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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 .
Thank you, Mr. Putin, we already know what you think.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Nobody in the EU is saying that Google charging for Android is a bad thing. They are saying that illegal trade practices like forcing certain services and applications upon vendors of smartphones, is a bad thing.
If Google must charge for Android in order not to do that, then charge for Android.
Yeah Google are such patriots they moved their whole operations to Ireland to avoid contributing anything to the USA, combined with their little Luxembourg sandwiches meaning Trumps secretary probably contributes more, hence your infrastructure is crumbling around you while certain individuals make out like the bandits they are
LOL MAGA
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.
>So they can continue this practice indefinitely and just pay the tax if they want.
That's pretty much standard for corporations, regardless. Fines are pretty much the only punishments applicable to corporations, short of dissolving their charter or banning them from doing business.
So, corporation breaks law, corporation gets fined, corporation pays fine and continues breaking the law because paying the fine is more profitable than obeying the law - that's how it's been done the world over for decades - Microsoft was notorious for that. The EU seems to have taken the lead however in establishing future fines as well, so that the company doesn't have to be re-sued for continuing to break the law, they just automatically get continuing fines so long as they're not in compliance, which increases their cost and decreases costs on the legal system.
I would like to see it go a step further myself. Say a 10% increase for every month they continue to break the law. Make sure their bean counters can see the oncoming storm of exponential growth looming in the future, so that they have serious incentive to set things right, rather than just regarding it as an overhead cost of doing business.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I bet you have never held an original thought in your life. Waiting for someone to tell you into what to think?
Thank you, Mr. Trump, we already know what you think.
EU has always been tough on companies. They do the same to EU companies. It is just that the US companies somehow like to do this much more in public than the EU companies who like to keep this behind closed doors.
In July 2016, the Commission fined MAN, Volvo/Renault, Daimler, Iveco, and DAF a total of 2.93 billion euros for forming a cartel and colluding on truck prices for 14 years
In November 2008, several car glass producers were hit with a cartel fine for illegal market sharing and exchanging commercially sensitive information.
French firm Saint-Gobain received the largest fine of 880 million euros, while U.K. firm Pilkington was hit with a fine of 357 million euros. Japanese company Asahi's fine was reduced by 50 percent to 113.5 million due to leniency, while Blegium's Soliver received a fine of just 4.4 million euros.
Spanish telecom Telfonica received a fine of 151 million euros in July 2007 for setting unfair prices for five years in the Spanish broadband market, according to the Commission.
French drugs giant Servier, Teva and five other drug companies were fined â427.7 million in July 2014 for colluding to delay the introduction of a generic version of perindopril, a popular blood pressure treatment.
And there are more.
That said, the fines are also based on the companies revenue and as the US ones are generally bigger, they get the bigger fines.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The problem here is Samsung, not Google. Android has had the ability to use the SD card as extended storage, rather than a separate drive, since version 7 (maybe 6, can't remember the exact version); Samsung purposely disabled the feature claiming (wrongly, I use it) that it leads to performance issues.
Google implemented exactly what you want. They just didn't force Samsung to not disable the feature.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.