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Google Challenges Record EU Antitrust Fine in Court (reuters.com)
Google appealed on Monday against a record 2.4-billion-euro ($2.9 billion) EU antitrust fine, with its chances of success boosted by Intel's partial victory last week against another EU sanction. From a report: The world's most popular Internet search engine, a unit of the U.S. firm Alphabet, launched its appeal two months after it was fined by the European Commission for abusing its dominance in Europe by giving prominent placement in searches to its comparison shopping service and demoting rival offerings.
said no one ever.
Even Google can't dismiss a fine of almost 3 billion dollars as a mere cost of doing business. Penalties for corporate abuses need to be truly painful if they're to serve as deterrents.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
That's Google's entire toilet paper AND Pencil budget! What is the EU thinking!!
It will take them MINUTES to make that back!!!!
Let's hope the appeal will double the fine.
Seriously, Europe is simply trying to go after foreign companies to make money from, rather than tax their own. I think that it is interesting that just about every European nations charges a VAT AND goes after corporate taxes, AND a number of them even have sales taxes. And yet, they still scream for more MONEY.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's the equivalent of you opening a store to sell "ACME brand" wrenches only to be told by some a$$h@t of "authoritae" that you must put up advertisements in your store for craftsman wrenches for the shop down the street. Um...no...GFY!
Don't like googles results...don't use google! And no, I don't work for, nor do I ever plan on working for google.
What is the EU going to do if Google just doesn't pay? Shut down access to Google? I don't think the voters would love that.
said no one ever.
What if you are searching for the price of something?
Citation: europa.eu.
Except that the next largest fine after Google, bigger than even Microsoft, is a European truck producer. I know this is a standard thing to do in some third world tinpot dictatorships which favour their own local companies (cough Samsung cough Apple cough cough) but in Europe law actually works pretty much evenly for everyone.
Citation: I leave this as a study. We don't much do citations here and it's important that people learn how to find this because I won't always be here to look after them when they get lied to next time. A citation like "europa.eu" is actually worse than no citation it's a trick that makes you feel there must be evidence but you just aren't smart enough to find it. The normal places to search for things will prove my point.
How many people said they only wanted to see results from companies that paid Google to be placed there?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Google supported the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, the regulatory state, and in particular, regulation of other companies and industries. They've made their political bed over the last decade, now let them lie in it. If the EU determines that Google has behaved anti-competitively, well, then Google has behaved anti-competitively and should pay the fines.
I want a price comparison site in my Google results. I do. When I'm looking for a moderate to major purchase, it's convenient and helpful. I don't want to figure out, and keep up to date on, which shopping site has good results for one product or another - I want a unified search that gives me good results.
Bollocks. The EU is pretty equal opportunity when handing out huge fines. But to know that you'd probably have to research, think, ponder etc.
They can find out how to pay the fine, what with vast amounts of their loot hidden away from tax gatherers. That and if they can magically find the ready cash how they can explain why it shouldn't be taxed like your run-of-the-mill regular business.
Well, if they're so upset with Google, then the answer's pretty clear.
Fire wall off Europe until they come to their senses. Should take, I don't know.... Three seconds?
Google is not a monopoly. There are other search engines. Use *them* if you don't like Google.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
No, it's idiotic. Just go directly to Amazon to shop. Nobody has better prices or better selection.
So go to the site you trust instead of searching Google, then searching some other site? Its like going to the classifieds to find ads for another classified service. How often does your newspaper list other newspapers?
When Google wasn't deranking these sites searching for any product resulted in pages of these junk comparison sites which only exist to use affiliate links.
Then, what is the purpose of Google, if you can't trust them and have to go by your own?
The reason that EU fined Google is that they have a demanding market share, and therefore also a responsibility to not abuse it.
I will look forward to see the outcome of the court case, but I will also say that I am worried as a consumer, if I can't trust the search engine I am using to deliver an honest result, because then I am screwed, as well as everyone else using it.
If that search engine is a minor search engine I can always look for another, but if it has too much presence so I can't reliably use another one, then I am in a stalemate as consumer, and will have to rely on authorities to rectify it.
Then, what is the purpose of Google, if you can't trust them and have to go by your own?
Its about trusting them to find relevant search results - do you also expect Google's results page to also include Bing's search query, Yahoo's results page, etc. etc.?
Then I'd suspect I was being offered paid results rather than the best deals
A false and populist opinion.
The human civilization is not for corporations. The corps are for it. They will make money and value for everybody, for the whole civilization. There is no other way and there is no other place for corporations to exist. Better deal with it.
Amazon may have a large selection, but they do not sell everything and they are often not the cheapest. Their main perk is free delivery troughout Europe, which essentially means that you can buy things at German prices without paying €10+ for shipping to your home address if you don't live in Germany.
When I want to buy something, I usually check a few of these price comparison sites. Amazon often pops up as one of the cheaper options on the German sites, but it's usually not the cheapest. Only when you include shipping cost to my home country Amazon wins, but even then quite often not, especially when I order multiple things.
What's the point of including a link that shows you are lying in a post full of lies?
Amazon is always cheapest thanks to Prime, third party sellers and add-on items. You just don't know how to search the site.