
| has ran the numbers on googles profit from their shop
| searches and determined this fine exceeds that profit.
| dahfizz wrote:
| This isn't a fine for Google generally. This fine is for a
| specific thing Google did wrong: prioritizing their own
| shopping results in search. The fine was specifically
| calculated to be greater than whatever revenue Google made
| from this behavior.
|
| To follow your analogy, they robbed a bank for a million
| dollars and got fined 2 million. Then keyboard warriors
| shouted that they should have been fined 10 million because
| of unrelated crimes which are still being litigated.
| Closi wrote:
| > To follow your analogy, they robbed a bank for a million
| dollars and got fined 2 million. Then keyboard warriors
| shouted that they should have been fined 10 million because
| of unrelated crimes which are still being litigated.
|
| Well, more accurately they robbed a bank for a million
| dollars and got fined a million dollars.
| Medox wrote:
| multitrillion*
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| When Google swallows a company, a valuation of only $2.8
| billion is a small acquisition.
| badRNG wrote:
| I mean, I'd agree, but 2.8 Billion is a LOT of money. I'm
| impressed that the EU is willing to even hammer Google that
| hard. From what I can tell, Alphabet only ever has ~120 Billion
| USD on hand at any given point in time.
|
| While the fine seems to be doing better than mere pocket
| change, the fine must be more costly than the benefit of the
| anti-competitive behavior in order to be effective.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... Alphabet only ever has ~120 Billion USD on hand at any
| given point in time.
|
| "Only".
| badRNG wrote:
| I totally agree with your sentiment. It's sad that a 2.8
| Billion USD fine should be considered a big win against a
| company, but in a regulatory environment where a 10 million
| USD fine often makes headlines (and is even more often
| overturned), 2.8B comes a lot closer to being meaningful
| than one would expect in our current situation.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| And with insanely aggressive share repurchases:
|
| > _The company is aggressively buying back stock, having
| repurchased a record $12.8 billion in the second quarter,
| bringing the total so far in 2021 to $24.2 billion._
|
| > _The company is on pace to buy back around $50 billion of
| stock this year. It's a testament to Alphabet's earnings
| power that its cash and equivalents were down less than $1
| billion in the first half of the year to $135.9 billion
| despite the heavy repurchases._
|
| So they "only" have $120 Billion on hand while already
| spending $25 billion of their cash buying back stock and
| planning on spending another $25 billion this year.
|
| https://www.barrons.com/articles/alphabets-voting-shares-
| are...
| remram wrote:
| Looks like the fine is an order of magnitude too low too
| hurt, at least.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > 2.8 Billion is a LOT of money
|
| > Alphabet only ever has ~120 Billion USD on hand at any
| given point in time
|
| To them, 2.8 billion USD is change. It's a tip for the
| government. Make it something like 70 billion and they might
| start caring. And if it looks like they aren't caring, fine
| them again until they do.
| chmod775 wrote:
| They add up. Don't forget that Google was also fined 4.3
| billion euros and 1.5 billion euros in two other instances.
|
| And there's other places on Earth that may impose their own
| fines.
| adventured wrote:
| If the EU fines Google $70 billion, which would obviously
| be an intentional assault on the US economy given the
| extraordinary scale, the only proper response would be for
| the US Government to attempt to destroy a major EU
| corporation in measured retaliation. Airbus is worth a bit
| more than $70 billion, they'd be an ideal and very easy
| target to sabotage.
|
| What you're suggesting is economic war.
| kiryin wrote:
| What do you think should be done? What methods are there,
| besides harsh economic sanctions, to control entities
| which break regulations and detriment free society?
| Clearly something needs to happen, something with impact.
| Pray to the invisible hand?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| That's fine if Airbus does evil at the same scale as
| Google.
| keewee7 wrote:
| Airbus is an international arms dealer.
| adventured wrote:
| Google isn't doing evil to warrant $70b fines. I reject
| your premise.
|
| A $70b fine would justify the excessive targeting of a
| major EU corporation in response.
|
| If the EU were to pretend that Google deserved an
| arbitrary $70b fine, then they could just as easily
| pretend US big tech broadly deserves several hundred
| billion USD in fines.
|
| It's pretty clear where that kind of insane behavior
| leads.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Google isn't doing evil to warrant $70b fines.
|
| Ok, how much should the EU be allowed to fine Google?
|
| How about $12b, that should be 10% of the money they have
| on hand as I understand it. I think getting fined 10% of
| your operating money might make you compliant to the law
| - or is the problem that Google should never be fined any
| amount that would cause them to become compliant to the
| law?
|
| on edit: put dollar sign in
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Google isn't doing evil to warrant $70b fines.
|
| Proportionality doesn't work with companies that are
| disproportionally rich. The purpose of the fine is to get
| them to stop violating people's rights and it's clear
| that pitiful 2 billion dollar fines are not going to
| accomplish that objective.
|
| > It's pretty clear where that kind of insane behavior
| leads.
|
| It leads to Google no longer being a monopoly as well as
| being more respectful of people's privacy.
| krzyk wrote:
| > It's pretty clear where that kind of insane behavior
| leads.
|
| A happier, less evil world.
| malermeister wrote:
| Why is having to follow the law "war" for US vulture
| capitalists?
|
| You come to our market, you play by our rules. We don't
| bend the law for capital interests quite as much as you
| do, either get used to it or get out.
| kazen44 wrote:
| you mean like what happened with bombadier?
|
| these large coorperations and the nations backing them is
| nothing new.
|
| Also, it is a strategic intrest of europe to protect
| airbus, especially considering it is the model in terms
| of being a multinational, truely european company[1],
| compared to a national one.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Ok just let them continue to effectively use piddly fines
| to bribe governments, what a great alternative.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Economic war? Why can't the US simply allow the
| corporations to face the consequences of their actions?
| They probably aren't even going to jail or anything.
| They're free to either pay or get out of the country
| that's imposing the fine. Why does Google get to exploit
| foreign citizens and violate their rights while under the
| protection of the US government?
|
| Huge fines are the only thing that will work.
| Corporations these days are richer than nations and these
| little 2 billion dollar fines do nothing.
| notyourwork wrote:
| > the fine must be more costly than the benefit of the anti-
| competitive behavior in order to be effective.
|
| That might be up for debate. According to Google Finance [1]
| Alphabet received income of $18.94B in September! So the fine
| is 15% of ONE quarter of their income.
|
| I don't think that is sufficient and qualifies to more like a
| slap on the wrist.
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=alphabet+revenue
|
| edit: I should have said quarter, not month. Revised, sorry
| for the confusion.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Alphabet as a whole yes, but the question I think is how
| much they made from Google Shopping specifically. If the
| fine was greater than amount of money they made with what
| they were getting fined about (multiplied by the chance of
| getting caught, probably higher for google than most), then
| they EU would successfully discourage similar rule breaking
| in the future. While alphabet's total income for the year
| may be that high, most of that comes from ads and not
| shopping, and penalizing just the shopping related income
| makes sense in that light.
|
| The alternative argument is that what you really want a
| fine to do is penalize law-infringing heavily enough that a
| companies' shareholders make not getting fined again high
| priority. In that light, you're primarily concerned about
| levying fines against a company's profit margin/funds
| they're using to invest in future growth. In which case,
| yeah, this fine is far too paltry to concern investors in a
| vacuum.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| Minor quibble, but that link says "Quarterly Financials."
| So $6.31 billion a month.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Thanks, I edited to correct this mistake.
| nwellnhof wrote:
| The $18.94B number is net income in Q3 2021, not in a
| single month.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| $18.94 billion would have been a more acceptable amount
| to fine them. You have to make these companies really
| hurt in order to get their attention.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| That said, someone's OKR in legal just got tanked haha
| badRNG wrote:
| So, is the thought that the net benefit of Google's anti-
| competitive behavior related to comparison shopping
| services in Europe alone is greater than 1% of Alphabets
| total income over a calendar year?
| claudiulodro wrote:
| No, otherwise the fine would simply be a cost of doing
| business, and there would still be a positive ROI for
| Google on the behavior that got them in trouble. The fine
| needs to be greater than the revenue generated by anti-
| competitive behavior.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| A truly fair punishment would require identifying when
| the unlawful behavior started, calculating all profits
| derived from it, taking it away _and only then_ fining
| them.
|
| Making unlawful business decisions shouldn't be a
| calculated power move for them. It should put them in a
| worse position than they started. Like a chess game that
| gets rewound all the way back to the last legal move, but
| it costs them a rook or queen as well for the trouble
| they caused.
| 93po wrote:
| A truly fair punishment would be people going to jail (or
| the threat of it), like is the case for virtually any
| other crime. This shit isn't going to stop unless people
| refuse to do it because of the risk of jail.
| rebuilder wrote:
| Setting aside the whole "fair" issue, I suspect Alphabet
| could convince a lot of execs to risk going to jail for a
| lot less than the fine levied here.
|
| Corporations don't go to jail.
| krzyk wrote:
| But if by being an employee of such corporation you would
| have possibility of going to jail, there would be not
| that many candidates.
| xwdv wrote:
| They will never notice the loss. This is a cost of doing
| business. Also these fines can be financed and become tax write
| offs through various loop holes and in the end even be a profit
| for the business.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Legal fees are generally paid in pre-tax money, that's true.
| How does that end up as a profit?
| xwdv wrote:
| Through some extremely creative accounting.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Or until they decide it's not worth the cost to do business in
| Europe.
|
| As of 2018, they were pulling about 32.2 billion euros in
| revenue in the European market, so there's quite a ways to go.
| no_time wrote:
| >Or until they decide it's not worth the cost to do business
| in Europe.
|
| One can only dream. There is no efficent solution to
| rangebanning google ips on mobile devices that i'm aware of.
| tremon wrote:
| If they stop doing business in Europe, they lose Android
| dominance in one of the largest, most advanced markets. It
| might just be what's needed to break the G/A duopoly, and I'm
| not sure they want to risk losing that.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| And what non-Android, non-Apple platform would users switch
| to?
| Jensson wrote:
| Voids get filled extremely fast when they appear.
| nixass wrote:
| Of course they will decide to leave the market twice as big
| (population wise) as US' one
| nyxaiur wrote:
| They didn't even follow through with their threat to leave
| the Australian market or the UK or France or Belgium or
| Germany. I don't even know whom they didn't threaten.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's what I'm saying... the EU could probably double or
| triple these fine levels, easy, before Google decides this
| isn't worth just factoring into cost-of-business.
|
| Of course, if the laws are structured fairly, such steep
| fine levels would absolutely cripple domestic software
| companies that ran afoul of them...
| eropple wrote:
| _> Of course, if the laws are structured fairly, such
| steep fine levels would absolutely cripple domestic
| software companies that ran afoul of them... _
|
| Scaling to revenue isn't unfair. It's how you properly
| scare multinationals into compliance.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Google would probably keep operating at a loss just to
| prevent competitors from seizing the market and using
| that to fuel growth in the rest of the world. Better to
| take a loss and keep everyone else small.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I feel like I've seen this headline a hundred times in the past 5
| years.
| samstave wrote:
| TOTs....
|
| An where have thesse 'fines' resulted in anything beneficial to
| human society.
|
| THe title *SHOULD* read:
|
| Google forced to fund N schools in Germany for fucking up.
|
| But no,
|
| In ALL of any of these 'fine-ings' can we have a document of
| where the fines were applied and what they accomplished?
| ohmaigad wrote:
| This is just dumb. Would you prefer if executives were sent
| to prison? These fines are beneficial in the way that
| business might think twice before fucking over people.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Would you prefer if executives were sent to prison
|
| Actually that'd be great for serious transgressions.
| They're at the helm, they make decisions, they reap the
| rewards, why shouldn't they also be punished when the
| company fucks up seriously?
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Anti-trust isn't a crime. And there are reasons for that
| other than what cynicism suggests. It is far more
| difficult to pin down the definition, for example, than
| it is even for typical white-collar crimes (fraud etc.).
| And it's morally dubious to punish someone in
| unpredictable ways. (the (civil(!) anti-trust fines don't
| create new harm, but are intended to fix a situation,
| which makes them more acceptable. As an analogy: when
| someone damages your car and has to pay for repairs, that
| payment is zero-sum for society. if you hit him in the
| head, that's a net-negative because you (shouldn't/don't)
| derive as much benefit from it as they are harmed)
|
| Then, practically speaking, the groups involved are
| simply too large to pin outcomes on individuals, and we
| don't do guilt-by-association. The timescales are also
| wrong, because the people responsible will often have
| moved on long ago. And the people usually do not
| participate in the spoils anywhere close to linearly with
| their involvement (which is a good thing because it
| prevents most corporate malfeasance: you aren't going
| expose yourself to moral and criminal guilt at a 9-5
| job).
|
| Also,, the standard-of-proof that is required is higher
| ("beyond reasonable doubt", i. e. 95%) than it is in
| civil cases ("preponderance of evidence", i. e. 50%).
| This is an outcrop of that moral-guilt vs responsibility
| thing from above, and also from the fact that in civil
| court it's often arbitrary what side of the courtroom you
| end up on.
| josefx wrote:
| > THe title _SHOULD_ read:
|
| That would only give them another way to put a positive spin
| on their anti competitive behavior.
| caymanjim wrote:
| The fines shouldn't be tied to anything. The point of fines
| is to punish bad behavior. The fine is the incentive to
| change behavior. I don't want fines being tied to specific
| rewards for a subset of society or a special interest. Once
| you start doing that, the incentives are broken. The benefit
| to society is that Google changes their behavior to avoid
| being fined again. The money should go into general
| government funding, not to "schools" or any other specific
| thing.
| andruby wrote:
| I'm wondering what the effect would be if the money from
| the fines is burned (destroyed).
|
| The company would still feel the same incentive. For the
| government on the other hand, it removes the incentive to
| fine for one's own gain. I like that it would remove this
| conflict of interest.
|
| By removing the money, it's essentially very slightly
| reducing inflation.
| niyikiza wrote:
| Actually that can be quite an equitable way of
| distributing the fines (to all people holding the
| currency in question).
| caymanjim wrote:
| While in theory this sounds nice, in practice it means
| everyone gets nothing. It's a rare case where I'd rather
| see the government get money. A comparable scenario is a
| class-action lawsuit; a company might lose a billion
| dollar class action lawsuit, but what that means is a
| third goes to lawyers, a third goes to administrative
| overhead, and the remaining third is distributed to the
| plaintiffs as a bunch of checks for 50 cents a piece (and
| then they're taxed on it!). I'd rather the government get
| one big check.
| samstave wrote:
| Hmmm...
|
| >> _While in theory this sounds nice, in practice it
| means everyone gets nothing._
|
| im trying to find out where anyone got something?
| nostrademons wrote:
| I think the point the grandparent is making is that for a
| corporation, a fine is the _price_ of bad behavior.
| Corporations don 't make moral judgments between good and
| bad; as far as the company is concerned, they will make $X
| of profit from the behavior and it will cost $Y in fines,
| and if $X > $Y they will keep doing it. So for fines less
| than the profitability of the behavior, governments should
| just think of them as taxes, revenue-generation sources
| from continuing to allow the corporation to do whatever
| it's being fined for.
| malermeister wrote:
| ... and that's why the EU has high fines for shit like
| this, to make sure $Y > $X.
|
| It's also why tech companies keep complaining about EU
| regulators.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That's ludicrous. It should go back into the governing
| bodies who do this to hire more auditors and
| investigators and lawyers to do even more of the Lord's
| work.
| ludamad wrote:
| On the other hand, wouldn't mind if my taxes had some
| allocation I could attitude to them
| easytiger wrote:
| Legislation is often changed so as to target big companies
| in the industry du jour. Just look at how tenuous many of
| the prosecutions in France of Google are. They aren't aimed
| at market fairness even remotely, but to extract wealth to
| the state.
|
| It's particularly noticeable because the regulations
| selectively enforced are usually a huge hindrance to market
| entrants.
|
| <Insert golden goose analogy here>
| adwn wrote:
| > _Google [...] market entrants_
|
| How did you draw a line from the former to the latter?
| iends wrote:
| I believe the parent was referring to things like GDPR
| which may have the unintended consequence of more
| entrenching the large incumbents because of the cost and
| time associated with compliance.
| teddyh wrote:
| The cost of compliance with GDPR is only high if you want
| to straddle the line of what is or isn't acceptable
| behavior regarding saving user data and monetizing said
| data. Lawyers are expensive, and the more crooked you
| are, the more expensive they get. If, on the other hand,
| you don't want to save any data on your users more than
| you obviously need (in order to do what your users
| explicitly ask for), then the cost is zero - you are
| already compliant.
| nostrebored wrote:
| This is just wrong. The cost of DSARs to most businesses
| who are subject to GDPR fines is massive.
| malermeister wrote:
| Then store less customer data. You're complaining that
| being data leech is expensive because of the GDPR. That's
| the point.
|
| Europeans don't want you to keep that much data on them.
| If your business model requires that, it is not one we
| want to encourage.
| Jensson wrote:
| You can send them the json for their user page and a copy
| of your user data policies. This process can easily be
| automated with an url. This doesn't cost more to do than
| any other form of customer support.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In ALL of any of these 'fine-ings' can we have a document
| of where the fines were applied and what they accomplished?
|
| Usually, this is impossible, because fines are tossed into a
| large pool of fungible money which is periodically allocated,
| but the allocation isn't done per individual fine.
|
| Of course, the budget which applies to the fund involved is
| usually public, so insofar as it is approximately and
| imprecisely (in relation to a specific fine) possible, it is
| already done routinely.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This money should be fed back into the regulatory system to
| provide fund for expanding audits of these companies which
| are clearly out of control. Corporations are basically
| entities without morals. They only care about the legality
| of situations and interpretations thereof that their
| lawyers think they can get away with so as much oversight
| as possible would be great.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Probably because the cases in question started in 2017. The
| headlines we see are the percolation of these three cases
| through the entire appeals and resolution process.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Note Google still has the option of appealing to EU's top
| court, so the appeals process isn't even necessarily done I'm
| this case.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I hope they do and that the fine gets doubled as a result.
| Companies always appealing to the highest courts is only a
| function of the amount of cash they have, whatever happened
| to: "Judge says so, so that's it". It's just trying to do
| an end-run around the system by always clogging up the
| courts from low to high.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Honestly, just adding a market-rate interest charge on
| the original fine seems Good Enough to me. I suspect the
| interest on a $3B fine is larger than the court fees and
| lawyers anyways, and it's not like time value of money
| isn't something companies will neglect to take into
| account.
| r00fus wrote:
| Wasn't the market-rate interest actually negative in some
| European countries in recent years?
|
| There has to be some mechanism for some additional cost
| for the defendants to prevent appealing all court
| decisions...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If the interest was negative, then paying the money now
| _is_ additional cost compared to paying it years ago.
| alach11 wrote:
| A lot more information about the case is available here [0]. The
| ruling is about promoting Google Shopping results above other
| comparison shopping websites. The fine "has been calculated on
| the basis of the value of Google's revenue from its comparison
| shopping service in the 13 EEA countries concerned."
|
| [0]
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
| keewee7 wrote:
| One problem with these non-Google price comparison sites is
| that they don't always show the best or cheapest products but
| the products that give the best affiliate commissions to the
| sites.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Even Google shopping doesn't show the cheapest results. It's
| a paid-for service, and the seller who pays most places
| first. There used to be a free and paid tier, but now it's
| all paid.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Interesting calculation. Did they deduct taxes paid, salaries
| and dev time?
|
| If not, this was a negative sum game for google.
|
| Would be very curious to know.
| AnssiH wrote:
| If you are willing to read, here's the original decision PDF,
| including details about fine: https://ec.europa.eu/competitio
| n/antitrust/cases/dec_docs/39...
| brewdad wrote:
| I should hope so. The whole point of these fines should be to
| prevent the behavior rather than just make it a cost of doing
| business.
| hulitu wrote:
| Google does not pay significant taxes in EU. Just like other
| companies they use a lot of tricks to avoid paying taxes.
| Crash0v3rid3 wrote:
| Sounds like the tax laws needs changing. I don't know how
| we can blame companies from leveraging loopholes if they
| are available.
| josefx wrote:
| It is less the tax laws and more the trade agreements
| between countries. Until a few years ago the biggest tech
| companies used a bit of creative accounting to make sure
| that all their EU profits would at least on paper be made
| in Ireland because it had the lowest taxes of all and
| Ireland had no reason to change that. The EU stepped in
| once it came out just how far the Irish tax office was
| willing to go to support that scheme, I think they
| outright allowed Apple to skip the pretense (and several
| shell companies) entirely while declaring their profits
| to be Irish.
| krzyk wrote:
| How you fix a situation when a child company in Country A
| pays parent company in Country B a given amount for using
| logos, trademarks?
| slavik81 wrote:
| Put a tax on licence fees for logos and trademarks.
| mtsr wrote:
| Revenue, not profit, so that by definition doesn't deduct any
| costs.
| overkill28 wrote:
| Quick- name as many other companies in this market as you can.
|
| Heck name a single product comparison shopping search engine.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Heureka and zbozi.cz are the big ones we use in Czech
| Reoublic.
| bonzini wrote:
| When I lived in Czech Republic the local sites for maps
| (maybe mapy.cz??) and email (seznam.cz) were still quite
| strong. Is it still the case?
| auxym wrote:
| I used to use shopbot.ca but it became fully useless around 2
| or 3 years ago.
| bduerst wrote:
| Amazon, Ebay, Shopify pages, etc.
|
| It doesn't really matter because google shopping is (or was?)
| just search ads with pictures. Every item shown was set up
| and paid for in Ads IIRC.
| slac wrote:
| kelkoo, prisjakt.nu, pricerunner.se
| berkes wrote:
| kieskeurig.nl/be, beslist.nl, kelkoo; all of which are
| relatively popular in just the Netherlands. Those are the few
| that survived by focusing on tiny niches; in this case a tiny
| geographic and language-demography.
| hawski wrote:
| From the top of my head: Ceneo, Cenowarka, Idealo, Skapiec.
| lostmsu wrote:
| https://market.yandex.ru (only in Russian). Exists for over
| 10 years. Was my to go place to shop for electronics due to
| extensive filtering. It actually still is even after moving
| to US: I just pick the device there, then order on
| BestBuy/Amazon/NewEgg.
| corecoder wrote:
| Well, there are all those suggested by Google - oh, wait.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Not commenting on Google, but the problem with monopolies is
| you don't know what other and potentially better products
| might exist now if there was fair competition. Companies
| aren't going to fund a competing product when they know
| they're against a powerful monopoly.
|
| "But the company being accused of having a monopoly has the
| best product and I like it" was said about Windows too when
| they were locking out competition. It's short-sighted.
| [deleted]
| mvdwoord wrote:
| idealo.de tweakers.net/pricewatch .. in my corner of this
| earth.
|
| There were / are plenty. Google's idea of being the only game
| in town is mostly marketing for almost all of their products.
| josefx wrote:
| geizhals.de might also qualify.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Was going to post this: Geizhals is amazing, especially
| to understand and browse variants of the same product.
| Their database is wonderful.
| keewee7 wrote:
| PriceRunner is big in Denmark.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| There used to be a ton of shopping "comparison" and "review"
| site spam. There still is. For a while google shopping seemed
| better. I actually liked google's involvement.
|
| Then they seemed to turn into ads? Now I ignore it along with
| most of the others as I'm sure many folks do and just shop
| through a few places (which is only marginally better).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| i just resent that shopping links are at the top of every
| image search - jesus google, i'm not always trying to shop
| brnt wrote:
| > i'm not always trying to shop
|
| Seducing you into consumption is how Google makes money,
| isn't it?
| [deleted]
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| And let's not get into the horizontal scrolling UI
| abomination they've added recently.
| prepend wrote:
| Froogle was better.
|
| I think if Google cares about product search quality then it
| would be good. Now it's just a paid product rather than
| trying to organize and present info.
| adamrezich wrote:
| oh man, I'd forgotten about Froogle
| arenaninja wrote:
| Amazon and Facebook when?
| PhileinSophia wrote:
| What is their crime?
| ddmma wrote:
| Had a project related to Drive, exactly 8 years ago mentioned on
| my twitter about their aproach on literaly all searches related
| to their services https://imgur.com/a/iM7XhaB
| caslon wrote:
| What's wrong with what they're doing there? Your project was
| named extremely generically and is spelled like a typo; correct
| the typo and Google and IBM have cloud services most assuredly
| more popular than your own, and you _still_ managed to come in
| first.
| [deleted]
| ddmma wrote:
| Domain was created using reversed engineered on the their
| analytics. You're right, heil Google
| kybernetyk wrote:
| If you can't build your own tech industry you just rob the other
| guys' one.
| malermeister wrote:
| If you can't follow our laws, get out of our market.
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| They are 'robbing' the ones who wont allow others to flourish
| like they have
| native_samples wrote:
| Problem is, Google never shut down competing sites or did
| anything to block them in any way. In fact they funded
| platforms that could be used to access them.
|
| That's the difficulty with this sort of ruling. What,
| exactly, does the EU think Google did wrong here? Putting new
| stuff into search results? That should not be illegal and no
| such law exists. Reality is the EU will be perceived as both
| financially robbing America's tech industry and blaming it
| for its own failures to develop competitive services,
| regardless of what spin "EU citizens" try to put on this. The
| perception is inevitable when the supposed crime is so
| difficult to understand.
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| Did you even read the article?
| spicyramen wrote:
| Anyone has the link how they come up with this number?
| riffraff wrote:
| there is this[0]
|
| > The Commission's fine of EUR2 424 495 000 takes account of
| the duration and gravity of the infringement. In accordance
| with the Commission's 2006 Guidelines on fines (see press
| release and MEMO), the fine has been calculated on the basis of
| the value of Google's revenue from its comparison shopping
| service in the 13 EEA countries concerned.
|
| But I didn't see a detailed calculation anywhere.
|
| [0]
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1...
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