[HN Gopher] Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B
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Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B
Author : april_22
Score : 532 points
Date : 2022-09-22 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| Government: Hey big company, we have laws to protect the people
| and you broke them and caused damage to the people! Now pay us,
| and we'll keep the money, because we don't really care about the
| people either.
| t_mann wrote:
| Are you claiming that EU officials are illegally pocketing the
| collected fines for themselves, or do you just not know how
| government budgets work?
| [deleted]
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Isn't that the case with any fine collected by any government?
| Why are people suddenly so much against these types of fines
| when it's the EU fining them?
| NtochkaNzvanova wrote:
| brynjolf wrote:
| "mad"
| berry_sortoro wrote:
| antonymy wrote:
| The fallout from this should be interesting. This fine is a
| substantial part (roughly 25%!) of Google's overall revenue from
| the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa), of which the EU is
| probably like 90%, at least, of the total, so it's probably toing
| the line of actually making the EU unprofitable to Google
| considering the costs of future compliance to avoid being fined
| again. Worse: this was not as steep as the fine could have been,
| they could've fined them about double this amount under current
| regulations, but chose not to. Probably because that would have
| pushed Google's EU operations into the red for sure and made the
| decision easy for them.
|
| To be sure the company won't be in trouble financially, their
| global revenue can cover the fine, but that doesn't stop the EU
| from potentially being a net loss for the company going forward.
| Abandoning the EU would be a drastic step, though. It's going to
| be interesting to see how they adapt to this. Another fine on
| this scale and I think they will pull out.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Bear in mind a global company like Google would much rather
| operate in the EU in the red than pull out. Simply because
| Google only survives on being a monopoly, and leaving one of
| the biggest global markets makes too much room for a competitor
| to develop that can eventually challenge them across the world.
| locallost wrote:
| They do 200 billion in ad sales a year. Without checking the
| data, I am pretty sure the EU is at least their third largest
| market, if not the second. This is definitely a lot less than a
| 1/4 of their revenue and they're not going anywhere.
| uni_rule wrote:
| I hate that fines proportional to the revenue giant companies
| make from doing shady shit are the exception and not the rule
| weatherlite wrote:
| The EU seems fine with the idea actually - it wants more
| independence on technology and said so several times. There
| will be many many pissed off European users for sure but that
| never stopped the EU elite from making a decision. Still -
| seems like a reach to me.
| antonymy wrote:
| I just remember when the EU passed that legislation that made
| it legal for member states to require Google to pay a fee to
| newspapers for linking to their content in Google News. Only
| a few countries bothered to try enforcing it, notably Spain
| did, and the result was Google called their bluff and de-
| listed every newspaper in Spain from Google News. It did not
| take long until Spain relented and permitted newspapers to
| waive the requirement with exemptions (i.e. allow status quo
| ante), which is exactly what happened for the bulk of them.
|
| Google definitely wants to stay in this market, but I don't
| think the EU has as much leverage as they think.
| osculum wrote:
| It took about 8 years? And my understanding is that it
| changed because Spain now allows the newspapers to
| negotiate directly with Google, not because Google doesn't
| have to pay those fees
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-news-re-opens-
| spai...
|
| Disclaimer: I work for Google in an unrelated product.
| Opinions are my own.
| babelfish wrote:
| To be clear, while the fines might make operating in the EU
| unprofitable, they could just...follow EU regulations...and
| remain profitable, albeit at a likely lower margin
| antonymy wrote:
| That's probably the goal, but Google is probably going to
| have anxiety about getting fined again if their compliance is
| not enough. Except in this case, the fines are so steep that
| it'd be very hard to over-spend on compliance. But it's just
| a race to the bottom in any case, Google only stands to make
| less and less money in the EU from now on.
| dangjc wrote:
| It's not walking on egg shells. It's very clear directions
| to avoid anti competitive behavior. Maybe it's harder
| without a moral compass telling them to not be evil.
| ranman wrote:
| EU regulations + individual country restrictions are written
| in a way that's allergic to running a profitable business
| (with a few notable exceptions).
| DandyDev wrote:
| That seems like hyperbole to me. Did you do concrete
| research/calculations to prove that for example Google in
| this case would not be able to turn a profit in the EU when
| they'd comply to regulations?
| crazygringo wrote:
| To be fair, it's often very unclear how regulations relating
| to markets apply. Which is why lawsuits around them often get
| reversed on appeal, re-reversed on another appeal, and so on.
|
| It's often very open to interpretation what constitutes a
| market, what constitutes bundling, what constitutes
| dominance, what constitutes monopoly, what even constitutes a
| product. There's neither such a thing as clear-cut
| definitions, nor even common sense (since different people's
| common sense can be diametrically opposed).
|
| It's things as basic as: is a Sony Walkman with headphones
| one product or two? What's the difference between Sony
| requiring you to buy headphones together with the tape
| player, or Android requiring Google to be the default search?
| Is "portable cassette player with headphones" a single
| market, or are "portable cassette players" and "headphones"
| separate markets?
|
| There's no such thing as "just follow EU regulations". Google
| and other observers can genuinely believe it's following
| them, while a specific EU court and yet other observers can
| genuinely believe it's breaking them.
| makomk wrote:
| Also, prior to Google throwing vast sums of money at phone
| companies, Bing was paying off many EU mobile phone
| providers to install Bing as the default search engine on
| all their Android-based devices _and lock users out from
| changing it to anything else_. Since those companies were
| government-enforced oligipolies, this meant ordinary users
| effectively couldn 't get devices that sent their searches
| to Google or anyone other than Bing in many countries
| unless they went off-piste and bought their own device
| online from someone other than their mobile provider (which
| doesn't work a lot of the time these days with 4G calling).
| This could well end up substantially reducing consumer
| choice in a way that directly hurts Google. In fact, an
| astounding chunk of the Google anti-trust actions from the
| EU seem aimed at giving Bing unearned advantages...
| ephbit wrote:
| > What's the difference between Sony requiring you to buy
| headphones together with the tape player, or Android
| requiring Google to be the default search?
|
| Sony and headphones together with tape player ... there's a
| synergy there, when they can sell them together, it's a
| small one though. (Selling two pieces of hardware together
| generates more turnover with one transaction.)
|
| With Android requiring Google to be the default search ...
| in comparison to the headphones there's a huge synergy
| here, I'd say. Collecting data (via non search software on
| the Android phone) and adding to it more data from search,
| makes all data more valuable in a very non-linear way. With
| the tape player I'd say it's more linear.
|
| So for me, the search data is a quite obvious non-
| neutrality issue.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I just meant it as a rhetorical question... just to point
| out that what is obvious for one person, the opposite is
| obvious for another. And so just "following regulations"
| doesn't always necessarily have any kind of objective way
| to do it -- as evidenced by courts often disagreeing with
| each other in specific situations.
| ephbit wrote:
| I think I understood what you were after, giving an
| example, that is.
|
| When I read the example though, I immediately thought it
| didn't quite ring true. So I tried to explain to myself
| why and came up with what I wrote.
|
| Even though there are obviously many examples one could
| give, where it'd indeed be difficult to see a difference,
| I didn't want to let this specific example go
| unchallenged. Why? Because it is so close to the actual
| topic (Google).
| rodgerd wrote:
| > What's the difference between Sony requiring you to buy
| headphones together with the tape player, or Android
| requiring Google to be the default search?
|
| Because of the tying of third-parties, I don't think that
| this is an equivalent comparison. This is more like going
| into the record store (since we're going back to the 80s
| with our Walkman) and finding that you think the Walkman
| comes with garbage headphones. So you pick up a Panasonic
| player and the headphones you want. Then you pick up a
| couple of tapes that you wanted to listen to, get to the
| counter, and the store owner explains that those albums are
| on the BMG label, so he can't sell them to you. In fact, he
| can't sell any Sony Music group cassettes unless you own
| those shitty Sony headphones, because if he does, Sony
| Music won't let him sell any more Sony Music albums in his
| store.
| gwerbret wrote:
| A summary of the original findings by the European Commission
| (1):
|
| "By decision of 18 July 2018, the Commission fined Google for
| having abused its dominant position by imposing anticompetitive
| contractual restrictions on manufacturers of mobile devices and
| on mobile network operators, in some cases since 1 January 2011.
| Three types of restriction were identified:
|
| 1. those contained in 'distribution agreements', requiring
| manufacturers of mobile devices to pre-install the general search
| (Google Search) and (Chrome) browser apps in order to be able to
| obtain a licence from Google to use its app store (Play Store);
|
| 2. those contained in 'anti-fragmentation agreements', under
| which the operating licences necessary for the pre-installation
| of the Google Search and Play Store apps could be obtained by
| mobile device manufacturers only if they undertook not to sell
| devices running versions of the Android operating system not
| approved by Google;
|
| 3. those contained in 'revenue share agreements', under which the
| grant of a share of Google's advertising revenue to the
| manufacturers of mobile devices and the mobile network operators
| concerned was subject to their undertaking not to pre-install a
| competing general search service on a predefined portfolio of
| devices."
|
| 1: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/p1_3862705/en/
| guelo wrote:
| The irony is that if Google had not licensed Android and only
| manufactured its own devices, like Apple does, it could
| restrict consumer options much more harshly without EU fines
| and restrictions.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If you look at their in house phones the odds are that this
| would actually have tanked android entirely.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If Google chose that path, other manufacturers would still
| need an OS to put on their phones - and it's likely Windows
| Phone would be the contender. So maybe we'd live in a world
| with 3 mobile OS's and more competition.
|
| The point is, the alternative scenario involves more actors
| making different choices.
| slaw wrote:
| We would live in a world with 2 mobile OS's iOS and Windows
| Phone. Android would land in Google Graveyard.
| kernal wrote:
| Windows Phone was always destined to fall. There is no
| scenario in which Windows Phone would not been beaten
| into irrelevance by Google and by Microsoft's own actions
| in undermining their underwhelming and unpopular mobile
| OS.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Windows phone was destined to fail mainly because they
| were the third to show up to a two-man race. If Android
| never showed up, or completely biffed it at the starting
| line, then Windows Phone probably could have succeeded
| with enough time.
|
| The other possible alternative is Palm WebOS, but I think
| they were too Apple-like for their own good. The key
| differentiators that helped Android succeed as an iPhone
| alternative (wide device variety, more "open" platform)
| apply much more easily to Windows Phone.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, this thread is in the parallel universe in which
| Google would have sold only its own Android devices. So
| no Android + LG, Sony, Samsung, Huawei, etc.
|
| If you look at Google's hardware's capabilities, Android
| would have flopped immediately.
|
| As bad as the org level issues were with Windows Phone,
| it would have still beaten Android-on-Google-hardware-
| only.
| kernal wrote:
| Microsoft actually charged a license fee for Windows
| Phone OS which is just one of many reasons OEM's
| abandoned the OS. Google also would have undercut their
| licensing fees to ensure their failure. Additionally, the
| absence of any Google apps would have also ensured a
| quick death for Windows Phone. Its failure was inevitable
| and justified for what they did to their customers and
| OEM's.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| In this hypothetical Android apps are far less relevant
| with that ecosystem only being present on Google phones.
|
| I wonder without AOSP or some other major FOSS mobile
| operating system to shake things up, if smartphones would
| be more like the PDA industry in the 1990s, with
| proprietary OS's from OEMs competing with each other.
| Maybe Palm sticks around and webOS gets a long lease on
| life. Maybe Samsung, Intel, the Linux Foundation, and co.
| try to get mass adoption of Tizen, with hilarious
| results. Though perhaps if Nokia sticks around, MeeGo as
| based on the Harmattan design in the N9 gets wider use,
| delaying the need for a successor like Tizen. In any
| case, with only Apple and Microsoft as their mobile
| competitors and without Android devices cutting at their
| margins, BlackBerry still has a fighting chance.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Then maybe Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch would still be
| around as FOSS mobile OS.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Firefox OS was built from a lot of Android internals.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Maybe Nokia would have stuck around unmerged and there
| would have been hope for the very polished MeeGo build seen
| on the Nokia N9.
|
| Not to mention BlackBerry and webOS still being contenders.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I think Google would have killed off Android before it
| could really take off if they went that route. Early
| Android was very rough compared to iPhoneOS, and one of its
| biggest selling points was the variety of hardware you
| could get it on. Early successful devices like the Motorola
| Droid and HTC Evo 4G were important to solidifying Android
| as a serious smartphone platform. This strategy allowed
| Google to focus on improving the software while experienced
| hardware manufacturers did what they already do best.
| rococode wrote:
| DMA may be coming soon and would most likely affect Apple
| too.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > The list of obligations would include prohibitions on
| combining data collected from two different services
| belonging to the same company (e.g. Facebook and WhatsApp);
|
| Would this not simply kill the kind of integration that
| Apple has between its different services? Or any of the
| smart assistants?
| dagaci wrote:
| This is true, but the case for the acceptance of Android in
| the Market was that its was and open-platform and open-
| source. This is what gave it legs despite its early
| questionable software and hardware merits (the mantra being
| that you can fix it yourself!). The slow moving EU, a
| decade++ later is on target from this point of view. ....
| mhermher wrote:
| Not even necessarily the "market" of consumers, but more
| specifically the market of manufacturers.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Android is not really all that open anymore, at least not
| in the sense that it was in 2010 when AOSP was basically
| just a de-Googled Android. The AOSP today is more like
| Darwin is to macOS than Chromium is to Chrome.
|
| I think today's ruling reflects this, as much of it has to
| do with how Google handles the licensing of their
| proprietary Android bits.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Theoretically, yes. But I am confident the EU would find
| other ways to extract fines from Google in that case.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| "Extract fines" makes it sound like the EU is the evil one
| here, rather than Google abusing its position.
| dahfizz wrote:
| The world is not a child's cartoon. It can be
| simultaneously true that Google is a scummy monopolist
| and the EU is not acting in good faith.
| krzyk wrote:
| Yes, but this Google. They are far away from having
| consumers as their top priority.
|
| And this is EU, which mostly does have them as top
| priority.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's acting in good faith insofar as it _does_ care about
| establishing transparent markets (and also protecting
| citizen privacy). It 's fortunate (at least for itself)
| that these ambitions are entirely consistent with
| political expediency - which means they can pursue them
| without reserve.
|
| If an EU company did similar it might not be hit so hard
| (which would be hypocritical). But that doesn't make this
| action (a fine for obviously anticompetitive action) in
| bad faith, so much as it would make the other (lack of
| fine) so.
| tremon wrote:
| If you're accusing others of acting in bad faith you need
| to substantiate that. With a proper argument. Otherwise
| you're not acting in good faith yourself.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I wouldn't use the term bad faith but it's clear the EU
| wants American big tech out
| kergonath wrote:
| The EU very regularly fines European companies. AFAIK
| there is no statistics showing a preference towards
| investigating American companies. Though that is
| certainly the case for large software companies, simply
| by due to the fact that there are more of them and with
| larger revenues than European ones.
|
| Have you any evidence, numerical or otherwise, to
| substantiate your assertion?
| oblio wrote:
| The EU doesn't want big tech out. It wants big tech
| abusers out.
|
| And guess what, most of those big tech abusers are
| American.
|
| But if it helps with anything, it doesn't look too kindly
| upon Chinese companies, either.
|
| It can't really do much about European big tech companies
| since there aren't that many left... and they're in
| enterprise markets where things work completely
| differently (enterprises can sue you themselves very
| efficiently if they're disadvantaged, thank you very
| much).
| [deleted]
| StingyJelly wrote:
| As a counterexample there's Apple with not insignificant
| market share in Europe - pushing icloud, not supporting
| third party operating sysems or even sideloading, still
| keeping proprietary connector despite everyone else using
| usb-c, etc.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Which kind of begs the question about the differences
| between a "walled garden" in a way to protect their users
| and what exactly amounts to anti-competitive business
| practices.
|
| Windows phones tried the Apple approach if I remember
| correctly when their phones were on the market and it
| wasn't enough to keep them competitive. They had a litany
| of other issues to boot, but taking the "walled garden"
| approach raised the ire of many developers.
| gls2ro wrote:
| At the first Google search (irony) I found that apple is
| maybe around 30% maybe (depending on the source) a bit
| hight than Samsung which is pretty close. but when
| looking at iOS vs Android then we have 30% (iOS) vs 60%
| (Android).
|
| this does not look at all even close to a monopoly from
| Apple.
|
| As far as I see their power in Europe comes from the fact
| that competition is following them in some decisions.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| For sure my recently bought iPad and Apple Watch use
| USB-C, so I think that part is not true. Arguably due to
| EU legislation.
| kube-system wrote:
| Or they could have written their licensing agreements in a
| way that doesn't violate antitrust law.
|
| Apple has lots of partners, but Foxconn and Pegatron make
| phones for many companies.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I don't think we would still be talking about Android today
| if Google went down that path.
|
| I think in this alternate universe, Windows Phone may have
| actually succeeded.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So I have no doubt Google threw their weight around in the
| Android space. It's known that they impose conditions for
| access to the Google suite of apps. But I have a thought that I
| have a hard time reconciling.
|
| Imagine Google had gone the Apple route of vertically
| integrating handset production, distribution and sale in the
| same way Apple did. If they had, there would be no antitrust
| issue, just like there isn't with Apple.
|
| That seems weird.
|
| How is having third-party manufacturers (well, really it's just
| Samsung now) create more antitrust issues than the Apple model?
| That just doesn't seem right.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If me and my wife decide to run with the bulls there is no
| legal wrong doing so I don't understand why child protective
| services took little suzy away just because she a five year
| old had to run away in stark terror from a ton of hooves and
| fury barely escaping with her life!
|
| Differing relationships come with differing obligations. It
| appears fairly straightforward that its illegal in Europe to
| impose such obligations on other market players. If they
| couldn't abide by that they could have declined to do
| business in the continent. It's not really weird that
| different places have different rules.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Well, one way to lose an antitrust case is putting obviously
| anticompetitive clauses into contracts, like here. This is
| much easier to prove than the whole "customer harm through
| abuse of dominant market position" thing!
|
| Much like when Jobs called up all the book publishers and
| told them straight up "we gotta agree on one price among us,
| and remember we are doing this to harm Amazon who we both
| hate". Now this was a slam dunk prosecution!
| moritonal wrote:
| Because Apple paid for all that integration. Google
| essentially vassalised companies by using the immense money
| they make from Search to wipe out a market of Phone-OS
| developers forcing companies to use Android.
|
| Kinda like how Uber was forced to accept they were an
| employer because they dictated work hours to drivers. Google
| is being forced to accept they have the potential to be a
| monopoly, and have abused that.
| nilsbunger wrote:
| #2 is the same thing Microsoft got busted for by US antitrust
| in the late 90s. Microsoft had required computer vendors to NOT
| sell computers with other OSes (eg Linux). At one point they
| insisted computer vendors pay for a Windows license on all
| computers they shipped, even ones shipped without Windows.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| The video deposition of Gates was pretty damning during their
| anti-trust case. I just remember watching it and having my
| image of Gates shattered right in front of me. The amount of
| unhinged arrogance and hubris he had was startling. I know it
| really damaged his clean cut, good guy image and many of my
| friends said it completely reversed their opinion of him.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Do you think today's Gates really learned his lesson and
| became a better person, or just better at putting on a
| show?
| b800h wrote:
| Time alone mellows out most people.
| [deleted]
| sylware wrote:
| Now, it is implicit, and you better care or the hidden OEM
| price of doz, will skyrocket for _you_.
|
| Even, rumors says that a future doz update may brick _your_
| hardware...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Is it? My reading of #2 suggests Google just didn't want
| phones with ancient or beta versions of Android in the market
| with Google branding. Fairly reasonable demand, if you ask
| me.
|
| #1 is right up the alley that busted Microsoft, though.
| ssddanbrown wrote:
| #2 sounds like it would prevent manufacturers from
| developing or using Android forks on completely other
| devices so, for example, you could not sell a device with
| Amazon's Fire OS (Even without Google's apps, so no
| hindrance to Google's branding) while also selling other
| Android devices with Google's apps. Would seriously hinder
| entry-to-market for Android-based forks.
|
| To be clear, I have not read the original agreements to
| confirm this is the case, it's just my interpretation of
| #2.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Requiring that someone cannot use Google branding on a
| phone with an ancient version of Android is legal.
|
| Requiring that someone cannot use Google branding on _any_
| device they manufacture or sell, if they also manufacture
| or sell devices _without_ Google branding that use ancient
| versions of Android, is entirely illegal in the EU.
| [deleted]
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _#2 suggests Google just didn 't want phones with ancient
| or beta versions of Android in the market with Google
| branding_
|
| I think that would have been acceptable - my reading of #2
| is that if you sold phones with a fork of Android, even if
| that phone did not have Google branding, Google would not
| allow you to sell *any* phones with Google branding. That
| does seem very similar to the Microsoft example.
| josefx wrote:
| > with Google branding
|
| Then the rule was overly broad, since it also prevented
| them from selling Android phones without Google branding. I
| think Amazon was involved in that lawsuit after it had
| issues finding a manufacturer that wasn't bound by that
| rule.
| mhermher wrote:
| Why would a manufacturer sell both devices with ancient and
| current versions of Android at the same time? There is no
| reason to limit this behavior because no one would do it.
| This is entirely about smothering AOSP forks.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > versions of the Android operating system not approved by
| Google
|
| That could include deprecated versions and any forks.
| saurik wrote:
| AFAIK the idea isn't that you can't ship devices running
| other operating systems but that you can't ship devices
| running non-compliant forks of Android, which I do agree is
| nigh unto the same thing--as Android is open source and
| that's a decision Google already made--but I think is worth
| noting explicitly as others sometimes see it as different
| (both because it doesn't prevent a greenfield alternative,
| and as Google gave away Android for free and arguably didn't
| have to--though I kind of think they originally did to pull
| off the coalition--and so this is one of the ways they
| maintain ecosystem control without being closed source, which
| they arguably could just do now without issue... I mean,
| they've already gone back _hard_ on the level of openness
| they started with, and for a year or so around Android 3.x
| they _were_ closed source, which I have oft claimed was to
| stifle Amazon).
| oblio wrote:
| > I mean, they've already gone back hard on the level of
| openness they started with
|
| From what I understand, AOSP is not dead, but it's
| definitely far behind the latest versions of Android. The
| default apps are not updated, the UI toolkit is behind,
| most of the new services used by everything in Android are
| the proprietary bits.
|
| It's basically Darwin at this point, yeah, open source, but
| in no way shape or form if you build Darwin, do you get Mac
| OS.
| saurik wrote:
| (By "gone back hard" I don't mean "has returned to" but
| "did a 180 away from". Maybe you are just expanding, but
| it sort of sounded like you were disagreeing, when in
| fact I am fully on board. I remember when they started
| and their stated goal had been to separate all of their
| build and hosting infrastructure from Google so everyone
| was working with and seeing live commits to collaborate.)
| typon wrote:
| What amount would these EU fines have to be to make companies
| like Google and Facebook decide to exit the EU?
| speedgoose wrote:
| That would be such a dream!
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| This is never going to happen. It's just too big of a market.
| woevdbz wrote:
| It's also _really_ not the outcome wanted by regulators.
| Everyone losing access to their email and information,
| YouTube, etc would create absolute chaos. Antitrust 's job is
| to rein in profit, not destroy markets.
| origin_path wrote:
| Never is a big word. Every time the EU levies fines like this
| it's effectively the market getting smaller.
|
| Also, there's degrees of exit. Google can exit the market and
| have zero presence in the EU whilst still sub-licensing tech
| to affiliates who pay for the privilege and resell their
| stuff, whilst dealing with all the local regulatory
| overheads. Plenty of firms use that sort of model.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| probably 15-20% of annual revenue
|
| its psychology, the board or ceo would react preemptively based
| on the idea that shareholders would react on their behalf
|
| shareholders (if they have voting power at all) would react for
| the same result at higher fine amounts than that
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Not annual, but projected maybe over decade... once you lose
| the market you lost it also next years. Lets not forget its
| 500 million of above-average rich folks that use google
| services extensively.
|
| The fine would have to be in range of 100 billion for them to
| exit
| antonymy wrote:
| Their annual revenue from the EU is only 17 billion
| dollars, as of 2021. The current fine is about a quarter of
| that. This is revenue, not profit. So this fine very likely
| impacted the bottom line for what Google is pulling out of
| the EU. And it was not even as big as they could've made
| it. It's very likely the EU refrained from the maximum fine
| amount because it would've pushed Google's EU operations
| firmly into the red.
|
| And this is setting aside the costs of compliance to avoid
| more fines. Even if the costs are less than another fine,
| they're not nothing. You're looking at an entire year's
| profits from the EU essentially being wiped out by this
| fine, plus reduced profits going forward due to increased
| compliance costs and probably losing sales. And this is
| your best case scenario.
|
| It would not take a 100 billion dollar fine to make Google
| leave the EU, it would only take another fine like this
| one.
| jsnell wrote:
| That's the quarterly revenue, not the annual.
| viraptor wrote:
| Speculation - google would want to operate in the EU even at
| a loss:
|
| 1. Other search engines regularly appearing in news / on
| screens would remind the non-EU users about alternatives.
|
| 2. Lost traffic is lost information. Google still relies on
| knowing your behaviour to improve targeting.
|
| 3. Giving a whole region to other search engines would build
| up their financial standing and they could threaten Google in
| other regions in the future.
| origin_path wrote:
| Very unlikely - the EU has proven it cannot build a Google
| competitor worth a damn. Instead what would happen is that
| Google would have no corporate presence here but the
| website would still be accessible, and people would just
| continue using it as normal but with fewer local
| customizations and the only ads they'd see would be from
| American firms, or from European firms that buy ads via
| American subsidiaries / brokers.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I personally doubt it, mostly because Baidu is a similiar
| boat and hasn't been a spreading competitor of note in that
| space. Not apples to apples obviously due to several
| reasons admittedly, but that is most country to country
| comparisons.
| soheil wrote:
| I just want to point out in Russia those companies have little
| to no presence specially after the war. It's telling that we
| always hear it's a sign of oppression and authoritarianism if
| governments kicked out those services out of their country, but
| here we are people advocating for it in the EU.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Only one way to find out!
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| Who gets the $4B? How will it be determined where it's spent?
| RandomWorker wrote:
| That increases the budget of the eu parliament with 2.2% on a
| yearly basis if paid out in one go.
|
| [1082B for 2014-2020, 4B/1082B*6y~2.2%]
|
| A loss of 4B is a decrease of revenue by 1.5% for google.
|
| [googles revenue was 256B in 2021 4/256~1.5%]
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| EMEA represents about 31% of revenues. Google makes about 76B
| in net income.
|
| So another way to look at this is 21% of profits in Europe for
| a year.
| josefx wrote:
| Another way to look at this is 2% if you split it over all
| the years the illegal behavior has been going on and then
| going through the courts.
| markdestouches wrote:
| Gives you a good perspective on how big google is and how much
| influence it potentially has.
| davidguetta wrote:
| what do they f**ing do with 1000B :/
| saiya-jin wrote:
| if you would actually visit (not only) poorer parts of EU,
| you would find entire new roads built or repaired completely
| by EU funds. Parks created, playgrounds built, many many
| useful things for common population. Companies can apply for
| various funds ie to get more eco-friendly.
|
| Its true that some of it gets stolen by local corruption but
| overall this is the source of many good things that folks can
| actually see around them, in places that wouldn't get any
| otherwise.
| [deleted]
| otikik wrote:
| You mean The European Parlament, or Google?
| dkarl wrote:
| If you're interested, there's a fascinating book called Life
| of a European Mandarin that provides an insider view and
| manages to be entertainingly written despite being about the
| incredibly dry work the EU does. It gives a vivid glimpse
| into how hard and tedious it is to accomplish things that are
| obvious wins like harmonizing trivial differences in laws
| across borders. You would expect it to be the kind of book
| you have to force yourself to finish, and there are certainly
| moments like that, but overall it reads more like a guilty
| pleasure, and I highly recommend it. It gave me respect for
| that kind of work and also makes me very glad I chose a
| different profession.
| nielsole wrote:
| The budget is publicly available: https://eur-
| lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
| statusfailed wrote:
| It mostly funds projects:
|
| > Approximately 94% of the EU budget funds programmes and
| projects both within member states and outside the EU. Less
| than 7% of the budget is used for administrative costs, and
| less than 3% is spent on EU civil servants' salaries.
|
| From [0], see also [1]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Uni
| on#P...
|
| [1]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-
| parliament/en/organisat...
| origin_path wrote:
| That's a tautology, the spending for every government will
| primarily go on "programmes and projects".
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Negotiate trade agreements for the second largest market in
| the world. Make harmonised law and regulations and operate
| the courts associated. Finance infrastructure projects and
| the development of the poorest members. Manage various
| cooperation efforts between members in sector like education.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| EU _needs_ to do a better job at showing how useful it is,
| where the money goes and so on, so that people stop having
| this vague idea of what EU is and does, and start seeing
| the benefits. Should do a good job at reducing the number
| of eurosceptics.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Funny. I just heard literally the opposite complain a
| couple hours ago: that the EU advertisements are getting
| obnoxious. Virtually every single infrastructure project
| that is even partially financed by a EU agency shows all
| the appropriate logos almost everywhere.
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| Ha, I can see why; I work in an institute that receives
| funds from time to time for infrastructure enhancements
| and large projects. We have those logos scattered
| throughout some equipment, hanging in rooms, etc. It's
| far from intrusive, though. I would rather see a sign
| that says "EU helped pay for this" than product
| placement, if I'm being candid.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The EU has a GDP of almost 20 Trillion, what kind of
| magnitudes of cash would you expect?
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| The budget of the EU parliament? What do you mean? The budget
| of the parliament was about 740kEUR in 2022.
|
| Did you mean the budget of the EU itself? It's about what you
| said (180BEUR in 2022). Of course, that doesn't account for
| individual member States' budgets. The EU's budget is dwarfed
| by the aggregate of all members' budgets, and it is lower than
| most of the big EU countries' budgets.
| 988747 wrote:
| Did you mean 740k EUR per person? I can't find the whole
| budget right now, but it costs EU parliament over 100 million
| just to move it back and forth between Brussels and
| Strasbourg (which is totally pointless and is only done so
| that France can feel important). They also apparently spend 1
| billion per year on translators.
|
| EDIT: I guess I offended some French people, hence the
| downvotes :)
| nightpool wrote:
| Apparently this is correct:
|
| > In [2014], the European Court of Auditors (ECA) carried
| out a further analysis of the potential savings if all
| meetings were held in Brussels, following a request from
| the Parliament. Their estimate of the cost of the monthly
| move is 113.800.000 euro.
|
| (From an EJTA fact checking website, which labeled a
| separate 200MM euro number as "mostly false"
| https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-false-travelling-
| cir...)
| Fiahil wrote:
| > EDIT: I guess I offended some French people, hence the
| downvotes :)
|
| Yes.
|
| But I have to recognise, they could - at least - hand out
| "free" train tickets to most of the Parliament staff. Not
| just between Brussels and Strasbourg, but everywhere in the
| EU.
| manholio wrote:
| > They also apparently spend 1 billion per year on
| translators.
|
| Now that the UK is out of the Union, it would be nice for
| sanity to prevail and most of those translators be made
| redundant. Except for drafting official multi-language
| legal documents, the bulk of the proceedings can go on in
| English, and EMPs that require translation services should
| request them from their own countries.
|
| It will never happen, but one can surely dream.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Sanity is not one of the hallmarks of the monster that is
| the EU bureaucracy.
| ignaloidas wrote:
| EU publishes tons of written material, and basically all
| of it has to be translated. Costs for translating the
| proceedings are very likely less than 1% of total costs
| for translation.
| manholio wrote:
| > EU publishes tons of written material, and basically
| all of it has to be translated.
|
| But only legislative text needs to have translated
| versions officially recognized as equivalent. The rest
| can be produced and published in English, and member
| countries can translate them as required, if necessary.
| It's a huge expense that exists only to placate French
| linguistic nationalism.
| mqus wrote:
| Well, Imagine your government (the EU is not far off of
| being one) is now handling everything in spanish, even
| though your country speaks english and english is your
| official language. Lets be generous and there are only
| about 10% of people not speaking spanish. Is it really ok
| that there are official documents, meeting notes,
| publications, advertisements,web sites, videos etc in
| spanish and only the most important ones get translated
| to your language?
|
| For companies this would completely fine. For a
| government this is not.
|
| Apart from that, there is right now a huge source of text
| that is publicly available and already translated into
| the same X languages, with a huge quality to boost.
| People have teached ML translators with that text source.
| Ofc this is just a side effect but these translations
| have made other translations and communication in the EU
| a bit more simple just by being such a big reference.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Android/GP is the most corrupted market in the history of
| mankind. Just baffling how EU aim for non-important things.
| legitster wrote:
| So... What's the end result? Google has to charge for Android?
| Ask users their search preference?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Android should damn well ship with multiple app stores and
| multiple browsers, not just the GoogleApprovedTM app store
| where they ban anyone that looks at them wrong or thinks about
| blocking ads for more than 2 miliseconds.
|
| The exclusive app stores are both iOS and Android's greatest
| strengths and failings at the same time. Apple is arguably the
| far worse offender there too. If there was an alternative app
| store on iOS everyone would jump ship immediately.
|
| Imagine having crossplatform Steam/GoG Mobile stores for mobile
| games, etc.
| izacus wrote:
| The way this EU ruling is setup, they want your Android not
| only ship with other stores, but allow sales with exclusively
| those stores as well.
|
| Just like the case with Chinese phones now - I have bunch of
| people in my family angry because they bought Huawei and they
| now can't use their banking apps because it's an incompatible
| build of Android that requires publishing in a Huawei
| AppStore to work.
|
| That's worse. That's strictly worse for everyone, even the
| OEMs will lose their market to Apple by driving their
| ecosystem into the ground... again. Samsungs, Nokias, ASUS,
| etc. did this tragedy of the commons failure repeatedly and
| reliably.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Incompatible isn't the right word for it. The banking app
| could run on the Huawei phone, but they're relying on
| google to certify the device through the play store.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > because it's an incompatible build of Android
|
| _sigh_
|
| I guess it's impossible to go 5 min without somebody
| wrecking the ecosystem. I don't understand how they can
| even manage to be incompatible, it's fucking Java, or more
| commonly these days just a wrapped PWA.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Requiring OEMs to be compatible with some Google-given
| (God-given?) Android version is a constraint on their
| business and their users. The point of EU's ruling is to
| allow incompatibilities to flourish. Let each user pick
| the best Android flavor they want.
| izacus wrote:
| I mean, in days of Android 4.x, Samsung wasn't able to
| not mess with core Android APIs for any release (and the
| bugs weren't even same across different models of the
| same darn phone).
|
| My favorite bug in career is when we found out that OneUI
| (2? Don't remember the version exactly.) redefined
| @android:color/white resource. It was blue.
|
| So anything that was set to white in your app was blue on
| that one model. That's the quality you can expect from
| the companies EU is trying to protect here. -_-
| rsanheim wrote:
| > If there was an alternative app store on iOS everyone would
| jump ship immediately
|
| citation needed.
|
| if there was an alternative app store, 90% of apple users
| wouldn't even be aware of it, the other 8% would hear about
| it and never use it, and maybe, _maybe_ 2% would install it.
| genewitch wrote:
| there... are, though, for example, cydia.
|
| I've never installed the AOSP or the oneplus specific
| "android" versions so i have no frame of reference, but it
| takes about 25 seconds to get cydia to come up on the ipad
| i use it on, with no other weirdness needed on the ipad
| itself.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I mean if there was another competitor store installed by
| default (as mandated by law, like browser choice was at one
| point) that wouldn't charge devs $100/year to upload
| anything and take 30% of all income you'd quickly see the
| App store deserted.
|
| Then Apple would have to set their pricings competitively,
| instead of monopolistically.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The end result is that Google either explains to their
| shareholders where their dividend is going every quarter or
| they adjust to what amounts to a fairly consistent signal out
| of the EU that people there are running out of patience with
| Google not complying with the rules there and that that has
| financial consequences.
|
| So, it's a game of ever escalating fines. At some point,
| they'll hit diesel gate levels, which caused a bit of an
| existential crisis for VW a few years ago. That signal actually
| mostly came from the US BTW. The EU is demonstrating that that
| kind of thin can work both ways and that they might go there
| squeeze some US companies when they misbehave.
|
| As for Google and Apple, Amazon, MS, Facebook, etc., they've
| been going through rounds of increasingly larger fines from
| different countries in the EU and them doing the absolute
| minimum to maybe toe the line but never entirely. It's not
| enough; they need to get more pro-active on this or they'll
| have to deal with bigger fines and lawyer fees. Very simple.
| Testing what is good enough in a court room like they have been
| doing is a costly strategy. Judges not amused/impressed so-far
| apparently.
| MikusR wrote:
| They already do both of those things.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I think this is about Google's Android certification, that
| allows manufacturers to ship Android with any google app. Some
| like the Play Store are basically required by users, but Google
| makes it a "get all or none" deal with a lot of other demands,
| which includes a google search widget.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| And Apple makes it so you can't even install apps outside
| their app store.
| josefx wrote:
| The deal isn't just "all or none" on a single phone, it is
| all or none over the entire inventory. If you sell an android
| phone with the play store you are no longer allowed to sell
| any android devices without it.
| izacus wrote:
| Think of the situation with Chinese non-Google phones. You
| install your favorite app and it crashes on launch because the
| manufacturer messed with the system APIs.
|
| You run another app and it gets killed in the background, not
| receiving messages, because it's not on the list of your phone
| manufacturer partners.
|
| This is the situation with degoogled Android today - a huge
| compatibility mess.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Android has created more choice for everyone, not less
|
| Did it? I can choose between an iOS phone and an Android phone.
|
| I may be able to choose from different manufacturers on the
| Android side, but on the software side there are just two
| options.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Before I could choose the same manufacturers but things were
| tied to those. I knew if I switched from Nokia to Sony for
| example, it would be completely different. In a way Android
| resulted in the choice to switch between manufacturers to be
| painless. Realistically, now you can choose whatever non apple
| device you want and know everything will continue to work.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Easy to switch between giving all your data to Google and
| giving all your data to Google, sure. Bear in mind, Android
| hardware is no longer unique or distinctive, every glass
| rectangle is the same, so those choices are pointless, but
| our lack of privacy is pervasive.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Steve Jobs pointed this out along time ago. No one cares
| about the hardware. Nice hardware is nice but what we care
| about is the software.
|
| Previously, we would switch from Nokia to Sony we would
| lose our ringtones, our games, our apps, our photos, etc.
| When each phone operator had their own operating system, it
| was honestly terrible.
|
| And honestly, shoehorning privacy into a conversation about
| choices in phones is a poor show. Feel ashamed.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Privacy is the top concern I have with phones. The fact
| that 80% of them globally are compromised by default is a
| huge deal. Nobody informed should be rolling with
| Android, anywhere, and yet here we are.
|
| Also, I care about hardware... when it matters. Sell me a
| keyboard slider, the DROID 4 was the last compelling
| reason to care about hardware and we've all been bored
| senseless since.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| If privacy is a top concern why are you walking around
| with a tracking device. Even without Google. It's
| literally a tracking device.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is a defeatist justification for using Android that
| fails to account for the fact that neither Apple nor
| anyone whose app is on my phone knows where it is right
| now.
|
| My cell carrier has a non-precise idea of where it is,
| but may not be able to tie it conclusively to my
| identity.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Your cell carrier will be able to pinpoint your location
| very accurately in a urban location. If you look at
| people getting convicted of various crimes you'll see the
| location data they're able to extract from the phone
| number.
|
| Also, they will almost certainly be able to tie it to
| your identity even on a burner phone by who you contact.
| If you have a contract then obivously they will tie it.
| If you have a pay as you go and make payments via non
| cash methods then that will be tied. Cash payments and
| the location you made them from will help conclusively
| tie it to your identity with a half decent amount of
| work.
|
| You are able to disable gps hardware on some Android
| phones. But as previously noted, no matter who your phone
| manufacturer is, it is a tracking device.
| imiric wrote:
| > I may be able to choose from different manufacturers on the
| Android side, but on the software side there are just two
| options.
|
| What do you mean by "just two options"?
|
| The AOSP ecosystem has a healthy range of ROMs to choose from
| on many devices. The process of installing alternative firmware
| may not be for everyone, but the choice is there, which is
| pretty much nonexistent for iOS devices.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That's like saying the Phoebus Cartell was fine because you
| can make your own lightbulb.
| Normille wrote:
| >The AOSP ecosystem has a healthy range of ROMs to choose
| from on many devices.
|
| But it's not true choice is it? It's just the same old same
| old with a different skin on top. Much the same as the
| similarly claimed 'choice' in Linux distros pretty much boils
| down to the same old same old collection of apps running on
| the same old same old collection of desktop environments. But
| with eleventy billion superficial skins layered on top, to
| choose from.
| RNAlfons wrote:
| > But it's not true choice is it?
|
| Compared to what?
|
| Apple?
| origin_path wrote:
| You can fork AOSP in arbitrary ways and have a pretty great
| OS. Most companies don't do this because they don't have
| any particular ideas about how to do Android's core
| differently - UI is one of the places where you can
| actually innovate and users will notice, so that's where
| the effort goes. But that's not Google's fault. They can't
| make Samsung have brilliant ideas about how to rearchitect
| the OS core.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > But that's not Google's fault. They can't make Samsung
| have brilliant ideas about how to rearchitect the OS
| core.
|
| One of anticompetitive restrictions identified was:
|
| > 'anti-fragmentation agreements', under which the
| operating licences necessary for the pre-installation of
| the Google Search and Play Store apps could be obtained
| by mobile device manufacturers only if they undertook not
| to sell devices running versions of the Android operating
| system not approved by Google;
|
| So no, Samsung can't just fork AOSP.
| origin_path wrote:
| But Google approves forks that are AOSP compatible as
| checked by an automated test suite. And if Samsung wanted
| to, they could stop selling phones with the Google apps
| and switch to their own AOSP fork. They've already laid
| much of the groundwork after all.
| Normille wrote:
| >But that's not Google's fault. They can't make Samsung
| have brilliant ideas about how to rearchitect the OS
| core.
|
| Of course not. But that's the point I'm trying to make.
| The illusion of choice. Out of all eleventy billion
| versions of Android you can get, who has actually
| produced something that is truly different, as opposed to
| just another skin on top of what everyone else has, or a
| slightly different layout of the same functionality
| everyone else has?
|
| Here's one example: text editing on mobile. I'm sure I'm
| not the only person who finds this excruciating.
| Especially things like selecting text / copy & pasting
| etc. And, it's 2022 and we still have no 'undo' function.
| But, every single variant of Android [and iOS] uses the
| same horribly flawed text editing functionality. Do any
| of the eleventy-billion 'alternative' versions of Android
| address any of this? Of course not. It's so much easier
| to throw a new skin on top of the same old crap than to
| actually innovate and make real changes.
| wvenable wrote:
| I'm not clear on what you want? There are two mobile
| operating systems, do you want some company to make another
| one? What is stopping them?
| kube-system wrote:
| Anticompetitive practices are stopping them. That's the
| point of these fines. Google controls the predominant
| non-Chinese marketplace for apps that are compatible with
| android-based operating systems, and they use it as a
| hostage to force other device manufacturers to
| arbitrarily force other google products upon their uses,
| for the purpose of unfairly expanding their market
| dominance.
| wvenable wrote:
| Isn't that a whole other level though? Google is being
| asked to stop forcing distribution of their software so
| other Android software can compete.
|
| Either way, you're still going to have 2 operating
| systems: Android and iOS.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's a bit of a self reinforcing loop, though. Top apps
| are all on Google Play because everyone using Android (on
| this side of the GFW) is all but forced to stay in
| Google's ecosystem.
|
| The diversity of *nix based OSes are a testament to what
| could happen in the absence of monopolistic powers.
|
| If it weren't for Google's stranglehold, Android probably
| would already be #2 to a fork made by Samsung.
| wvenable wrote:
| > The diversity of *nix based OSes are a testament to
| what could happen in the absence of monopolistic powers.
|
| You mean how they all died and Linux became king?
|
| The market cannot support diversity of operating systems
| -- users will flock to where the applications are and
| developers flock to where the users are. Only a small
| number of choices are ever sustainable.
|
| If Android disappeared tomorrow and 10 operating systems
| were designed to replace it eventually there would be
| only 1 or 2 surviving.
|
| If Samsung forked Android it will still need to run
| Android apps and therefore be Android. That's pretty much
| exactly what they do now.
| kube-system wrote:
| Darwin and FreeBSD have huge install bases, and can run
| many *nix applications, as android can too. OS developers
| often think about compatibility, at least, when they're
| not contractually prohibited from creating their own OS
| to begin with.
|
| There's no technological reason that you can't run
| popular Android apps on other OSes. Other OSes _already_
| support running Android apps. The primary reason this
| isn't more common is anticompetitive.
| malfist wrote:
| Are you seriously trying to argue that all linux distros
| are the same except for their UI?
| wiseowise wrote:
| Are they not?
| aembleton wrote:
| No, the package management differs between distros
| nottorp wrote:
| As someone who makes a living partially by doing custom
| distros for arm custom boards (and apps on top of
| them)... no. There is no difference between linux
| distros.
|
| Same for Android flavors for that matter.
| n0tth3dro1ds wrote:
| Yep. That's pretty much the case. They are functionally
| the same for 99% of users.
| amelius wrote:
| If you're looking for a phone without ads/spyware, there is
| less choice because the EU sees Android as a similar product-
| category as iOS, thereby not identifying iOS as a monopoly (and
| Android as well, in its own category).
| ericmay wrote:
| I think you can argue that iOS/Android are a duopoly but I'm
| having a hard time seeing how iOS is a monopoly.
|
| Mobile OS: iOS Android (third options from Korea/China?)
|
| Hardware: iPhone Pixel Galaxy etc.
| Hamcha wrote:
| Remember when Google refused to put Youtube on Windows Phone
| and when Microsoft made their own client, Google forced them to
| take it off their own store? Truly advocating for more choice.
|
| (Press at the time:
| https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/16/windows_phone_youtube...
| )
| sangnoir wrote:
| The Microsoft YT client didn't play ads. All it did was cost
| YouTube bandwidth without bringing any revenue - there was no
| way Google was going to let that slide.
|
| More broadly, that was also the time Microsoft was going
| after Android OEMs - never Google directly - threatening them
| with a _secret_ list of patents that Android allegedly
| infringed[1]. The settlement almost always resulted in the
| OEM agreeing to manufacture Windows phones (HTC and Samsung,
| off the top of my head). As an outsider, it appeared to be
| part of a mobile marketshare shadow war.
|
| 1. I'm guessing to prevent invalidation or work-arounds.
| Hamcha wrote:
| Far from me to want to put Microsoft on a pedestal, but it
| always felt like neither liked playing fair. WP eventually
| got a third party Youtube app that kinda stuck for a while,
| but it was paid (and actually decent) and AFAIK it never
| got any attention from Google, which to me always felt more
| like Google was trying to be an ass and protecting their
| revenue... but mostly their Android revenue.
|
| I was around when Project Astoria almost saw the light of
| day and I assume Google came back to shoot it down in a
| similar way (which would be really nice karma given MS
| patent story)
| sangnoir wrote:
| Project Astoria had weird timing, considering Microsoft
| initially submitted an amicus brief in Oracle v Google
| _on Oracle 's_ side, i.e. supporting the notion that APIs
| are copyrightable - which was awkward as Astoria
| implemented Android APIs. Sometime later, after both
| sides appealed, MS submitted another amicus - this time
| on Google's side. Possibly after seeing the light with
| WSL and Astoria
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| I had a Windows phone. The web version of Youtube worked
| fine. The Youtube app on Android is such a pain in the a*
| that sometimes I use the web version of Youtube on an Android
| tablet I have!
| nfriedly wrote:
| You should check out Vanced / ReVanced. Vanced is basically
| a modified Youtube app with ads removed and a lot of the
| other annoyances fixed. It's gotten trickier to find since
| google sent them a nastygram, but they posted the SHA256 on
| https://vancedapp.com/ so if you find a copy floating
| around, you can quickly determine if it's legit or not.
|
| ReVanced is a WIP set of tools to patch Youtube and other
| apps - https://github.com/revanced
|
| Vanced and Iceraven (Firefox with more addons enabled) are
| two of the main things keeping me on Android.
| oblak wrote:
| I have only used the android version once and what a pain
| that was. Clearly designed to only push content on the
| unsuspecting user and nothing else.
| kernal wrote:
| Yes, I do remember. You, however, seem to have conveniently
| left out the fact that they illegally reverse engineered the
| protocol and filtered ads. Microsoft got what was coming to
| them.
| izacus wrote:
| And before that you could choose between multiple brands that
| wouldn't run the same software and could only download apps on
| a proprietary carrier app store.
|
| Someone built an app for Nokia Symbian phones and released it
| with O2 UK? Well, go to hell if you had Sony Ericsson Symbian
| phone because that phones Symbian was incompatible on API level
| with the Nokia, despite having the same OS. You could even have
| the same Nokia, but good luck if yours had the T-Mobile DE
| bloatware and their own store with their own profit sharing
| deals.
|
| Google enforces compatibility between Android phones with
| CDD/CTS/VTS which ensures that the phones support a consistent
| set of working APIs that application devs can rely on.
|
| Before CTS/CDD/VTS tests grew enough, we Android devs had
| hellova time making sure our apps worked across Samsungs, LGs,
| Nokias and whatnot.
|
| EU attacking Google for ensuring the Android ecosystem is
| actually compatible is just ensuring that Apple will dominate
| with it's lack of choice in the mobile market. The fact that EU
| officials excluded Apple from consideration of how mobile
| markets work is telling just how disconnected from reality they
| are. Apple swept away all the old competitors BECAUSE it didn't
| have the fragmented mess of lacking cross-device, cross-region
| and cross-carrier compatibility.
|
| And just to be clear - I'm not against EU issuing out fines to
| big tech (god knows I've defended that a lot of times), but in
| this case it's actively toxic for us Europeans.
| Salgat wrote:
| What they did with their manufacturers is a different issue,
| but in general they offer a lot more options than Apple.
| Android allows Manufacturers (such as Amazon and Samsung) to
| have their own app stores and allows for side loading apps,
| both of which are impossible with Apple.
| Hamcha wrote:
| You have it backward, Amazon and Samsung's own appstores are
| desperate attempts to get enough traction out of Play Store
| so that they are not forced to succumb to Google's demands.
| The issue here isn't Android not being open (which it is),
| the problem is Google having a lot of control (including full
| veto power) on devices shipping with Google Play Services,
| while making them an increasingly necessary part of Android.
| You _can_ make an Android device without having to let Big G
| call the shots, but they 're banking on you NOT doing that
| because no one wants a phone without the Play Store and its
| related services.
| o_1 wrote:
| It's not good. Google should let people opt out. Breaking
| the trust of it's users makes people rabid for a feasible
| opptuntiy to leave. Apple starting to monetize data doesn't
| make a great argument for jumping in that walled garden.
| Holding your users hostage is not a good look.
| cloverich wrote:
| Well also, and note its been a while, but when I used non-
| Google software on the various other phones I've tried
| (such as Samsung), the first thing I used to do was
| uninstall all of their software and (if a available) get
| the Google versions, because they were usually much better.
| But this isn't new -- back when I was still purchasing
| Windows machines it was the same way. For whatever reason I
| just never found an OEM for laptops or phones whose
| software seemed to add any value.
|
| Now that I work in Software I get it. Most companies are
| just really bad at making it.
| mhermher wrote:
| It's hard to find value in something that you immediately
| uninstall.
| Salgat wrote:
| Apple strictly prohibits any apps outside their app store.
| Google does not. Yes Google abuses their popularity, but
| it's leagues better than Apple.
| ehsankia wrote:
| But what did Google do that's worse than what Apple did? It's a
| bit ironic that by making their OS opensource, they somehow are
| more guilty than Apple for keeping their OS locked down.
|
| Android allows hundreds of companies to have a business and
| make millions or billions, many of which are in EU and wouldn't
| exist if Android had gone the Apple way.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| EU has decided to make a living out of fining the tech companies
| regularly.
| rr888 wrote:
| They continuously fined the banks until they're all nearly
| bankrupt. I guess tech is next now.
| chmod775 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure bailouts/other support the banking sector
| received dwarf any fines they got _for breaking the law_.
|
| Banks going bankrupt is their own fault entirely. It's a "you
| had _one_ job " kind of thing.
|
| If you want to find someone who is bad at managing your money
| and somehow breaks the law at the same time, a bank is
| apparently your best bet.
| fabatka wrote:
| Seems like it's still worth it for the tech companies, so I'd
| say it's a smart move.
| nebalee wrote:
| And Google has decided to make a living out of breaking the law
| regularly.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| No, they're not fined regularly, only when they knowingly
| violate the law.
|
| And it's $4B after 4 years since the beginning of the
| investigation, a tiny increase to an already massive EU budget.
| Normille wrote:
| Cool. The EU does have its [many!] faults. But they have a pretty
| good track record when it comes to consumer rights and consumer
| choice. Next up I'd like to see them do the same for the plethora
| of incompatible cordless power-tool systems out there as they did
| with insisting all mobile phones standardise on a USB connector.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| If the EU standardizes on battery packs, Ryobi needs go get a
| free pass or extension of some sort. Ryobi have kept the same
| battery format for 25 years, whereas their competitors have
| changed battery standards 2 or 3 times during that timeframe.
| woeh wrote:
| I was pleased to see recently that a couple of different brands
| at my local DIY store had interoperable batteries. I bought a
| small lawnmower which now uses the same battery as a cordless
| drill from another brand. The brands that joined are listed on
| their marketing site[0].
|
| Edit: One of the companies has a slightly less obnoxious
| website which also lists brands[1]
|
| [0]https://www.powerforall-alliance.com/en/#technology
|
| [1]https://www.gardena.com/int/products/powerforall/
| franciscop wrote:
| wow this is very interesting, and the main reason I hadn't
| bought many cordless tools, because I didn't want 2-5 years
| down the road to have a bunch of chargers and batteries that
| are all incompatible among each other! I'll reconsider it
| whenever I need new tools, thanks for sharing!
| Semaphor wrote:
| Oh cool, so there are two competing battery pack standards :D
|
| https://www.cordless-alliance-system.com
| mdiesel wrote:
| Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/
| bmicraft wrote:
| I've never even heard of a power tool from any of those
| companies
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is why the EU is right we have to regulate these
| things. There just aren't right answers here, each battery
| has pros and cons, so it's a political matter full stop.
| Kerbonut wrote:
| I'm glad we're finally working towards standard batteries for
| power tools. I have to say that website is terrible.
| pmx wrote:
| It plays absolute havoc with the browser history, how did
| they think that was a good idea?
| dml2135 wrote:
| Wow this is a great idea. I do have to say I'm disappointed,
| but not surprised, that none of the bigger brands in power
| tools look to be participating.
|
| The only name I recognize there is Bosch, I've never had any
| of their tools but my perception is that they are a mid-tier
| brand. It would be great to see players like DeWalt,
| Milwaukee, and Makita do something like this.
| mrks_hy wrote:
| Bosch segments its own market into the "green" and "blue"
| parts, the latter being for professional use. They're very
| well-made and costly, on-par and competitive with the other
| brands you mentioned. But of course they are _not_ in this
| Power4All alliance thing and are incompatible with the
| "green" consumer stuff.
| twblalock wrote:
| > Next up I'd like to see them do the same for the plethora of
| incompatible cordless power-tool systems out there as they did
| with insisting all mobile phones standardise on a USB
| connector.
|
| We should all be glad that didn't happen with micro-USB or some
| of the worse connectors years ago, because we would still be
| stuck with them. USB-C was innovated by the market, not by EU
| bureaucrats.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Sadly this decision will lead to more fragmentation, not less,
| won't it? Would have be nice if there was a path forward for
| Android standards.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The EU insisting on all phones standardizing on the USB
| _connector_ is evidence of just the opposite and shows the
| cluelessness and shortsightness of the EU.
|
| You will still have phones that come with "standard USB C"
| cables where some support different power delivery, data speeds
| (or not support data transfer at all), very few will support
| video over USB C (which is standardized), etc.
|
| So still when the Android user with the cheap power only USB C
| cord moves over to the hypothetical iPhone 15 with USB C, they
| will still have to throw away their USB C cable that
| potentially doesn't support high speed data or video over USB
| C. Both supported by todays iPads with USB C.
|
| If the same mandate had gone through when it was first
| proposed, we would have been stuck with micro USB.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _So still when the Android user with the cheap power only
| USB C cord moves over to the hypothetical iPhone 15 with USB
| C, they will still have to throw away their USB C cable that
| potentially doesn't support high speed data or video over USB
| C._
|
| Except that it's still a perfectly fine cable for charging,
| which is what most people do with their cables?
| scarface74 wrote:
| As long as you don't care about data transfers of the very
| large video and photos that modern phones can create or
| connecting to a larger screen. If you want to "avoid
| ewaste" why not "mandate" more than the least common
| denominator?
|
| If iPhone users were satisfied with the least common
| denominator, they would be buying cheap Android phones.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| The amount of people that transfer videos/photos off of
| their phone to a computer by any means is absolutely
| minuscule.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So you think the people shooting 4K video and taking RAW
| pictures are posting them to Instagram?
|
| The lowest common denominator is the same reason that
| Bluetooth outside of the Apple ecosystem is such a shit
| show.
|
| Android has supported its own proprietary video over
| micro USB for ages before USB C became more ubiquitous.
| What are the chances that Android manufactures won't
| cheap out and not ship with cables that can support video
| over USB?
| unionpivo wrote:
| people who know what shooting 4k video means or what RAW
| format is is probably way less than 10% of all users of
| smartphones.
|
| and I am probably overestimating by order of magnitude.
|
| Most people shoot photos and show them to their friends
| online. Some of them even share it through sites like
| Instagram and Facebook or WhatsApp and similar.
|
| And that is where it ends for most normal people.
|
| As long as the cable can charge the phone, it will do for
| the most buyers.
| genewitch wrote:
| people who _earn_ on twitch, instagram, etc use dslr or
| mirrorless cameras, unless the video requires a phone in
| hand.
|
| I know the "standard setup" shown in media, and
| advertisements, etc shows a ring light with a cellphone
| using the _front facing camera_ as the recording device,
| that 's just not technologically feasible.
|
| And for the record, i move 4k and/or 108MP images from my
| phones via wifi or cellular, using synology diskstation
| autosync or syncthing, respectively. I've used syncthing
| to upload unedited 4k30p drone footage with no issues,
| and when i get home, it will sync to hard disks in
| addition.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Because the mandate is not about phones or data. It's about
| battery powered devices and charging. I don't need data in
| the cable for my wireless earbuds, or my battery pack. My
| toothbrush or my beard trimmer. So that hypothetical USB C
| cable doesn't have to be thrown away, it can still be used
| for other devices. Which is why standardization is good.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So grab a random "standard" USB C cable. What are the
| chances that it will charge my MacBook Pro 16 inch that
| does support "standard" USB C?
|
| Will that "standard" USB C cable that comes with my Beats
| Flex headphones charge my iPhone 12 Pro Max? My Anker
| battery?
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Maybe not, but what's the alternative? Should we give up
| because of incompatibilities and go back to proprietary
| cables for everyone? Do we move back to DC jacks that
| offer no voltage negotiation so you can blow up your 5V
| battery pack with a 24V input?
|
| You're letting perfect be the enemy of good here.
|
| Also I think the ideal endgame is that your Beats Flex
| headphones don't come with cables at all because of
| standardization. Look at Apple (and most phone
| manufacturers) no longer packaging chargers.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If the aim is to prevent eWaste yes. Someone should be
| able to buy a "standard" USB access cable and know that
| it actually work across devices if it is government
| mandated. If not, what's the point of the "standard"?
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Well like you say, it is to prevent ewaste.
|
| And even the cheapest power only USB cables with the
| cheapest USB power supply provides "standard" 5V power.
| If your device doesn't accept that, isn't that a problem
| with your Macbook and not the cable?
| scarface74 wrote:
| How far do you think a 5W USB C cable will get charging a
| 16 inch laptop?
|
| The USB standard is fine until the unsuspecting consumer
| who left the USB C cord to his MacBook Pro 16 goes to a
| random drug store to pick up a standard "USB C" cable and
| wonders why their laptop is still going dead after a few
| hours of heavy use not knowing the cord is incapable of
| delivering 100W of power.
|
| Or the hypothetical iPhone 16 user goes to the same store
| because he wants to watch video on his TV and buys a
| "standard" USB C cable and finds out that the cable
| doesn't support video over USB C - which is part of the
| standard.
|
| Not to mention the unsuspecting tourist who wants to back
| up the pictures and video from his phone to his computer
| so he won't incur roaming charges and finds out the USB C
| cable he purchased is power only.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Once again, you're letting perfect be the enemy of good.
| A 5W USB C cable will charge faster than the perfect
| universal cable standard that doesn't exist.
| scarface74 wrote:
| For all intents and purposes, charging at 5W is basically
| useless on the iPad Pro (which does have USB C) or a
| MacBook.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 5 watt cables do not exist.
|
| Basic cables support 60.
|
| It's unfortunate when cables don't say their Gbps, but
| that's a different issue.
| [deleted]
| ignaloidas wrote:
| > What are the chances that it will charge my MacBook Pro
| 16 inch that does support "standard" USB C?
|
| Most likely yes, unless it's a non-compliant cable in the
| first place, and possibly at a reduced speed (60W max).
|
| >Will that "standard" USB C cable that comes with my
| Beats Flex headphones charge my iPhone 12 Pro Max? My
| Anker battery?
|
| Ignoring that iPhones don't have USB C, yes to both at
| the fastest charge rate available.
|
| Only times where you have to worry about a cable with
| USB-C when charging is if charging power exceeds 60W or
| the cable is optical. Above 60W you need marked cables,
| some go up to 100W, and some (will, not seen in the wild
| yet) go up to 240W. There are plans to deprecate the 100W
| tier as well.
| genewitch wrote:
| can it "charge"? yes. The charging circuitry either can
| query the output voltage of the power supply, or knows
| what the voltage should be (on insertion, 5VDC) and
| determines if the wire is too small or too long to
| support higher wattage. There's a reason that quickcharge
| et al use 9, 12, 18 volts, same wattage, but compatible
| with any of old, too long, or too small gauge wires.
|
| You'll notice weirdness with anything that speaks a
| different language, i think USB defaults to power
| delivery, which is 5V @ 2.5A - or whatever. If your
| charger speaks the same protocol as your device, it will
| get as much power as it can through whatever cable you
| use.
|
| this doesn't speak to other comments about "high speed
| USB C" - i have plenty of power delivery cables that do
| decent wattage but cannot transfer data, it doesn't even
| beep the computer when you plug something in to it.
| rlpb wrote:
| I don't mind so long as third parties are free to make
| compatible batteries and tools. Unfortunately there's no
| reasonable migration path for someone already invested in tools
| and batteries. Unlike phones that get cycled through in just a
| few years, I am invested in my tools with the expectation that
| the majority of my less-used tools will last my lifetime. I'd
| like to be able to buy replacement compatible batteries for at
| least that long.
| pvarangot wrote:
| suction wrote:
| origin_path wrote:
| _" consumer choice ... insisting all mobile phones
| standardise"_
|
| Although it's not the most important thing in the world,
| forcing standardization through law is the opposite of giving
| consumers choices.
| largepeepee wrote:
| Nice joke
| jlokier wrote:
| I don't think it qualifies as an "opposite", because enforced
| standards also create consumer choice sometimes.
|
| Case in point: The enforced standardising of mobile phone
| chargers has _given_ consumers _more choice_ of chargers to
| use with their phone. Thas proven quite useful in practice,
| e.g. when they leave the one that came with their device at
| home because they didn 't expect to need it, or when the
| manufacturer's own brand is more expensive than an
| alternative, or if they have an old phone.
|
| I remember before USB-C standardised phone power, when
| visiting someone the chance that they had a power supply you
| could use was very low, because each one used a different
| connector. Even different models from the same brand. If you
| went travelling at short notice, you might have to buy a
| second charger just to keep you going for a few days. That's
| no longer required. Over the years you would end up with a
| box full of incompatible chargers, all e-waste. I think I
| have about 10.
|
| This particular consumer benefit didn't happen voluntarily
| among manufacturers (unlike, say, SIM cards), so forcing it
| has increased consumer choice in some useful respects.
|
| I prefer Apple's lightning connector (even though I don't
| have an iPhone), and other connectors better than USB-C would
| surely emerge if allowed to, so I do see benefits in not
| enforcing a standard like that too strictly. But the
| situation before USB-C mobile power was less consumer choice
| not more, for consumers of almost every phone.
| Normille wrote:
| That's a bit of a disingenuous comment though. I'd make a
| distinction between forcing standardisation on something like
| a power supply connector and forcing standardisation of
| actual products themselves.
|
| Standardisation of the former means we don't have to have
| half a dozen sockets on the wall because every domestic
| appliance manufacturer uses a different design plug... or
| have each of those sockets provide a different voltage
| because every appliance manufacturer opted for a different
| voltage.
|
| Standardisation of the latter leads to waiting 15 years for
| your Trabant.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You lose choice of plug, which almost nobody wanted.
|
| You gain choice of charger to use with your phone, which most
| people do want, especially when outside their home.
| tmoravec wrote:
| > pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights
|
| Are you sure EU has "pretty good track record" with these fines
| of Google, FB, et al.? If anything, I'd say the EU puts a mild
| theatre every now and then, and gives the US giants a free pass
| otherwise.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| I'm pretty sure one of the main reasons the EU exists is to
| fine US tech companies instead of trying to compete
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I am pretty sure that one of the main reasons US companies
| are so successful is that they flout laws all over the
| world, up to and including numerous scandals involving
| child labor, slavery and corporate manslaughter. CEO of
| Union Carbide is still wanted in India for 4000 deaths and
| half a million injuries, and he is hiding in US.
|
| EU is one of the few institutions that reigns them in
| occasionally, and for some Americans apparently that's a
| constant source of outrage.
| oblio wrote:
| The standard business practice of many US tech companies is
| to go:
|
| We have a ton of VC capital. Can we use this to price dump
| our way into the market or to do slightly illegal or very
| illegal things covered in great UI/UX/XD so that some
| consumers are our own side, and by the time they ban us,
| we're too big too fail and fines we get are lower than our
| profits?
|
| Examples: Uber, Airbnb, LinkedIn, ...
| Hamuko wrote:
| Dear Americans,
|
| Not everything in this world revolves around you.
| chuckSu wrote:
| oblak wrote:
| You have a point, though one must not forget who runs the
| world. Spoiler alert: it's not the EU. The bigger theater is
| forcing the big US bois to invest here (building data
| centers) by playing the privacy card.
| Normille wrote:
| >Are you sure EU has "pretty good track record" with these
| fines of Google, FB, et al.?
|
| I wasn't specifically referring to the Google [and other]
| anti-trust measures. I was thinking of things along the lines
| of abolishing roaming charges for mobile phone use, the right
| to open a bank account in any EU country, the right to work
| and reside in any EU country, the introduction of the Euro
| [which I know a lot of people are ambivalent about, but it
| did get rid of currency conversion charges]. All of which I
| consider to be 'consumer friendly' actions.
|
| I'm also a European. But unfortunately resident in UK. So all
| those benefits and more are now lost to me. Still. At least
| we showed Johnny Foreigner who's boss, eh?
| londons_explore wrote:
| What really matters is how many dollars did they take from
| european citizens and businesses, and how many tax and fine
| dollars did they return.
|
| Europe needs to make sure these tech giants get to keep just
| enough money that they don't pull out of europe entirely, but
| not much more.
|
| Big fines are a start, but a better approach is taxation,
| since that takes away the regulatory risk for the companies.
| oblak wrote:
| Huh? The EU tech sector would absolutely love the US giants
| pulling out (phrasing) of Europe. Who wants to fight all
| these behemoths that pay almost no taxes here because they
| "invest" so much
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Let's imagine for a second that someone really wanted FB
| out of Europe. FB would fight tooth and nail to stay -
| because losing the European market would be a huge blow
| to them. Practically every European business at least
| tried using FB ads, some have permanent campaigns. There
| is no way FB would ever leave Europe. They will fight,
| they will pay, they will protest, but the chances of them
| leaving are exactly zero.
| tmoravec wrote:
| > Big fines are a start, but a better approach is taxation,
| since that takes away the regulatory risk for the
| companies.
|
| Companies should obey the laws first and foremost. I'm not
| sure there's a lot of regulatory risk either; Google
| certainly has enough lawyers to know that what they did was
| illegal.
| 6510 wrote:
| There is no reason to think Google is not aware of EU
| laws.
|
| One such law for example forbids fake reviews.
|
| Google creates profiles for small businesses, invites
| everyone to anonymously say whatever they want about
| business and rate it.
|
| Then they list advertisement from competitors next to it.
|
| Their solution for the public shaming contest is that you
| should send more <s>customers</s> people to google to
| review your business and of course purchase adds.
|
| The law says that if you want to do reviews of any kind
| you must be able to prove the review is from someone who
| purchased a product or service. The fines are in % of
| global revenue. Google could have some legal talking
| point if they allowed business to disable it.
|
| We didn't know wont fly.
| timmg wrote:
| > and gives the US giants a free pass otherwise.
|
| Probably because I work in tech in the US, but that has not
| been my view.
|
| What was the fine that the EU put on VW for _intentionally_
| cheating on emissions standards? And how does that compare
| with the _many_ fines Google has gotten?
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Volkswagen has definitely been fined less than Google -
| they were fined about a billion. The difference is though
| that the EU wasn't really prepared for the Volkswagen fraud
| - there was no standing law setting enormous fines for
| companies engaged in an emissions fraud of that scale like
| there is for GDPR violations. Since the scandal they
| brought in legislation to prevent it in the future,
| including fines of up to EUR30,000 per car sold violating
| the emissions guidelines.
|
| EU regulator powers operate with an honestly fairly limited
| scope based on the laws passed by parliament and the
| commission. There's no EPA like organisation with broad
| powers to persue companies for most forms of misbehaviour
| like there is in the US - that's left to the member states,
| with countries like Germany and Italy individually
| prosecuting Volkswagen executives for fraud.
|
| The difference with GDPR and anti-trust violations is that
| the EU has been deliberately granted the power to exact
| severe fines on companies _for each individual offence_. If
| post-scandal Volkswagen had been caught falsifying
| emissions again and again (similiar to Google 's repeated
| GDPR violations) they might have been hit with more and
| more fines of the severity that Google has.
| timmg wrote:
| Couldn't they have prosecuted VW on the basis of
| "competition"?
|
| Like VW had an unfair advantage over other (non-EU) car
| companies because they didn't meet the standards.
|
| The reality is that they didn't want to hurt VW that much
| because it is an important EU company. Same reason the US
| fined the crap out of them -- but would have been lenient
| on Ford in the same circumstances.
|
| This is normal stuff. I was just responding to the idea
| that the EU was "too soft" on US tech companies.
| Narishma wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something, this fine has nothing to do
| with the GDPR but with Google's anti-competitive
| behavior.
| tmoravec wrote:
| IIRC it was mainly about cheating in the US, no? The US
| definitely gave VW huge fines. And jail time for an
| executive.
|
| Not that it's relevant to Google...
| efsavage wrote:
| I support the charging connector standardization, but not tool
| batteries. There are so many factors in play I don't see how
| standardization would offer enough benefit to offset innovation
| penalties. Even within a given brand/connector, there are
| variations on capabilities like size and duty cycle and power
| output. I have a bunch of Milwaukee cordless tools on the M18
| platform, and the smaller tools (e.g. drills) can use any
| battery but some tools (e.g. chainsaw) only work with a subset
| because of higher power draw.
|
| I have cordless tools across a number of battery platforms and
| while it's convenient when they can be shared, it's ultimately
| not a big deal to have a few if another company makes a better
| tool. Tradespeople won't lock themselves in if the right tool
| is on a different platform.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "Tradespeople won't lock themselves in if the right tool is
| on a different platform."
|
| Right, but home users will. I have 5 Ryobi One+ batteries, so
| there's no way I'll buy a battery-operated tool from a
| different brand, even if the tool itself is better/cheaper
| than the equivalent Ryobi product.
| Normille wrote:
| >Right, but home users will.
|
| Agreed. I've got about half a dozen Makita cordless tools
| taking the LXT battery. I'm pretty happy with the brand but
| I do kind of feel like I'm trapped using whatever Makita
| offers from now on.
|
| The charger cost about PS70 and the 3 batteries I have were
| a similar price, each. So, for me, changing brands for a
| particular tool would mean an outlay of _' Price of Tool' +
| 'Price of Charger' + Price of n Batteries'_ which just
| isn't worth it, unless the rival company's tool was 2 or 3
| times as good as the Makita offering.
|
| I've sometimes thought that maybe Metabo, DeWalt or
| Milwaukee's version of a certain tool I wanted was slightly
| better than Makita's one. But, as I say, not twice or three
| times as good, to justify that kind of outlay.
|
| So, like quite a few people commenting here, I'm kind of
| stuck with supporting the blue team now --even when they
| occasionally get outplayed by their opponents.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Tradesperson.
|
| There's a reason Milwaukee, Makita, DeWalt, AEG, and Bosch,
| are wildly popular.
|
| They're almost entirely indistinguishable. We also have
| some Hilti branded cordless tools, also fine.
|
| My personal preference for home use is something like Ryobi
| One+ or Ozito PXC (less than half the price of the One+)
| because I'm actually at work all day using power and
| cordless tools supplied by work, I don't plan on taking my
| home tools to three or four hundred commercial construction
| sites or building 1000 houses with them.
|
| Tool brand preference is, in my opinion, largely a sport-
| like
| londons_explore wrote:
| The cordless power tools typically have the battery management
| system in the _device_ , not in the battery. The battery tends
| to contain protection circuitry, but no logic that determines
| charge rate etc.
|
| That means every device manufacturer will claim, even if the
| law requires that devices must all have the same plug, that a
| competitors device drew too much current, or charged their
| battery too fast/too slow/at too a low a temperature, and thats
| why performance sucks.
|
| In reality, these technical problems could be solved - but
| device manufacturers will make the small hurdle into a big one
| when explaining why they can't all standardize.
| beAbU wrote:
| I'm not sure that I agree with this statement.
|
| Many of the packs that I've seen the inside of has balancing
| circuitry included.
|
| Also worth considering these packs are charged separate from
| the tool. So this means the tool cannot control the charge
| rate etc.
|
| Lastly, based on my luddite eyes, the difference between
| makita, milwaukee, bosch, dewalt and ryobi batteries seem to
| me to only be a different keying in the plastic mating parts.
| This suspicion is amplified when you consider that some of
| these brands are made by the same company.
| Normille wrote:
| >Lastly, based on my luddite eyes, the difference between
| makita, milwaukee, bosch, dewalt and ryobi batteries seem
| to me to only be a different keying in the plastic mating
| parts
|
| The fact that you can buy adaptors to allow one brand's
| batteries to be used on another brand's tools would seem to
| back up your theory. However, with the adaptors costing
| around PS20 each and being produced by no-brand 'warranty
| voiding' unofficial third parties you've never heard of, it
| would be an expensive business if you wanted to be brand
| agnostic in your power tool choices, as you'd need a heap
| of adaptors to cover all the various combinations of tool &
| battery. Added to which is the potential for a dodgy 3rd
| party adaptor to damage tool or battery.
|
| I'd like to see the EU designate a common battery interface
| for all newly manufactured tools & batteries. That way we
| could buy the best tool for the job each time, instead of
| being locked into using whatever the Blue, Yellow, Red or
| Green team are fielding in that area.
|
| The manufacturers would doubtless also produce their own
| adaptors to allow their existing tools & batteries to work
| with this new 'One Interface to Rule Them All'
| 6510 wrote:
| I much enjoyed my mobile phone with AA batteries. I had a
| pocket full of charged ones but if they ran out every
| corner store sold them. (They drained pretty quickly
| eventho it had a led display but replacing them was as
| fast as reloading a gun)
| deelowe wrote:
| Of the tools you listed, none are made by the same company.
| At least for their primary products.
|
| All of the large format packs have pins for each cell, so
| charging with a standard balance charger is pretty easy.
| You can find plenty of schematics for homemade controllers
| online. Where they differ however, are the other pins. Some
| use a communication protocol like SMBUS. Some have
| dedicated pins for specific things like overcurrent or
| temperature. It varies highly from manufacturer to
| manufacturer.
|
| AFAIK, all tool brands are moving to communication
| protocols for the packs.
|
| [EDIT] Someone mentioned adapters. I don't believe there
| are adapters that support newer communicating packs (e.g.
| the OEM chargers won't work with the adapter). Older packs
| are all analog, so conversion is just a simple matter of
| rerouting the pins.
| 6510 wrote:
| But in all honesty, that is their problem. They chose
| this road and knew there were riches on it but also
| risks.
| deelowe wrote:
| Who's problem exactly? The communicating packs are WAY
| better. They last much longer than the old style. It
| makes sense why this was done.
| sorry_i_lisp wrote:
| +1 that the plastic is the main difference are the
| "everything to Ryobi"-plastic adadpters you can buy. I use
| Makita battery->Ryobi tool and it works great.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Ryobi are actually the first batteries that I genuinely
| dislike; I have 8 year old Black & Decker drill whose
| battery still works great. Similar experience with some
| other manufacturers. But we went all-in on Ryobi at Home
| Depot a few years ago, and we now have to buy 2-4 new
| batteries a year. Then after 12-18 months, the battery
| shows as defective on its charger.... brutal.
|
| (probably less-than-average usage patterns as we are lazy
| house owners; stored inside, not abused)
| Normille wrote:
| That pretty much echoes the reputation Ryobi tools have.
| ie. the tools themselves are really good but the
| batteries don't last.
| fatboy wrote:
| I think that's a bit trickier. If Makita or whoever was forced
| to change their batteries, anyone with a big catalogue of their
| tools would be pretty miffed.
|
| Also, I've mentioned this on hn before, there is already the
| Cordless Alliance, which does exactly this.
|
| Sadly, there's only a couple of useful-in-a-mainstream-sense
| brands in there: Mafell and Metabo. The rest are very niche.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Why? It's not like manufacturers haven't switched all their
| batteries themselves before? If all of them are forced to
| have the same batteries, that's no different from makita or
| dewalt or bosch going "we're switching to a new 24V battery
| system, and your old tools won't take them. deal with it".
| namdnay wrote:
| I would be wary of this "cordless alliance", the dynamics are
| closer to that of a kingdom than an alliance... it's
| basically lots of small(er) german tool manufacturers using
| Metabo batteries instead of developing their own. Which is
| great, but not really the same thing as an alliance of equals
| agreeing to align existing systems
| fatboy wrote:
| That's not really so surprising though. Any brand that
| already has a system would be penalising existing customers
| by changing, we're not talking usb cables here.
|
| Good on Metabo for doing it, and good on Mafell for signing
| up to use them. The smaller brands it's a no-brainer I
| guess.
| 6510 wrote:
| I just sold some tools for 5 euro each. They need new
| batteries but company is gone. Makita can just continue to
| sell their old batteries while their new tools use a
| standardized form factor. They could also make an old type
| battery with replaceable cells.
| stephen_g wrote:
| As somebody who has a couple of Makita tools and batteries,
| it would be really bad if they were hypothetically forced
| to change. Specifically because not being able to get new
| tools that use my existing 18V batteries would mean buying
| a whole set of new batteries, and then it's so annoying
| keeping two kinds of batteries that when the old ones wear
| out, I'd probably instead buy new tools for the new ones.
| So the old tools potentially become e-waste far sooner than
| they would be (the old batteries wouldn't be available
| forever) as well as the waste of resources for the
| premature replacement of all the tools and batteries...
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Perhaps not an entirely ideal solution for all scenario,
| adaptors are available for any of the big brands.
|
| Perhaps part of a battery standardisation push could
| include making these available at a reasonable price.
| fatboy wrote:
| I have five or six Makita 18v batteries and a load of their
| tools. If they only make new tools with the new battery
| they are potentially making me quite miffed. If I want the
| new tool I need also the new batteries and charger. Also
| I'd need multiple batteries because you can't really only
| have one.
|
| Personally I'd be happy for that situation because of the
| big upside, but I can see why a company would not want it.
|
| Plus, the most logical thing to do is not make a new
| standard, but pick an existing one. But who gets to be the
| golden brand whose battery system remains unchanged?
|
| I would love it to happen but I can't see it happening for
| a while.
| saalweachter wrote:
| > But who gets to be the golden brand whose battery
| system remains unchanged?
|
| The first one to make all relevant patents & designs
| available royalty-free.
| 6510 wrote:
| There is probably some sensible time frame to adopt a new
| battery.
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's not clear to me what the EU, specifically, wants Google to
| do here from the article. Any insight?
| layer8 wrote:
| For example, not require that Chrome be preinstalled as the
| default browser on Android devices, and not require that a
| bundle of Google apps be preinstalled if any of them is
| preinstalled.
| wara23arish wrote:
| there is no way to delete safari from iphones
| mqus wrote:
| I would think the same and can only assume that apple is
| not as much of a monopoly as google/android in the EU. I
| think Vestager &co also wanted to have a solid case (as
| evidenced in the appeal losses right now) and the apple one
| was more difficult to establish? I don't know.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Apple's lawsuits are different
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-
| sideloadin...
| layer8 wrote:
| That's Apple's choice as the manufacturer of the device,
| while Google enforces conditions on Android device
| manufacturers. Apple would have the same problem if they
| would allow other companies to build iOS devices but force
| Safari to be the preinstalled as the default browser AND
| derive ad income from the use of Safari.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Microsoft chose to have desktop browser integration as
| the manufacturer of Windows. That didn't protect them
| from fines.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's not the same situation, Microsoft didn't
| manufacture the PCs.
| mhermher wrote:
| This news is about Android.
| hellisothers wrote:
| I know it's a nuance but Apple doesn't license its OS to
| other manufacturers. So while Google dictates "if you use
| the Android OS you must bundle Chrome", Apple isn't
| dictating terms like that to another manufacturer.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Technically Google isn't really making anyone use Play
| Store, either. They're free to use AOSP and bundle their
| own set of apps, no?
|
| In fact, I'd argue these rules the EU enforces are
| counter productive. Manufacturers should fork android and
| band together and create their own App Store. Google will
| either cede their position or we'll have a viable,
| growing third ecosystem.
| the_duke wrote:
| The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act will
| change a lot of things for both Apple and Google.
| mhermher wrote:
| This is what the entire ruling is about. They are _not_
| free to do so if they _also_ sell with Google Play
| Services. It 's the root of the entire issue is that the
| above requirement is in the agreements that Google has
| with manufacturers. The EU is striking down this type of
| agreement such that manufacturers will _actually_ have
| that freedom.
| izacus wrote:
| That's absolutely not what the ruling wants.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Is this not already possible with things like LineageOS?
| layer8 wrote:
| It's for example not possible for Android device
| manufacturers to ship a phone with Google PlayStore
| installed but not also have Chrome be preinstalled as the
| default browser.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It's about the contractual obligations Google forced on
| makers. What the user does with the device after purchase
| is out of the scope of this ruling.
| endisneigh wrote:
| No, what I mean is that manufacturers don't have to
| include the play store if they don't like Google's
| requirements around using it?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Google forced them to take the Play Store and search
| widget (including default search engine) as a condition
| to get Play Services.
|
| Play Services is required by a majority of android apps
| and developping and maintening a compatible system layer
| is just out of reach of most(all?) device makers.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Yes, but my point is - can't they they just not use the
| play store at all like lineageos?
|
| Ultimately Google will always have control over android
| if what you're saying is true unless an alternative
| ecosystem is created
| stale2002 wrote:
| > can't they they just not use the play store at all like
| lineageos?
|
| This changes nothing about if google's behavior was
| illegally tying two products together.
|
| You are bringing up a non-sequitor that does not change
| the law.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| dahfizz wrote:
| Its an issue with bundling. If a phone manufacturer wants
| to ship an Android phone _with Google Play Store_ (and they
| all do), then they must also include a bunch of other
| Google stuff. The EU wants Google to license the Play Store
| but not force the inclusion of all their other apps.
|
| So yes, a manufacturer could ship a phone with a de-Googled
| LineageOS. But they cannot today ship a phone with Play
| Store, but without Chrome, etc.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Interesting - thanks for the info.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Pay a fine, first of all :-)
|
| Wikipedia has more:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Google...
|
| > In October 2018 Google revamped how it would distribute its
| Google Play Store with Android in the future: Charging a
| licensing fee for the store, without requiring installation of
| Google apps, but making it free to pre-install the Google apps
| if they want.
|
| > Furthermore, Google's hardware partners will be allowed to
| market devices in the EU that run rival versions of Android or
| other operating systems.
|
| > In March 2019 Google announced that it will give European
| users of Android phones an option of which browser and search
| engine they want on their phone at the time of purchase to
| further comply with the EU's decision.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The original ruling:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/18/17580694/google-android-e...
|
| Basically dirty stuff we all knew Google was doing, but kept
| getting away with until then
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| It looks like it's about forcing manufacturers to ship with
| chrome and the google search widget, so like the old Microsoft
| forcing IE upon everyone case.
| gniv wrote:
| It's interesting how the two continents are keeping each other in
| check when it comes to major abuses. The EU fining big US tech
| and the US fining VW are the prominent examples. In each case the
| home country has big incentives to keep the status quo fully
| aware that it's bad for consumers.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I can't help but roll my eyes at the hypocrisy of the EU. One
| prime example is French websites forcing you to pay 3 euros
| when you refuse cookies.
| pmontra wrote:
| Google's reaction.
|
| > We are disappointed that the Court did not annul the decision
| in full. Android has created more choice for everyone, not less,
| and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and
| around the world.
|
| s/Android/Windows/ and s/Europe/USA/ and it could be Microsoft at
| the end of the antitrust case in the 90s.
| josefx wrote:
| > Android has created more choice for everyone
|
| Same way IE did back when Microsoft provided it for "free".
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Apparently the court system still uses 32 bits.
|
| (~4B is the 32bit integer limit...)
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| If the page fails to scroll on your screen, just disable JS (one
| click in uBlock Origin).
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yet, still pocket change.
|
| It is commendable that EU does not allow miscreants to tie up
| fines in an endless legal maze.
| dahfizz wrote:
| What % of global revenue or profit do you think an appropriate
| fine is?
| ncmncm wrote:
| That is for courts, but it should be enough to produce
| correct behavior by eliminating incentive to violate. If the
| fine is too small, it becomes operating expense, as is usual
| in the US.
|
| Probably any fine should accompany (but not depend on results
| from) criminal charges for a company officer.
| dahfizz wrote:
| So you believe Google made more than $4B with their Android
| licensing practices in the EU?
|
| I think that is unlikely, and I think it is likely we will
| see Google change the illegal licensing.
|
| I am more than happy to see a Google exec get charged for a
| crime if you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they
| committed that crime.
| mqus wrote:
| > I think that is unlikely, and I think it is likely we
| will see Google change the illegal licensing.
|
| According to another comment, they even already changed
| their practices in response, a few years ago
| ncmncm wrote:
| If it takes a $4B fine to get Google to behave, then a
| $4B fine is the right amount, regardless of revenue.
| Revenue hints at the fine that would get their attention.
|
| We charge people with a crime to see if their part in it
| can be proved. Second-guessing the court produces often
| bad results.
| caldarons wrote:
| While I am in favour of efforts like the GDPR to protect users
| data, I wonder if all this anti-bigtech sentiment is actually
| justified and where it will eventually lead to
| rvz wrote:
| It is a long time coming and still a long way to go and the
| surveillance big tech giants should pay a high price for
| abusing and violating the privacy of hundreds of millions of
| users.
|
| It's a shame that this fine is too generous to Google and it
| won't scare them. It should be much larger than that and should
| be in the multi-billions of dollars.
| metadat wrote:
| What? Did GPT3 write the parent comment? This is a multi-
| billion dollar fine, a $4.1B fine.
| rvz wrote:
| > What? Did GPT3 write the parent comment?
|
| No. Why do you think that is?
|
| > This is a multi-billion dollar fine, a $4.1B fine.
|
| As it should be the standard and nothing less than that.
| Even so, this one is a 'generous' multi-billion dollar fine
| that won't scare them.
|
| I am saying it needs to be much higher than that. GPT-3
| cannot explain itself or its own comments, can it?
| metadat wrote:
| Losing 5% of Google's annual profits will absolutely
| scare the shit out of them.
|
| Consider how much this harms their ability to keep
| reinvesting the profits into growing the business. A 5%
| loss is likely sufficient to get them to stop for a
| moment and rethink their strategy so the punishment won't
| recur.
|
| > No. Why do you think that is?
|
| Because you lament the lack of a multi-billion dollar
| fine when the title states that it's a $4B fine. This
| comes off as nonsensical and disconnected from reality,
| in a way that triggered "-\\_(tsu)_/-, maybe it's GPT3".
|
| With that said, I meant it as a joke, not a serious
| accusation. The likely explanation here is this comes
| down to the common case of human confusion.
|
| As a tangential aside:
|
| I can only conclude that due to the curse of knowledge,
| we collectively are overly paranoid about bot commenters
| on HN. I was just accused of being a bot just two or
| three days ago.
|
| Cheers and take care.
| rvz wrote:
| > Losing 5% of Google's annual profits will absolutely
| scare the shit out of them.
|
| No it won't. We all know that this won't be the last of
| such violations from these big tech companies like Google
| which the EU is disputing and especially when Facebook
| paid a similar fine to the FTC years ago and is once
| again still violating the privacy of its users. So it is
| clear that they still wouldn't change even if the fine is
| as high as that.
|
| The fact is, they are not scared of these fines. Setting
| them in the multi-billion dollars should be the standard
| and the minimum and continuous violations warrant a much
| higher significant fine than this generous discounted
| fine which Google knows it can easily afford to do it
| again.
|
| For them, the violations is worth it and pays more than
| these so-called generous 'fines'.
|
| > Because you lament the lack of a multi-billion dollar
| fine when the title states that it's a $4B fine. This
| comes off as nonsensical and disconnected from reality,
| in a way that triggered "-\\_(tsu)_/-, maybe it's GPT3".
|
| Except I already said that _' this'_ fine _" needs to be
| much larger"_ and disagreed with the EU's 'generous'
| fine. I'm talking fines of over $10B dollars, which that
| still qualifies as _' multi-billions of dollars'_ and _'
| much larger'_ than the EU's small fine. I made myself
| perfectly clear on my whole point.
|
| So my comment is hardly 'GPT-3 bot' generated.
| metadat wrote:
| Sigh, it's never enough for some people.
|
| If the amount of the fine would deal a fatal or nearly
| fatal blow to the company, they'll simply exit the market
| and not pay. It's a balancing act.
|
| I'm grateful for the EU setting a good example in this
| case: a fine which the perp feels is painful, without
| killing them. This is one proven path to rehabilitation.
| Someone wrote:
| If you're in favor of efforts like the GDPR, why do you call
| this anti-bigtech sentiment? It's pro-privacy sentiment.
|
| The GDPR applies to smalltech, too, and smalltech gets fined.
| For example, an _individual_ got fined EUR600 about two months
| ago for pointing a video camera at a shared access road
| (https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-1397)
|
| You can find many more examples of small fines at
| https://www.enforcementtracker.com/.
| athenot wrote:
| With a small fine, it's just an annoying cost of doing
| business. With this ruling, there's a possibility it may
| actually change the risk/benefit assessment for companies that
| insist on doing whatever they want with user data.
|
| Maybe the lines of business which require promiscuous data
| sharing in order to be profitable will stop operating in the
| EU, and give rise to other business models. Whether these newer
| ones will be better or worse is not yet known, though the
| gamble in the EU is that it won't be worse.
| saalweachter wrote:
| ... wasn't the case about Android app bundling, not user
| data?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >GDPR to protect users data
|
| GDPR was never about users data from the start. This is all
| political theater to garner popular support from mostly
| clueless voters who have no idea what their data even looks
| like.
| xani_ wrote:
| Breaking the law that applies to is not a sentiment. The same
| law punished small companies too
| seydor wrote:
| GDPR has been pro-big tech according to all the studies i have
| seen
| esperent wrote:
| Studies such as?
| seydor wrote:
| https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/gdpr-effect-how-data-
| privacy-...
| jlokier wrote:
| The EU appeal the article is about has nothing at all to do
| with GDPR, user data, or privacy.
|
| It's about anticompetitive behaviour, i.e. antitrust. Antitrust
| is not particularly about tech companies, and it has been
| around a long time, since before modern computers.
|
| It's about misusing a position of market dominance to prevent a
| healthy competitive market from operating. Very large companies
| which are market-dominant face this problem, but they also have
| the resources to understand and handle the responsibility. They
| can either do so, or face fines and injunctions to make them do
| so. In severe cases they can be forced to break up dominant
| business units, such as happened with the breakup of AT&T in
| the USA some years ago.
|
| This is the same sort of thing as might have blocked nVidia
| from buying ARM, for example (until nVidia pulled out
| voluntarily). You can see how that has nothing to do with GDPR;
| it wasn't even in the EU.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I expect some kind of:
|
| - common carrier status for "platforms"
|
| - PII laws, broadly
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| For your first point, that's more or less what the Digital
| Market Act is and it was adopted in July. They call
| "platforms" "gatekeepers" but you got the idea of it. It
| should become enforceable by Q3 2023.
| metadat wrote:
| Hopefully it can actually entice Google into changing it's
| behavior. The US fines are so small they are a joke, a light
| tax on doing business.
| saurik wrote:
| Previously discussed at:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32835000
| Fiahil wrote:
| Maybe a boring question, but where do the money goes ?
|
| Can they use that to finance grants or RFPs for other projects ?
| robomartin wrote:
| Does the money in these cases go to government? Not sure how it
| is in the EU.
|
| This is one of the aspects of government-based fines I dislike.
| The money should go to the people, the victims, not government.
| They go after a company that may have damaged consumers and then
| proceed to grab the fine instead of giving it to the people who
| were the actual victims of the transgression.
| wickedsickeune wrote:
| The money of this fine is not to repair damages to individuals,
| it's to disincentivize behaviour. Plus if it's used for
| expenses of the EU, it indirectly goes to the people, as they
| will have to contribute less taxes.
| perlgeek wrote:
| It's simply not practical to determine with certainty who owned
| an Android phone during the time that Google violated the
| antitrust laws, and divide the payout among them.
| genewitch wrote:
| I get class action checks from a single online grocery order
| i made in 2010. I'm getting a class action check for a used
| vehicle i bought in my state where my state isn't involved in
| the class, but the vehicle was originally sold in a class
| state.
|
| i'm pretty sure the panopticon that is google can determine
| who had an android phone, ever.
| layer8 wrote:
| The money will go into the EU budget, which for the most part
| benefits EU citizens. And everyone will benefit from Google
| having to change (or already having changed) their agreements
| with device manufacturers.
|
| It's like when you pay a parking fine, the money doesn't go to
| the specific people inconvenienced or endangered by your wrong
| parking, it goes into the municipal budget.
| mritun wrote:
| Extremely interesting point in this ruling that I have never seen
| before and I guarantee is sending shockwaves to the boardrooms is
| the definition of market. In this ruling EU chose to define the
| market as " _Android_ phone manufacturers all over the world
| _except China_ ".
|
| Of course that definition is very peculiar. I was doubtful that
| it would stick but apparently it did.
|
| This is fascinating that a regulator can define market as "users
| of YOUR_PRODUCT excluding all competitors you thought AND across
| the world EXCEPT the very place where everything is made".
|
| Now that it has stuck, it would change the dynamics of business.
| It started with tech but its going to trickle down :)
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| The market they're interested in is the EU. So "all over the
| world except China" includes the EU. Defining the market as the
| region the governing authority has power over is nothing new:
| The FTC rules on the US market, the European Commission rules
| on the EU market.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I'm kind of bummed that FOSS licencing isn't one of the teeth
| here. The anticompetitive aspects here are based in overly
| restrictive distributor contracts. The fact that android and
| chrome are so full of FOSS, yet Google does what it does...
| drexlspivey wrote:
| That's 1.45% of their annual revenue or 5.2% of their annual net
| profit.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Which is essentially nothing. Imagine an individual, caught
| committing an illegal act of this magnitude _for the third
| time_ , being fined 1.45% of their annual pre-tax salary, with
| no other consequences.
|
| Speeding tickets are costlier than this in many jurisdictions.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| If you were earning minimal wage in France, that would be
| about $1500 of fine for the equivalent of being caught
| commiting burglary for the 3rd time.
|
| Quite lucrative.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Factor in marginal utility of income, and it's even more
| lame. $1,500 means a lot more to someone making minimum
| wage than $4,000,000,000 does to Google.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't care how much money you have or make. $4 billion can
| buy an enormous amount of stuff, it is in no way essentially
| nothing.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Which is essentially nothing.
|
| Holy shit.
|
| Is it some sign of being on HN too much?
|
| Sure, 1.45% is small, because % is shitty at representing the
| real value at this point
|
| at the end of the day it's fucking $4 000 000 000
|
| It's year salary of 2200 well paid engineers
|
| That's industry-changing level of possibilities
| Fiahil wrote:
| closer to 8000 engineers, if you want to spend 500k/eng in
| salary alone (pre tax)
| rvz wrote:
| Google makes twice more than Facebook in their annual
| profits and still Facebook can afford to pay the FTC's
| record fine and still continues with collecting more PII
| and violating the privacy of their users. $4B is
| essentially nothing and instead it should be the minimum
| fine for these companies.
|
| Repeated violations from them should be in the significant
| multi-billions, much higher than this generous discount of
| a fine that the EU is asking for. This proves that they
| will do it again and won't change until the fines get
| higher than $10B.
| bush-bby wrote:
| 1.8 mil is "well-payed"...?
| [deleted]
| tester756 wrote:
| ops, I've taken annual salary as monthly :D
|
| I wanted to have 150k per person, thus "well-paid".
|
| This way it is even more ridiculous since
|
| 4 000 000 000 / 150 000 = 26 666 engineers!
|
| but, 1.8 mil is definitely well paid!
| 988747 wrote:
| Yes, but it's also a threat of further fines in future if they
| don't stop their shenanigans.
| sizzle wrote:
| I really respect the EU for having the guts to hold corporations
| accountable.
| p-e-w wrote:
| > This is Google's third EU antitrust fine. Previously, the
| search giant was fined in a shopping case and an online
| advertising case.
|
| Apparently, "three strikes and you're out" only applies to
| individuals, who with a repeat offense of this magnitude would
| have their lives destroyed by the justice system, and get locked
| away for a decade or more.
| synu wrote:
| Wow, what country has three fines and you go to jail for a
| decade? That sounds intense.
| foepys wrote:
| RICO laws in the United States work that way.
|
| > Under RICO, a person who has committed "at least two acts
| of racketeering activity" drawn from a list of 35 crimes (27
| federal crimes and eight state crimes) within a 10-year
| period can be charged with racketeering if such acts are
| related in one of four specified ways to an "enterprise."
| Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000
| and sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count.
| In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains
| and interest in any business gained through a pattern of
| "racketeering activity."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corru.
| ..
|
| The Wikipedia article also lists a few famous cases.
| dahfizz wrote:
| In some places in the US, if you commit a felony 3 times, you
| go to jail for life. Usually it has to be a violent felony,
| but every state is different.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law
| dahfizz wrote:
| I don't believe Europe has three strike laws. Anyway, in the
| US, three strike laws only apply to criminal charges and not
| civil ones.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Anyway, in the US, three strike laws only apply to criminal
| charges and not civil ones.
|
| And not even to all criminal charges. Three strike laws
| usually apply only to felonies.
| draw_down wrote:
| jefftk wrote:
| While the EU doesn't use a "three strikes" model, they do use
| progressively higher fines and other consequences for repeat
| offenses. If Google had ignored the 2017 Google Shopping order,
| for example, they would have lost a repeat investigation
| relatively quickly and there would have been very large fines.
| But instead, they changed how the product works, in a way that
| looks like they're responding to the decision and trying to
| follow it.
|
| In a company with as many independent lines of business as
| Google has it's possible to have multiple instances of anti-
| trust enforcement that don't look like "we already fined you
| but you're continuing with the prohibited behavior", and the
| Android, Ads, and Shopping cases do all look really different.
| Plus they're covering overlapping time periods, which limits
| how much the regulator can say "you should have listened to us
| before".
|
| (Disclosure: I used to work at Google)
| esperent wrote:
| The 3 strikes law is a US thing.
| Normille wrote:
| One of the few areas where I think the US has got it right.
| No-one should need more than 3 chances to stop being a dick.
| trasz wrote:
| This law results in people landing in jail for being poor:
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-
| an...
| dahfizz wrote:
| This law results in people landing in jail for being
| habitual criminals. Being poor does not excuse criminal
| behavior.
| johnday wrote:
| On the other hand, it appears that being rich _does_
| excuse criminal behavior - that is, if you hire a lot of
| people and get them to work in an office, and they commit
| crimes, the company gets fined and you don 't go to
| prison (almost always).
| trasz wrote:
| If you hire a lot of people and then steal their wages
| you don't go to prison either. You can be proven to be a
| murderer (OJ Simpson) or a child rapist (DuPont,
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2019/06/14/how-a-
| du-po...) and you won't get punished if you're wealthy
| enough. If you are poor, you'll get life sentence for
| stealing socks. It's not a bug in US judiciary system,
| it's how the system was designed.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| We really need the equivalent of jail time for companies.
| Clearly after a certain size, fines do not cut it. Jailing
| executives is too hard, so laws should exist that remove the
| company from a market for x years or something, like if they
| were in a cell.
| guitarbill wrote:
| > Jailing executives is too hard
|
| Do you mean "too difficult" or "too bigger punishment"?
| Either way, I disagree. If they reap the reward of huge
| salaries, they ought to take some of the risks.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Yup. And if you put Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg in
| jail for a year or two, watch the tech industry whip itself
| into shape in weeks. Hold people actually responsible for
| the damage they do and you'll see real change.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I doubt that giving the power to overseas nations to
| criminalise and incarcerate US citizens has no downsides.
| cyphar wrote:
| Believe it or not, committing a crime in a foreign
| country as a US citizen will result in you being
| incarcerated in said country regardless of your
| citizenship status.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Most crimes committed by US citizens in foreign countries
| are in the context of their military service: War crimes.
| And instead of being incarcerated for those, they just
| complete their tour of duty and go home. With any luck
| there's some public outcry about their crimes, but often
| not even that. The US is also not party to the Rome
| statute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute), and
| has even threatened to personally target International
| Criminal Court employees if they try to prosecute US
| citizens.
|
| ... but I suppose you're right about more mundane, non-
| government-sanctioned crimes.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I do believe it. But that's not relevant, because OP is
| talking about an additional power.
| cyphar wrote:
| In that case the argument should be about whether or not
| it should be a criminal offense _at all_ (meaning whether
| European CEOs should be jailed in the case of malicious
| actions against their users). The fact it would
| theoretically extend to people in the US (good luck
| extraditing them) is IMHO not really an important thing
| to consider.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Well, that was the example this thread was talking about.
| You could change the topic and make what we were talking
| about unimportant, but that seems a bit churlish to
| phrase it that way : - )
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Both individuals have committed crimes (perjury, for
| starters) here in the United States as well. We can jail
| them here!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They can certainly be jailed for crimes, yes.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I understand what you mean, but keep in mind that many
| nations do have extradition treaties with one another.
| markdestouches wrote:
| You are already eligible for punishment for crimes
| committed in foreign countries. I don't see how this
| makes things any different.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Some crimes, yes. If it doesn't make things different,
| then there's nothing to change. If it does change things,
| then that's because the US would be allowing it for non-
| crimes.
| [deleted]
| dahfizz wrote:
| Proving guilt is difficult. Execs can and do go to jail
| when it can be proved they personally did something
| illegal.
|
| Guilt by association is not acceptable in a first world
| country. You don't go to jail if your brother commits a
| crime, you shouldn't go to jail if your company commits a
| crime. You only go to jail if _you_ commit a crime.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Guilt by association is not acceptable in a first world
| country. You don't go to jail if your brother commits a
| crime
|
| Staw man. The only way that is comparable is if you
| oversaw your brothers career and received part of his
| income... if he then committed a crime (from which you
| benefited), then yes, you could be held part accountable.
|
| Execs are not merely "associated", they are responsible
| and receive excessive compensation directly derived from
| the actions of the organisation they oversee. If a
| corporate crime is committed on their watch they could be
| held accountable, if not through direct involvement,
| through negligence - allowing it to take place by not
| exerting enough oversight or management... to say
| otherwise would be similar to allowing people to drive
| cars negligently killing people without consequence, the
| analogy is not exact, since the car (the organisation) is
| not purely mechanical and has some degree of autonomy
| which is where these matters are not cut and dry, and
| those would be the finer points of a case exploring
| whether an individual subverted reasonable oversight or
| not - in the inexact analogy you could say, whether one
| of the wheels decided to ignore instructions, or whether
| the driver (exec) wasn't event bothering to steer.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Too difficult: you need to prove they knew and took a
| series of actions to get there, but it's very hard to do,
| and they usually have fall guys all the way to protect
| themselves. It's also easier than ever to destroy evidence.
|
| The cost of going after those companies is ridiculous
| already, once they are proven guilty, it would be simpler
| if we could punish the company as a person, than to find a
| real person to punish. After all, companies are very happy
| to be persons for other legal purposes.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Too difficult: you need to prove they knew and took a
| series of actions to get there, but it's very hard to do,
| and they usually have fall guys all the way to protect
| themselves. It's also easier than ever to destroy
| evidence.
|
| Make it illegal not to have a "custody trace" of how a
| decision came to be. Even if the CEO came up with it in
| the shower, for the thing to be implemented, it has to
| come across a lot of individuals. Make them having to
| keep all of that data around, and required to disclose
| how something came to be in case it's revealed as
| unlawful.
| feanaro wrote:
| Yeah, that surely wouldn't grind everything to a halt and
| effectively make the existence of non-megacorporations
| impossible.
|
| No, what should instead be done is prevent the existence
| of these megacorporations which have disproportionate
| influence on humanity in the first place. Prevent them to
| form and chop up the existing ones aggressively into
| smaller ones.
| lioeters wrote:
| I've long suspected that these "megacorporations" are
| nurtured for national security reasons, to consolidate
| and project power. The disproportionate influence is by
| design, a feature not a flaw. Especially since those who
| make the rules are owned by such powers themselves,
| including those responsible for intelligence (corporate
| spying, undermining workers unions) and regulation (not
| preventing Metalphabetamazons from dominating a wide
| range of industries).
| yamtaddle wrote:
| This has at times been explicit policy. It's a big part
| of how Japan (re-)joined the developed world so fast
| after WWII--they gave a few megacorporations a captive
| home market to keep them healthy & safe, used incentives
| to get them to pool R&D money and share the output, then
| set them loose on foreign markets.
| skywal_l wrote:
| Maybe but when you are CEO, the fact of "not knowing"
| should not protect you from consequences. If not jail, at
| least being banned from being a corporate officer in any
| capacity and relinquish your stocks/benefits/whatever so
| at least you remove the profit motive of fraud.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Pretty much what I was thinking too! If your company has
| violated the law previously in the same or similar manner,
| you should not be permitted to sell to customers in that
| market for the equivalent amount of time an individual would
| be jailed for. I am not opposed to the concept of treating a
| corporation as a legal entity, but I think that if a
| corporation is going to be considered a legal entity, they
| should inherit the same legal consequences a human would
| incur, if they break the law.
|
| Realistically speaking, I don't see many politicians
| supporting this kind of change. I'm not even thinking of the
| issues around corruption, but merely the knowledge that
| hurting that company would in turn, also impact their own
| economy in the process.
|
| Imagine if no business of a nation were searchable in Google
| for a 4 year period. It would be devastating.
|
| Similarly, there are a lot of physical consequences to
| consider as well. If you lock out a company like Apple or
| Coke from operating in a country, suddenly there are a lot of
| related issues.
|
| If Apple could not operate in a specific nation for a set
| amount of time, suddenly any stores they have would
| presumably be closed. This would impact customers ability to
| get their devices repaired. I would also have to assume that
| all employees at each of those locations would be fired,
| leaving a sudden glut of unemployment, impacting people who
| had nothing to do with the situation.
|
| If Coke were to be banned for some set amount of time, it
| would make a lot of weird cases around things like Vending
| Machines and Grocery stores. The _company_ might not be
| marketing or selling their products to distributors, but
| those distributors might still be selling that product. Once
| their stock ran out, if they were to attempt to purchase more
| from the company in a nearby country, who would be at fault?
| Coke, or the distributor?
|
| I imagine it would create a ton of issues with other things,
| like agreements to pay X amount of money over time. Stock
| trading would be another big one, not just in individual
| stocks, but in mutual funds and ETFs that might be heavily
| invested in that company. In one sense, it might make
| investors and day traders more weary and discerning from who
| they decide to trade with, but trying to figure out which
| company is breaking which laws, and how likely they are to
| get caught doing it, is practically impossible to determine,
| without inside knowledge on the matter.
| darkwater wrote:
| But this would hit on workers who might be really
| innocent/unaware, depending on their roles. If you go this
| way, then just jail current/past executives, it would be more
| fair.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| On the short run, yes. But on the long run, that would be
| more effective. Once the customers and workers have been
| burned once, they will be very hesitant to give their trust
| to the company again.
|
| Companies would then have to get their things in order
| quickly, and win back the trust. A very effective
| deterrent.
|
| Imagine Google being out of the EU market for 3 months. How
| many youtubers would try and publish their videos on other
| plateforms? That would open competitions. People would boo
| google everytime they suck because they would fear for
| themself.
|
| It would create pain right now, but a sane pressure that
| would force companies to stop playing with fire because
| they know they can't get a bad burn.
| everforward wrote:
| Google exiting the market for 3 months would have
| enormous economic impact, in a bad way. They're too
| integrated into the economy to "just" close them out of
| the economy for 3 months.
|
| The world could tolerate YouTube being gone for a while.
|
| What about Android though? Is the entire world supposed
| to replace their phone while Play Services are down, and
| Android isn't getting security updates?
|
| What about GCP? How many businesses are also going to be
| shut down when GCP suddenly stops working? They might
| migrate, but that's not something you can do overnight.
|
| What about Gmail? Email communications would be shattered
| for a while, since so many people will need a new email
| provider and will have to distribute that out. God forbid
| anyone forgot their password and can't reset it because
| Gmail doesn't work.
|
| What about G Suite? Do all these other businesses just
| suddenly lose access to their documents? That would
| royally screw a lot of businesses.
|
| You can't "just" shut down Google without a whole host of
| second-order effects.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Google exiting the market for 3 months would have
| enormous economic impact, in a bad way
|
| so too big to fail. Like with banks, they should be
| allowed to do anything with impunity and we should use
| taxpayer money to bail them out when they fuck up?
| everforward wrote:
| I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished, I'm saying
| that the specific punishment of suddenly shutting them
| down is going to punish everyone.
|
| E.g. we could simply seize all profits for 3 months, so
| Google sees no profit but the world can keep spinning. We
| could fine them a % of their cash holdings, if we wanted
| to. We could force them to split off lines of business so
| we don't have to worry about a catastrophic failure if we
| do need to kill the whole business.
|
| I just don't think suddenly shutting them down is the
| right move. There are ways to punish them with far less
| collateral damage.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| You put everything read only, and you give a 2 years
| notice before applying the sentence.
|
| What do you think inflation is ? Their externalities
| being taxed on the population. Since we have to pay no
| matter what, at least they should feel it too.
| everforward wrote:
| > You put everything read only, and you give a 2 years
| notice before applying the sentence.
|
| This is probably still a multi-billion dollar cost when
| spread across the economy. There are going to be tens of
| thousands of workers who now have to work on migrating
| off Gmail/GCP/GSuite rather than doing anything actually
| productive. A migration like that is usually a multi-year
| effort, involving huge man-hour expenditures.
|
| We could just set a fine equal to their profit for X
| months and accomplish roughly the same thing without
| upending half the businesses in the world.
|
| > What do you think inflation is ? Their externalities
| being taxed on the population. Since we have to pay no
| matter what, at least they should feel it too.
|
| Inflation is a decrease in the value of currency, and the
| causes are not well-understood. Pinning it on Google is
| pretty spurious. We had low inflation through years of
| Google doing shady things. I can't ascribe a cause to
| inflation, but I can pretty confidently say that Google
| doing shady things isn't the major cause.
| samwillis wrote:
| Rather than fine the company, fine the shareholders of public
| companies. If they can't afford their share of the fine, then
| they have to sell their shares to pay it.
|
| That would immediately force them to comply.
|
| Edit: Although looking at that and this fine, if you own
| $1000 of google shares, you would owe $3...
| adament wrote:
| But this is exactly what happens when you fine a company.
|
| Unless you fine the company enough for it to go into
| bankruptcy in which case the shareholders are protected by
| limited liability and the creditors take the hit instead.
| But the bankruptcy angle is completely irrelevant to this
| case, none of the fines considered are close yo bankrupting
| Google.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I have investments in a lot of different companies. I have
| no idea if any of them are breaking the law. I have to
| assume that they aren't, because they have not been charged
| or convicted of any crimes previously. I have done as much
| due diligence as I can to assume that their company is
| financially solvent and stable. If they have lied to me
| about any of those things, I have no way of knowing until
| after the fact. Leaving my money in a savings account is
| not an option, because the interest rates are taxed, and
| don't even cover the cost of inflation, let alone give me
| any sort of growth for retirement. That means not only
| would I not preparing for my future, I would actively be
| _losing_ money by not investing.
|
| If a country violates international sanctions, should I be
| sent to The Hauge because I have bonds tied to the bridges
| and roads being built by that government?
|
| To put it another way: If a restaurant is shut down for
| health code violations found in the kitchen, should the
| valet be lectured about proper food preparation?
| madsbuch wrote:
| This is an absurd idea.
|
| That would be a complete detriment to one of the greatest
| innovations in financing: Seperation of capital and
| responsibility. When you buy a stock you know you can not
| loose more than the stocks value, so you dare to invest.
|
| Also, would bond holders also be burdened with this? what
| about derivatives?
| bdefore wrote:
| That great innovation is at the root of the market's
| disregard for negative externalities such as climate
| change. I'm not in support of jailing shareholders, but
| say a tax on the dividends of shareholders who front the
| capital for companies that impose a burden on
| civilization doesn't sound outrageous to me. Especially
| since fining the company directly doesn't necessarily
| discourage bad behavior at the tiers of power that have
| the ability to take a different path.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Not that absurd. People would start doing way more due
| diligences to invest. They would put pressure on the
| company to not do something stupid.
|
| You invest in bad actors and want to make money with it?
| Well you should pay the consequences for that.
| poizan42 wrote:
| Maybe a better idea would be to force the company to emit
| new shares by some percantage of their total number of
| shares and transfer those to the state. That way
| shareholders lose a bit of value by dilution. And after
| enough fines the state will eventually reach a
| controlling majority ownership and can directly stop the
| company from further transgressions.
| perlgeek wrote:
| I agree that we need better enforcement mechanisms, but I'm
| not sold on a "time out".
|
| What would that even mean? If you aren't allowed to
| participate in the Maps business for, let's say, 2 years,
| does that mean you cannot offer the app for download? Then
| everybody stays on the old version, and cannot install
| security updates.
|
| Or that you cannot offer it as a new install? Then people
| changing their phones are screwed.
|
| Or that you cannot offer new maps? Then people rely on the
| old ones, running into permanently closed roads.
|
| Or that your servers must immediately stop serving map tiles?
| Customer's won't be very happy about that either.
|
| That you cannot make any revenue from the service? Kinda hard
| to do when your service is maps, but the revenue source is
| ads.
|
| And so on, ad infinitum.
|
| Consumers tend to switch apps pretty quickly, but what about
| b2b software? Switching over to a database from another
| vendor can easily be a 3 to 5 years project, so it's likely
| that many customers would simply sit out such a jail time.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| First, 2 years is too long, because the consequences are
| very heavy. But a 2 months of service interruptions of
| youtube, google doc and gmap wouldn't crash the world, but
| would be so painful people would find alternatives quickly
| and never rely just on one monopoly again.
| ignaloidas wrote:
| I think just making so that for the next year a set % of
| revenues that are associated with the product in question
| get fined would be fine.
| otippat wrote:
| I don't think three-strikes laws exist anywhere other than in
| the US to be honest.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| noone else is as beholden to baseball metaphors as us.
|
| There's even judges who love baseball so much they quote it
| in opinions lol.
| asddubs wrote:
| when will the sport of baseball stop wreaking havoc on the
| justice system at last?
| justnotworthit wrote:
| Whenever someone goes in a long baseball analogy to make a
| point, i start looking around the room uncomfortably.
| p-e-w wrote:
| But whether it's a repeat offense is taken into account by
| almost every criminal justice system. A first-time thief
| might get off with a light sentence by claiming that they
| needed money and made a stupid mistake. That's not going to
| fly when it happens for the third time.
| tzs wrote:
| New Zealand had one until last month, when it was repealed.
| Their ACT and National parties have said they will bring it
| back if they ever get a chance.
|
| I don't know enough about New Zealand politics to know if
| those parties have a chance of actually doing so.
| rodgerd wrote:
| They're sleepwalking to a win in the next election,
| sadly[1].
|
| [1] I say sadly, less because I like the current
| government, and more because they seem desperate to import
| Bannon-esque culture war nonsense like attacking women's
| rights.
| spixy wrote:
| Slovakia: https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20017344/three-strikes-
| system-to-...
| mdrzn wrote:
| Yesss! EU is doing its job.
|
| I'm very happy every time they manage to give a slap on the wrist
| of these monopolies
| moffkalast wrote:
| Wrist slaps are getting slightly stronger though!
| [deleted]
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