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EU Poised To Fine Google More Than $1 Billion in Antitrust Case (marketwatch.com)
Google is braced for a fine of potentially more than 1bn euro ($1.18 billion) as Brussels prepares to make the first of three antitrust decisions on the search group's practices, the first sanction by a leading competition regulator on the way it operates. From a report: The penalty, expected to be announced in the coming weeks, could exceed the record 1.1 billion euro bill slapped on Intel, in 2009 for anti-competitive behavior in the computer-chip market, the two people told The Times. The European Commission's antitrust body declined to comment to MarketWatch on the FT report, but referred to the latest steps taken in the case against Google. In July last year, the commission reiterated its conclusion that the search giant had "abused its dominant position by systematically favoring its comparison shopping service in its search result pages." Google and its parent company Alphabet were then given 10 weeks to respond to the findings. Reuters reported last month that Google had attempted to settle the dispute with the EU three times in the last six years, but the sides had failed to reach a compromise.
The EU did not choose that Google would violate antitrust laws. Google did.
Why comment, if you don't need to convince anyone — neither beyond reasonable doubt nor even on the preponderance of evidence?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
they will be treated punitively in direct proportion to the size of their wallet.
Are you trying to say they should be fined 50€ instead?.
Do you know what the purpose of a fine is? It is to dissuade such behaviour. If the fine is not directly proportional to the size of their wallet, they either get crushed if it's too high, or don't care at all and continue if it's too small.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
Google is a US company. The EU is going after them solely because of this fact, while domestic firms are given carte blanche
Absolutely true. Just look at the list of companies that have had antitrust rulings against them. Daimler, DAF, Saint-Gobain, Philips, Renault, Iveco, Siemens, Deutsche Bank.... None of these companies would have been ruled against if they were from the EU.
Microsoft gets fined a few hundred million dollars for causing real, irreparable damage to a critical world industry for decades, but Google gets fined over a billion dollars because some people couldn't be bothered to scroll down a bit? This is mind-boggling stupidity!