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Google Facing Billions in EU Antitrust Fines (axios.com)
Another EU antitrust fine for Google is coming down the pipe in mid-July over allegations Google has used its Android mobile operating system to beat out rivals, Reuters reports. From a report: The European Commission has been investigating the case since 2015. It's another example of how the EU takes anti-competition violations far more seriously than the U.S. In June of last year, the EU slapped Google with a record $2.8 billion fine for anti-trust practices around its search product, which they said unfairly pushed consumers to use Google's Shopping platform. Sources told Reuters they expect this new fine to top that record.
With a $2.8B fine, and another that could be higher, would it just be more profitable to stay away from the EU where they appear to keep their economy afloat via litigation (gross overgeneralization, but you know what I mean)?
Perhaps they should not have started a business in a place they where unwilling to follow the law.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The EU actually will enforce fines, split up firms, and take actions, and Google knows this.
They should move all their activities to Scotland, and make not getting fines part of the repatriation of Scotland into the EU after Brexit.
There will be a legal grey area for a few years as Lesser Britain falls apart, and they can easily get most of their Irish employees to move there for a few years.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They could also play by the rules, and avoid the fine while still making more money compared to not selling anything at all.
which they said unfairly pushed consumers to use Google's Shopping platform.
They have what now? As an European, this is the first time I am hearing about "google's shopping platform", ever
With a $2.8B fine, and another that could be higher, would it just be more profitable to stay away from the EU where they appear to keep their economy afloat via litigation (gross overgeneralization, but you know what I mean)?
1) These billion dollar fines are a great way to keep the European government funded!
2) Trillion dollar corporations wouldn't even blink at a million dollar fine. The fines for egregious behavior need to be commensurate with their size.
Is EU paying google to run search service? Why they are treated like a public sponsored company or utility company? They are private business and they return results anyway they want to.
Running a personal data-mining business in a region of the world with strict policy laws? What could possibly go wrong?
privacy laws*
The EU is just sucking money out of US tech firms now. Android is free to use. There are no viable rivals that can do what Android does, other than Apple's iOS. Who would buy a new phone without a solid app platform, and pay extra to avoid Android? I don't get it.
that's 1/4th of one quarter's earnings...cost of doing business noise level
nothing to see here - move along
What is preventing the EU from coming up with a better: hardware combination? Better search engine? Better operating system?
I fail to see how this is anti competitive when no one i the region is even trying to compete.
I'm not the biggest Google fan in the world, but if I were Google, I'd just say "ok", and turn off google entirely for EU for awhile, and see how they liked it.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I would love it if every one of the Top 5 (Apple, Microsoft, Google/Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon) said "You know what? Fuck it. We're out" and just left Europe entirely. Just leave it to its own devices.
What is preventing the EU from coming up with a better: hardware combination? Better search engine? Better operating system?
Socialism.
Well, they seem to be just changing the laws under them over and over again...becoming more onerous each time.
This is like the EU is trying to step up and dictate what a private company's business model is.
If the EU wants a search without the things Google offers and requires of its users, why don't they just build a state sponsored service, EUuugle or something and offer that to their citizens, rather than trying to dictate to a private company?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is why we need e.g. linux phones but they don't exist yet.
If there were sufficient demand for them, they would exist.
Android is a monopoly, now they are forcing doze mode in all androids and if you want to send notifications you must do it through its server in usa for the whole world. I want to send my own realtime, secure notifications from my chosen server as always. I want to use imap mail as always. (K9 mail, a free classic mail android app doesn't work well anymore.) They want all the earth traffic to sniff and rule the world. Google is beeing evil and showing its true face with its monopoly. We need a Linux phone, sadly Richard Stallman was right, you can't trust these big companies.
I fail to see how this is anti competitive when no one i the region is even trying to compete.
It's not just about companies in the region, it's about every other company trying to compete. There are several search engines, for example, and if a manufacturer of an Android phone wants to offer different search engine options, Google should not interfere with that.
I'm not the biggest Google fan in the world, but if I were Google, I'd just say "ok", and turn off google entirely for EU for awhile, and see how they liked it.
I hope your wish comes true and Google does just that.
Because then one or more search engines would reach critical mass while also obeying the EU's privacy laws.
Those entities would then be able to compete against Google while lobbying the US to change its privacy laws.
Google would then have no business model, and would hopefully die a painful death (unless countries like China kept it afloat because they're willing to do the Chinese government's bidding...).
And all you Google fanbois can chew on THAT.
The law is being interpreted in a really strange way. Android has a major competitor with iOS. There's also the AOSP, so manufacturers can install Android without Google's branded software.
Manufacturers aren't prohibited from installing their own software, including software which serves the same functions as Google's options, so rival options aren't even chosen by Google - they're chosen by the manufacturers. And that's just the original install... users can choose their own browser, or other apps.
So, there's not a monopoly, and no restriction of choices, so I'm just not seeing the problem here.
They would never do that because their presence is the only reason why there are no competitors.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
They don't have to build it, all they have to do is work their laws so that there is a healthy competitive market where companies are not allowed to subsidize their capabilities with behavior that they don't want, or at least the effect of such behavior is mitigated with penalties. That is exactly what they are doing. If a company makes billions of dollars violating the laws then what is the motivation to create an honest company locally?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Except that paying the fine does not mean they get a waiver from the law. They have to pay the fine, and modify their business practices to comply with the law in the future.
What is the motivation for anyone to start a company when they will be clobbered by the one not following the laws?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
> if a manufacturer of an Android phone wants to offer different search engine options, Google should not interfere with that.
Google doesn't interfere with that.
Manufacturers are free to use Android through the AOSP. Amazon did this - their Fire phones didn't include Google's Play Store or other Google branded software.
If manufacturers want to include Google's suite of apps, they aren't restricted from also including rival apps.
Users are also able to choose different options both for the browser and search engine within the browser. Users want to use Google apps, manufacturers know this, so that's what the manufacturers include. If anything, the EU should be fining the manufacturers for not including other apps, or users for choosing to use Google apps.
The EU keeps changing the rules. and in this case are interpreting the law in a very out of the ordinary way. google is not a monopoly. nor is android. there's no lock-in. there's no restriction of choice.
they're punishing a grocery store, for having it's own sale advertisements inside their own store. they're punishing a gas station for selling their own brand of gas and soda. they're penalizing a veterinary service, for having their own prices and supplies listed on the wall. it's an -actual- insane interpretation of the law, and google should call them on it and pull out of the eu.
Here's a list of competitors - each are only a click away:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Amazon made the Fire phone, which included Amazon's app store. Developers could upload their apps to this store as well. Have an Android phone? You can install Amazon's app store. Here's a link:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/...
Did I just save Google $2.8B?
I think Google should charge for any of their ad supported services and software when they're not allowed to advertise through them. Charge for search, charge for Android, etc. If Google gets fines and can't collect revenue then the users should pay for the services and software.
You're assuming that:
1) search can be profitable while respecting privacy law or not (seems possible, but not necessarily a given)
2) that search can be effective while respecting privacy (this seems even more likely, but not a given).
The other scenario that could happen is that search becomes a subscription and/or is ineffective and twitter, Facebook, reddit, etc become how to find things. Closer to web directory era yahoo than a search engine.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Manufacturers aren't prohibited from installing their own software, including software which serves the same functions as Google's options
Except that if you want to install any Google apps, then you must install the entire suite and if you want to install competing apps then there are different licensing terms that cost more. And if you don't then it's impossible for your customers to install most third-party software because Google has managed to achieve an effective monopoly on distribution of most Android apps. And if you do install the Play store then you also need Play services, which run with insane permissions and hook into almost every app installed from Play.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
How much market share do the Fire phones have? Is it enough that Google isn't an effective monopoly? How many apps are not available via the Amazon store that are available via Google Play?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Where, except in the EU, do people buy Android phones worth > $500?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There are no socialist countries in the EU.
And if there where: it would not prevent anyone to compete with Google.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
But that's the beauty of the internet.
There is NO barrier from right now, someone creating their own search engine and offering it up in place of Google.
No regulation changes required.
They would have a difficult time competing with Google right now, due to being late to the game, likely not having the finances in place to create world wide server farms and all to handle the traffic, nor the long term knowledge base for algorithms, etc.
But, there is NOTHING in place now to prevent a start up from trying to compete.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
While I *do* think here in the US we should have greater privacy laws.....YOU lost me as a foreigner advocating to lobby US on how to create or manage our laws.
WFT should you care or try to lobby how WE govern ourselves, it has fuck all to do with anyone outside our country how we wish to govern ourselves.
If a US company like google, obeys our laws, but that doesn't chime with your laws, then kick that company OUT of your country, but leave us alone with our own domestic laws.
We couldn't really give a fuck how the laws of your country are set...if you're happy with them, fine. I don't want to change how your govern yourselves...so, please don't even give OUR ways we govern ourselves a 2nd thought.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
it's still noise level...
nothing to see here - move along
Well, they seem to be just changing the laws under them over and over again...becoming more onerous each time.
Yep, companies keep doing increasingly dickish things os the EU regulations get tighter.
This is like the EU is trying to step up and dictate what a private company's business model is.
Yep the EU is dictating that being massive asshats is not a valid business model. I'm cool with that.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yeah, those edit buttons are extremely handy arenâ(TM)t they?
-- Cheers!
Because Google can do that much better. But companies that donâ(TM)t adhere to EU laws get fined. Also EU based companies, like Apple for instance.
-- Cheers!
You forgot to mention how awesome you are because you're an independent contractor and you have a gun taped to the underside of your dining table and how you claim deductibles on your hobbies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Bullshit. Itâ(TM)s just that American companies tend to think they own the whole fucking pkanet, like all Americans do.
-- Cheers!
Thatâ(TM)s normal. If you get a ticket for speeding and pay the fine, are you allowed to go full throttle everywhere you go? Thought not.
-- Cheers!
They did exist but Nokia killed them in a succesful suicide attempt.
-- Cheers!
We donâ(TM)t. We pay them in euros or pounds or other European money. Never in dollars.
-- Cheers!
Europe has plenty of competitive web services. You just don't know what they are because they aren't aimed at you.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This has been in the works for the better part of a decade. The EU agreed some changes with them, but they didn't happen. This is really the last resort.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Unless there's a patent blocking it.
See the EFF's list of missing products.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
would it just be more profitable to stay away from the EU
So just to be clear what you're saying is that staying away from a rich market twice the size of the USA is more profitable because of measly $2.8bn fine? I take it you've never actually seen a financial report before. You know that fine is less than Google's EU tax avoidance scheme right? A company that made $26bn last year, a large chunk of which was in EU business.
But yeah, let's make knee jerk reactions about something which we know nothing about because of ${scarybignumber}
If the EU wants a search without the things Google offers and requires of its users, why don't they just build a state sponsored service
I'm going to go with anti-trust abuse, you know ... kind of the entire point which you are complaining about.
Looks to me like google isn't just a US company: https://www.google.com/about/l...
Cheap storage VM.
What is preventing the EU from coming up with a better: hardware combination? Better search engine? Better operating system?
Monopolies abusing their power?
Yeah. Makes more sense for them to just jack up the price of their services in Europe, anyway, and pass the cost of the fine on to consumers.
The lack of a barrier is the PROBLEM with the internet. The only hope for a small company looking to compete with Google is to identify a niche to protect them from Google; otherwise it is automatically a non-starter. You can't make yourself a distinctive product with no areas of the internet that are in themselves distinctive. Adding regulations, such as severely hampering Google's ability to do business in the EU, and therefore having smaller companies that specialize in the EU, is the only way to both encourage small companies to form and to encourage innovation. A person could start a search engine that pays more attention to European needs I suppose but that's not likely to be compelling on its own and once successful it is very easy for Google to simply emulate without the wants and needs of a nation enforced with laws.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So, which country in the EU is socialist?
And which socialist country has laws that block companies from competing with google?
Fuck off? Fuck yourself you uneducated clod.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
When you have a business, providing a distinctive service is absolutely key. As a consumer I am not compelled to use any of them. What makes these other services distinctive enough from Google that ordinary internet users would go out of their way to use them? I've never heard anyone say, "Wow Yahoo provides such wonderful search results compared to Google". I don't like Google as a company, but yet I use them all the time because they are convenient; time is most important to me and at the end of the day Google is the easiest. And no I am not compelled to become an internet search crusader. I'm not sure if there is anywhere left in the search field to really be distinctive enough to win users because the playing field is just too level. I welcome Yahoo to reach me and convince me how their search results are better for me, but I feel they would have already if they truly knew how they were.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
iOS has a small market share, it does not offer all of the same functionality and it is only offered through a single hardware vendor. It's not truly a competitor. Moreover, from the point of the phone vendor, which is where Google abused its monopoly, it is not an alternative atall: Apple doesn't offer iOS to third parties.
WTF did /. link the Axios summary?
Why stop there? Link the reddit link.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I like the E.U. even less
That's a rather broad brush. Do you hate people too? Old buildings? Good music? No speed limit? Just asking.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
With a $2.8B fine, and another that could be higher, would it just be more profitable to stay away from the EU where they appear to keep their economy afloat via litigation (gross overgeneralization, but you know what I mean)?
The US is the most litigious country in the world, where people can make millions by getting their lips burned by a hot cup of coffee at starbucks, which is why the US is plastered with ridiculous warning signs all over the place. So I guess you know best.
But it is good that you're being a real patriot defending the honor of US companies against blackmailing and leeching EU bureaucrats. Too bad Google is not very patriotic and moving all of their billions in revenue through Ireland to pay almost nothing in taxes... anywhere else.
Chump Change! Sergy Brin has that in loose change in his couch on his mega yacht.
Great, then they should have no issue with this and the next fine will need to be bigger.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Manufacturers aren't prohibited from installing their own software, including software which serves the same functions as Google's options
Except that if you want to install any Google apps, then you must install the entire suite and if you want to install competing apps then there are different licensing terms that cost more. And if you don't then it's impossible for your customers to install most third-party software because Google has managed to achieve an effective monopoly on distribution of most Android apps. And if you do install the Play store then you also need Play services, which run with insane permissions and hook into almost every app installed from Play.
How is this any different than Apple? You don't have an option of not installing Apple apps on any of their mobile devices, and they most certainly have an effective monopoly on distribution of most iOS apps. Or will your response simply be that Apple has less market share so its ok for them to have a monopoly on app distribution and provide no ability to run iOS without Apple apps?
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Cheaper to obey the law.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Android has a major competitor with iOS.
Classic misunderstanding of anti-trust. The legal yardstick is "market power" not "does Apple somehow manage to defend its sliver."
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
These billion dollar fines are a great way to keep the European government funded
It's a drop in the bucket. This is about attending to the interests of their citizens.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
that's 1/4th of one quarter's earnings...cost of doing business noise level
Apparent that you never ran a business or participated in one in any meaningful way.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This is why we need e.g. linux phones but they don't exist yet.
If there were sufficient demand for them, they would exist.
The manufacturing economies are not there. But a law requiring boot loader unlocking would fix that. Android can be cloned, it is freely available, Google prevents this from gaining traction by denying access to its software ecosystem. Another law would prevent that, there is considerable legal precedent for it. I sense, this is the direction it's going. Eurocrats may not now know what a boot loader is, but they soon will.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
wrongo again
nothing to see here - move along
Let's try some stuff here.
I was a developer at Opera. Until our company was mismanaged and driven into the ground by a profiteering board of directors hellbent on seeing ROI instead of long term growth through good products, we did make a better web browser than most. That wasn't EU but was Norway.
My drinking buddies worked for companies like Fast Search and Transfer which was consumed by Microsoft and ended up working on Bing... I know that's not really a better search engine... in fact it's horrible. I searched for "When is mother's day" on it using Cortana the other day and it returned nothing but incest porn links. So I'll assume it has a few bugs or that Bing is being use mostly by German politicians which is driving up ratings on certain web sites.
I heard of some operating system made by a Finnish guy... I can't remember his name or what the OS is called, but I'm sure someone around here may have heard of it.
Of course, there's also this Qt thing... made on the same floor of the same building as the Opera Web Browser. And the KDE thing which was made by a German guy who later worked at Qt. And oh... there's WebKit which was made by another German guy. And there's this thing called the World Wide Web made by Sir Timmy himself while working in Geneva.
There's also this chip thing called ARM which seems to be catching on. It's pretty much running the entire mobile and IOT world. And then there's Atmel who probably still sells more CPUs than the next 5 CPU producers combined.
Of course, for 10+ years the entire mobile phone market outside of the US was dominated by Nokia and Symbian... which to be fair was some of the worst software ever written, but it did have market dominance by a large scale.
Then there are things like major components you use. Like VideoLAN which is mostly french. There's GStreamer which is (or was) led by a Dutch guy.
There is plenty of stuff going on out here. I can write for a long time on the topic.
I am however against this lawsuit because I feel that it's nothing more than a fund raiser from the EU. In addition, they love to mention that Google lost the 2.3 billion euro. It says nothing about whether they've actually agreed to pay it or whether they decided it was cheaper to just waste more time in court. It's not like a credit reporting agency could really force them to pay. Could you imagine Dunn and Bradstreet lowering their rating over something like this?
Even if the EU fined Google 50 billion Euro, Google would just ignore it and move on. It's some piss-ant kid trying to build his resume by winning huge lawsuits against Google.
Let's be honest... even if Google did pay the 2.3 billion Euro... was that even a punishment to them? They can probably lose 5 billion every 10 years to the EU and it wouldn't make a difference to them. But also notice that no company... not Google, Apple or anyone else will ever pay a 2.3 billion euro fine and if they did, they'd pay it in pennies.
So the lawsuit is bullshit. They're doing it as a fund raiser. They're seeing how much money they can put in their coffers. Remember, if they win 2.3 billion Euro off of Google. So long as Google owes them that money, they can still spend it because they'll print the money (symbolically) and from a credit perspective justify it from the note.
Besides... it's not like they'll actually pay it... and if they do, they'll pay it over 50 years with a 0.1% interest rate.
Winning the money isn't the same as collecting it and I'm pretty sure it costs less than 2.8 billion euro to run the collectors around in circles for a few decades.
This story is about EU.
That is exactly what they are doing. Google can either work with EU, or it has to leave the EU.
I wouldn't even "turn it off" for the EU, just close all your offices in the EU, pull back to America and give the middle finger to the EU when they argue for compliance, just say "nope, we are an American company, we comply with US law alone, you have zero jurisdiction over us, if you want to implement a China like firewall to block us that's on you but we won't help you censor your own people"
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Google already got crushed in China and effectively contained in Russia. If it loses EU, it's left with Americas, Africa and some parts of Asia.
And anything that is created to fill the void left by google will rapidly grow to be able to compete with google, as we have seen with tencent's services in Asia and yandex in Russia.
Nonsense.
What can the EU or the US government possibly do to Google now?
Will they fine them?
How will they collect it?
Will they split them up?
How would they actually force that to happen?
Will they arrest the leadership?
How fast would Google bury the courts in so much paper and lawsuits that it would cost tax payers 10 times more money than the EU is asking just to process it?
Will they launch a political war on Google?
How exactly would the leadership of those countries stay in office if Google search results returned nothing but negative information about those leaders?
I get the feeling you don't realize just how big Google really is. Apple may be richer, but Google is way bigger than any company in the history of the world. They make IBM at their absolute largest look like a peanut shell next to an elephant.
What percentage of the entire world's infrastructure does Google currently own/run?
What would happen to the Internet if Google turned off their CDN and their sub-sea links?
These are just the little things.
If you break them up, how many of those smaller companies could earn enough money to be in business?
What would the impact of those lost services/products be?
Yeh... Size does matter. If Google pays the fines or complies with EU law, it will be purely to be nice.
This is literally how Tencent and Baidu became the giants they are today. Tencent is bigger than facebook in terms of market cap last time I checked.
Pretty sure google really, REALLY doesn't want similar European giants to be formed, or even worse, cede the huge EU market to Chinese giants, effectively surrendering world leadership in search in the process.
These fines are not even one percent of the yearly budget (145bn EUR), as they're paid over many years.
It is for now. It's shrinking however as a portion of entire world and the path of decline doesn't seem to let up.
Ha ha ha ha ...
You must have had a bad school education ...
However you have a nice nick, if the /. number would be 6502, I would consider to buy it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Just sign a blank check and hand it to the EU. Someone has to pay for all that free healthcare and college. You can call it "pre-fines" to hedge against laws that will be passed in the future. As long as Google can make $1 after all the fines, there's no real problem.
And you think that 6% of annual earnings is noise? Don't make me laugh, poser, you never read an income statement in your life.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Yeah, those nasty regulators, stopping me and Vito from protecting our local shopkeepers against damage to their businesses.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
The EU is fining Google for abusing their monopoly, not for the simple fact of being a monopoly.
Eat the rich.
The N900 was one. The N900 was even a bit popular, but then Microsoft stepped in and bought Nokia. So yes, the demand is there. And no, corporations don't let it happen.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Yeah of course they will close their office in Ireland and then move the 100's of billions they stashed using the classic double irish, possibly with a dutch sandwich, back to the US to pay taxes. Although I am sure that their tax lawyers have alternatives planned for just that.
fully deductible...and, look at alphabet stock value over time...blip at best look at top line revenue, not earnings, to gauge impact note: I am not an investor in that stock
nothing to see here - move along
Suppose you were a small entrepreneur and come up with a great product. You start to manufacture it, and suddenly Microsoft (for example) comes along and says "I want a license to brand it in my name. I want to buy your company for your ideas/product. You don't want to sell. So what does Microsoft do. Given lots of $$$, they buy your product, copy it with a few changes (maybe even cheapening it or modifying it slightly), and suddenly, Microsoft is your competitor, selling a knock-off of your product under their name and brand. Two years later, you are out of business.
The European Union's objective is to level the playing field. If you are in business xyz, then do not, under xyz charter, also compete with abc,def,ghi... who are in different industries.
You, xyz has amounts of money your competition does not. You drive the competitor out of business via protracted lawsuits. If your corporate charter is for doing "search engines". then that's it. Do not, as your charter is defined, become a hardware manufacturer which also makes products that divulge every purchasing action you make, or social contact you meet to discuss.
Wow, almost sounds like the POTUS effect is what they are guarding against.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Right, you're not an investor, you're an idiot. Money isn't free, deductible or not.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
you go right on believing that...who do you think pays them? hint - not the investor.
nothing to see here - move along
Bing, Ask.com, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go, Yandex, Baidu.
What is google supposed to do, slow down on indexing and making things better so that their competitors can catch up?
Thought everyone had enough sense to get out of that. The EU isn't serving Europe's best interest.
Always wondered about it. They had a vote years ago and it seems to me they didn't have enough votes to ratify the EU as an entity. Didn't hear what happened though they still seem to be here.
If they didn't have any business presence in the EU they wouldn't be able to make any money there so why would they run the search engine at all? Google needs the EU more than vice versa.
Socialism is banned under EU rules. Unlike the US, which leads the world in protectionism and government subsidies for corporations.
What if Google has most of the market because they make a better product for less money?
That depends. Are they making it for less money because they're subsidising it with income from other products? If so, it may count as dumping and so is illegal (for good reason: it means that no company that doesn't have an independent revenue stream can compete).
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