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Trump Slams EU Over $5 Billion Fine on Google (reuters.com)
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized the European Union and said the bloc was taking advantage of the United States, pointing to the record $5 billion fine European antitrust regulators imposed on Google. From a report: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House next Wednesday to discuss trade and other issues. "I told you so! The European Union just slapped a Five Billion Dollar fine on one of our great companies, Google. They truly have taken advantage of the U.S., but not for long!" Trump said in a post on Twitter .
... but I agree on this. Sure, google made the manufacturers install their apps, but so what? They got the OS for free and thats the whole point. Its not the same as MS making people pay for their OS but still forcing OEMs to install their shit.
Google has to make money out of android somehow and if they can't do it via the play store or some other method they'll simply start charging for the OS itself.
Its exactly the same as what happened when people starting bitching about various bank charges. So now the banks dropped the charges and instead a lot of them charge you a flat fee just to have an account. Nice going people, thanks for that.
The US fining VW within an inch of bankruptcy over emissions had nothing to do with this fine on Google I am sure.
He thinks his sanctions are going to really hurt the economies of their targets and force them to come to the negotiating table and agree to new trade agreements with terms much more favorable to the U.S than currently existing agreements. What he's referring to here is obviously the future after the EU bows to his sanctions and agrees to new trade agreements that prevent them from levying sanctions against american companies for breaking their laws.
Only problem with this "brilliant" plan is that the European leadership knows exactly what the purpose behind the sanctions is and in the case of Junker and Macron have even publicly stated that they can see this and won't come to the negotiating table while the sanctions are still in place.
As for why he's using sanctions in particular is that it's about the trade deficit he's obsessed with he knows that sanctions against countries and blocks that the U.S has a trade deficit with will be more effective than any return sanctions they may impose on him instead. This is the only part of it that makes any kind of sense, but it's kind of negated by the fact that the targets can retaliate trough alternative means like refusing to recognize U.S physical or intellectual property rights, which then swings the balance in their favor.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
The EU has to regulate their markets in a way that suits their needs. There's no universal principle which dictates how to regulate a capitalist economy. There's no "one size fits all" solution.
Most US Presidents can hardly manage their own economy. I hardly think they are qualified (or have sufficient information) to make a call for a foreign economy.
If Google was found in violation in the EU- it's their call. Google can negotiate.
Trump, might be considered to be defending one of our companies. Though the action is only impressive if the observer is totally clueless.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
The real smoking gun for Google is that they forbid phone makers from releasing *any* android phone that is not on their Google Play platform. If a company wanted any Google Play supported phone, they *all* had to be Google Play phones. That's a big no no and obvious abuse of Monopoly power.
However.... just like the time Microsoft was forced to stop dictating what software is pre-installed on PC's, government regulation here is just going to make things worse for consumers. For all it's faults and obscene privacy invasion, Google is a relatively benign overlord. If they loose the ability to dictate how phones are pre-configured, the end result will not be a utopia of phone carefully pre-configured to protect end-user privacy. It will be phone makers selling out and pre-configuring phones with malicious advertisement hijacking search engines, and app repositories stuffed with even more malware than Google's Play store.
"One of our great companies"
Yep, one that played a key role in turning us into a surveillance society, where your children and especially grand children will grow up knowing nothing but mass surveillance and think "privacy" only applies to other individuals (not corporations) -- as they were taught by their masters.
Hey idiot, do you understand that Google are the ones who are taking advantage of everybody on the fucking planet, including your own stupid ass?
I love Google, but what they did was textbook abuse of a monopoly. They established a monopoly, and then used that monopoly to force their other products onto consumers and companies. That's just a textbook version of abusing your monopoly power. Then they also made the mistake of not just doing that, but forcing major corporations with massive lobbying power like Samsung to ship their products. EU regulates competition tightly, and enforces this against EU companies just as fiercefully as against US companies. Google could have seen this one coming from miles. They probably just thought this type of fine and ruling was a fair price to pay for it.
8GB is not "nothing", and buying a $900 phone to replace a year old $600 phone is not a smart financial decision.
I'd be surprised if the Android operating system has exceeded the 8GB capacity limits, though it may be close. I suspect that the 32GB SD card the GP has is largely empty and unused. Methinks there is more to the story,...
You are giving el Presidente Tweetie too much credit. In his mind, the R voters don't like free trade agreements (they haven't yet lost jobs by losing those) and he can understand one number...at a time. The Big Number he's capable of understanding is the trade deficit number, but only as a number. He gets nothing else about trade because he has a mercantilism view of trade. He also knows that he can use that number in tweets and those go well with big stupid numbers and Fox...well they would seeing as they are essentially a mouth-organ for sound bites that his base likes.
Couple that with his distorted view to bargaining between nations which he figures should be just like bargaining for investment dollars. He bargained by promoting a dream that made the foolish banks and others bet money on him. His 4-6 bankruptcies showed how foolish that is. However, governments do not work like that, at least mature European governments and some Asian governments. They see trade as being something much more complicated, which it is.
When Trump doesn't get people or governments to give what he wants, he acts like the 15 year he is. He resorts to threats. It's worked for him before when he was holding other peoples money and they wanted to withdraw it. He threatens them with a loss. He doesn't really have a loss to threaten anyone with here except his trade deficit number. But since he never understood what that number represented beyond just a number, he ascribes to it all sorts of magical properties which translates in his mind of governments giving him what he wants.
They don't though - they're no more a US company that any other international corporation. They have offices and data centers all over the world, and the always popular Irish tax-dodging offices to hide their profits.
If they don't want to comply with EU law, they're quite welcome to simply not do business in the EU - geoblocking is quite simple, and the EU can block them as well. But that would means giving up all the profit from selling ads targeting Europeans.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Betcher ass, more tariffs.
Look, Trump walks into the G7 and, as 1st order of business, he says, "Lets drop all the tariffs, 100%." The others just look at each other, and said, "Lets move on to the next subject." The fact is that when we tariff something at 2.5%, they're tariffing our stuff at 25%. That's not free trade, its UNfair trade. Trump wants Fair Trade, because free trade is not possible - the others won't give up their tariffs.
It's the same situation in a different jurisdiction. Because of all the trade treaties and agreements, many world governments are, for all intents and purpose, entangled to the point that we might as well have a "world government"... there is significant reciprocity between the jurisdictions that mutually benefit both (or at least benefit the ownership class in both areas). The real question here isn't why Trump is so angry at the EU, but why the US DOJ and FTC aren't aggressively pursuing the same type of case against Google.
I do not have a signature
No it is becoming tiring. Not one fucking article is free of someone from either side mentioning Trump. Every single day the biggest headline is what Trump said or did. Reddit is the worst because the entire site is dedicated to removing him from office. I looked at voat.co but its mostly tin foil hat conspiracy theorists who are stuck in the 1970s.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Did anybody ever tell you that you're a fucking moron?
This $5B is simple a "protection racket", just like the mob.
No. Google (much as I admire their products) broke the EU law. Maybe you could read up on the complaint, it's pretty clear. (The EU - unlike the US - has a history of not being a complete pushover to corporate interests.)
I'd agree that nothing the EU can do will "attack the base" of Trump. By definition his base believe what he says, so I don't think anything is going to change that.
FWIW, I believe that the Google fine is NOT politically motivated, so maybe I'm irrational too.
And he will continue to attempt and fail to bring jobs back from outside the country
Fixed that for you.
... because International trade is not a zero sum game, trade barriers harm American interests. Then I don't expect his base to understand that, but they will understand the mass unemployment that is coming their way as a result of his and your ignorance of Economics 101.
While the targets, such as the EU, Japan, the rest world with trade more with each other.
EU signs its biggest free trade deal with Japan
Except Intel which got away with just a 1B fine for stifling the hell out of AMD (and some people believe Intel are still doing that) and Intel was a bloody monopoly and they abused their monopoly to hell.
Meanwhile Google doesn't stifle anyone (yes, they push Google search and Google Chrome but you're free not to use them ever if you have them on your phone preinstalled) yet is hit with a five times larger fine.
I'm sorry, the EU advocates: this 5B fine is simply insane and mostly inappropriate.
Listen, EU, Android is not your adversary. Android is not a monopoly even though over 80% of smartphones run it. Various Android OEMs compete with each other and compete with Apple. Android is simply an OS which is useful for them and given to them mostly for free. Try creating an Android alternative and have people buy your devices. Let's see how it worked for Nokia under Stephen Elop. Oh, it didn't. Let's see how it works for Samsung and their Tizen OS. Oh, and once there was FirefoxOS.
Google isn't an American company anymore. In order to facilitate tax dodging they made themselves an Irish company.