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Google Fined Nearly $1.7 Billion For Ad Practices That Violated European Antitrust Laws (washingtonpost.com)
European regulators on Wednesday slapped Google with a roughly $1.7 billion fine on charges that its advertising practices violated local antitrust laws, marking the third time in as many years that the region's watchdogs have penalized the U.S. tech giant for harming competition and consumers. The Washington Post: Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's top competition commissioner, announced the punishment at a news conference, accusing Google of engaging in "illegal practices" in a bid to "cement its dominant market position" in the search and advertising markets. The new penalty adds to Google's costly headaches in Europe, where Vestager now has fined the tech giant more than $9 billion in total for a series of antitrust violations. Her actions stand in stark contrast to the United States, where regulators -- facing a flood of complaints that big tech companies have become too big and powerful -- have not brought a single antitrust case against Google or any of its peers in recent years, reflecting a widening transatlantic schism over Silicon Valley and its business practices.
Nothing will change until some of the higher-ups at these big tech companies are jailed, or killed.
#FuckGoogle
Probably more than $1.7 billion.
So evil is rewarded again.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavor you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimize doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Google needs to push its weight around. Time to go dark. Let see how well European companies do without Google.
Her actions stand in stark contrast to the United States, where regulators -- facing a flood of complaints that big tech companies have become too big and powerful -- have not brought a single antitrust case against Google or any of its peers in recent years, reflecting a widening transatlantic schism over Silicon Valley and its business practices.
No matter where you're from, it seems likely there exists more animus against a successful foreign company dominating a local market.
In the US, for instance, our current angst with Chinese domination in certain tech areas is rearing its ugly head as persecution of Huawei.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Oh, wait.
For our own selfish business needs (long gone is Don't be Evil)
Unlike other, more "patriotic" international corporations, Google won't be getting the standard merkin "The Europeans are just STEALING from US corporations!!!" because Google, most especially through Youtube, have banned fellow anti-everything-not-merkin nutjob Alex Jones, so those who normally HATE anything that harms corporations that they know as American won't care about THIS one, since it is a target they hate.
I'm not going to waste my mod points on this. You're clearly have no idea what the legislation regarding this really says.
Yeah, cause google has never actually done anything wrong /sarcasm
Invest in the EU and face new EU taxes and new regulations.
Invest in the USA and enjoy the freedom to grow your brand globally.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You idiots are genuinely surprised that big corps aren't reined in in the U.S.?
The corporations OWN the bureaucrats, so why would they worry? Their lapdogs will never bite them, and they know it.
They pay enough for them.
People try other search engines all the time and get a little less in the results than Google returns so people go back to google for a little while and then try another search engine again. One day, another search engine will return a better list than google and it will be all over for good. And the mass firings will start and families who trusted Google suddenly find nobody will return their calls except debt collectors. It can all happen in a day.
The EU annual budget is roughly €150 billion. That comes from a handful of countries who are net contributors, (the UK is the third biggest contributor). Fining US corporations is a fairly painless way to boost the budget.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
US corporations won't be fined if they don't break the law. What is the point of having laws if you don't uphold them?
Unlike the US, there are still places in Europe where size, wealth and power don't provide immunity from prosecution when a corporation violates the law.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
... in the US barely registers. Corporations are in charge, and politics is broken by corporate money and lobbying. In Europe, things are not great either, but still significantly better.
The EU needs money, everyone knows that, where do they turn, where there is huge piles of it of course. They will bilk Google until they're gone. If Google is smart they will leave the EU.
The EU needs to die and they need to stop regulating these businesses to death. These so called politicians don't represent the people.
Find a European company that actually has 9 billion and fine them in response. Do this till Europe cuts the crap.
Article is hidden behind a cookie wall in violation of GDPR because they are trying to force consent for personal tracking... Hope someone complains to the respective authorities and the publication is slammed with a fine as well
...on my feed. But three times?
Why does /. suck as much as Duke?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
From everything I can find, the EU was investigating VW at the same time as the US. The first indications of a problem were found at roughly the same time in Europe and in the US, and the fines levied were similar on both sides of the ocean. So yes, they were "investigating their own".
I moved completely away from anything Google awhile ago, because Google appears to be company with very little ethical standards much like Facebook. Make money as much as possible for itself and don't worry about casualties. Chrome is a good browser, but not worthy of what I loose just to use it.
That's the danger of relying on Fox News. You get fed shit that ranks high on "outrage", instead of actual information. Then you go on rants on the Internet in front of an international audience and look like a total ass.
Unlike the US, there are still places in Europe where size, wealth and power don't provide immunity from prosecution when a corporation violates the law.
The thing is, in the US regulators are designed and tasked with protecting US companies from prosecution, as we've seen with the FAA, Boeing and the 737-MAX fiasco. This means they assume that everywhere else is the same. Its quite inconceivable to some Americans that the EU applies the same rules and regulations to EU companies as they do to foreign ones, ergo in order to quell the congnitive dissonance there must be an anti-US conspiracy.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
except that isnt true.
When apple formed a cartel and illegally engaged in price fixing for ebooks they were given a slap on the wrist by the EU, and only the USA took action. Why, because in the cartel were Hachette (french) and Macmillan (German).
Its often see-no-evil when EU firms are involved in illegal activities.
The USA convicted a computer monopoly nearly 20 years ago; but since then has been unable to PUNISH the guilty. MS was convicted and never punished; if you call what they got punishment, you're a fool. (They paid a relatively tiny amount to bribe their way out from punishment.)
Even pedophiles go free if you are rich enough (and not black... that takes even more money.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Fining US corporations is a fairly painless way to boost the budget.
Errr horseshit. The law doesn't care about where corporations come from, and there's nothing painless about multi year protracted legal battles against incredibly wealthy and well resourced opponents.
Now here's a thought, rather than getting all upset that a USA based company is in trouble with a another country, instead point out how that USA based company actually complied with laws that have been on the books since the 60s (before the precious budget contributor of the UK even joined the EU).
Prof. Randy Picker at the Univ. of Chicago has a good course - Internet Giants: The Law and Economics of Media Platforms - that includes a fairly in depth look at the EU's history of fines against American tech companies in the guise of anti-competitive practices. Microsoft, 2004, $578 million, began a string of significant fines by the EU. They went after Intel, Apple, Google, et al. They had MS jump through hoops to satisfy the regulators. MS Media Player - nope, no good. MS web browser - nope no good either. Fine, fine and fine some more. The problem is, and has been, isolating just exactly who has been hurt. Europe had no domestic companies that Europeans might have preferred. Europe was slow to create a culture of computer and tech innovation. If it was there, it was poorly introduced and marketed. It's not enough to create a good, or even great, product if you're unable to collaterally create an equally good marketing strategy. The privacy issues are separate and apart from the anti-competitive rulings.
Are American companies aggressive in pursuit of profits? Of course they are. And why should they not be? We all have choices. And a lot of people world wide have chosen to use Google, Intel, Apple, Chrome, Android, Amazon and others. American innovation has brought enormous profits. That's the whole point of business. The mantra of 'do no harm' has, of itself, seemingly done a bit of harm. At least to Google. Evidently not to doctors.
I don't resent Jobs or Gates for doing something I couldn't do. I don't resent that they became wealthy and I did not. The EU regulators need a bit of introspection. And the EU is not simply a large, harmonic monoculture. In some respects, Barcelona has more in common with Austin or Silicon V than Paris when it comes to innovation. C'mon EU, either do or get off of the pot.
And I mean it in a serious way. 1:1 analogy. Ergo: The whole company goes to prison. Board, CEO, managers, employees, cleaning lady & janitor.
If you work for evil, and profit from evil, you hang with evil too.
"I was only following orders" didn't work at the Nürnberg trials either.
Cause those license keys sure cost work and material to make! ... *Unlike* with software. /s
That is why they are worth money that cost work to obtain.
Otherwise you could copy the money, just like software, and use the exact same "I worked HARD for that software/money, you pirates!" argument.
But the latter clearly is a crime, because a copy is not the same as the original. Nobody worked for the former. And having "selling" copies as a financing business model would not justify it not being a crime either.
So the issue that American companies are getting hit with fines by European governments isn't a thing? Seriously?
It is a thing, but only inside your own head. The size of the anti-trust fine is based on several factors, A fine of even 1% of revenue for a large company = "record" fines. But in actuality, its a pittance given the abuse of the market that Google has gotten away with for all these years.
Somehow the EU's vaunted investigations never find anything when it's their own companies.
Telefonica, Asahi, Saint-Gobain, Volvo, Daimler are not american companies AFAIK
http://ec.europa.eu/competitio...
To Recap:
1) You're a moron
2) You're wrong on the facts
3) You're morally and ethically bankrupt
Its often see-no-evil when EU firms are involved in illegal activities.
All of the EU commission fines target EU companies, because the companies that do the most amount of business in the EU are EU companies. US companies only make the news because dummies like you don't actually know whats happening in the 99% of cases. You've never read a EU antitrust commission report, you've never talked to anyone involved, you have done nothing except dump your stupid thoughts on the internet.
Unlike the EU, the right of the accused to know the exact nature and cause of the accusation against them is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The EU never told Google what they thought Google was doing wrong. Just that it was "anti-competitive." The way the EU handles these cases is they inform Google that they're facing an anti-trust judgement, but never state exactly what the problem behavior is. Google had to come up with a proposed solution, present it to the EU, and the EU rejected it without explaining why. Google then had to come up with a different proposal, present it to the EU, and the EU rejected that. Repeat until the deadline passed.
Don't misunderstand me Google probably did need to be taken down a peg or two. And this is the same crappy way Google treats people with their YouTube demonitization and account revocation. They'll punish you without ever explaining why you're being punished, pointing you to their generic list of suggested guidelines without bothering to explain which one you ran afoul of. But it's wrong when Google does it, and it's wrong when the EU does it. If you think someone or some company did something wrong, you need to tell them exactly what they did wrong so they can correct that behavior. You don't just say "you're wrong" and punish them.
....if Britain isn't going to, then SOMEONE has to start paying Brussels' bills!
-Styopa
Yeah. How dare they act like legitimate entites of our society. Not hyper-psychopatic monsters that literally consider *anything* legitimate for making profit, and see no point in morals, empathy or anything else that resembles actual fucking human behavior! (Aka Murican "legitimate business as usual".)
Why would google leave? They still make tons of money in the EU, even with this tiny fine. If they left some other company would fill the gap gain recognition knowledge and be able to compete in Googles other markets. You know the ones where they are allowed to be anticompetitive because the government doesn't give 2 shits about people.
Dont do business in that jurisdiction. Quite simple
The fines should have been bigger, and included jail terms for the senior executives.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So the corporate cancer google has become a monopoly, eh? What a shocking problem. Not.
In solution terms:
(1) The google can divide itself into competing companies.
(2) The parts improve faster because of REAL competition.
(3) PROFIT!
For simplicity, I left out a few intermediary steps. For example, the part about how we would get more freedom by having more choice (which can be implemented even if many (or even most) people are too lazy to be more free). Also the step where the parent holding company (Alphabet, which already exists) can keep most of the enlarged profits as long as the competing companies honor their "Chinese walls".
Now to search the discussion to see if there are any constructive solutions on display. First let me adjust my expectations a bit lower. Down to the level of today's Slashdot...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Only mention of "solution" in the discussion (before mine), but no details. Guessing from the context, but I am willing to wager some quatloos it was NOT a real solution and I would like to see more details. Actually, from reading your comment again, it is not clear that the google actually offered any pretense of a solution, which could certainly explain why you didn't offer a link to it.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Want to really scare the crap out of Google? Use your only power against them. Vote with your feet. Leave Google as a user. I've used DuckDuckGo ever since the James Damore firing.
Are there other alternatives?
EU trying to stay relevant with their laws and big fines. Hoping to get some of that money!
It would have been nice if the summary had listed key reasons leading to sanctions. Even the article itself takes it time before finally spelling them out:
Google for a time prohibited those third-party sites [that used Google’s AdSense for Search] from using rival ad services, then required prominent placement of its own ads. (...) “There was no reason for Google to include these restrictive clauses in their contracts except to keep rivals out of the market,” Vestager [(the European Union’s top competition commissioner)] said at her news conference.
EU laws apply to EU companies and companies that operate in the EU. That is what they are, not a scheme against ultra-nationalist fantasies. Every day I find myself wanting the world to become truly multi-polar again, like it was before the fad of superpowers. This is already happening due to growth rates, the EU and China will soon be doing more business together than the US with both combined. The AU (African Union) is starting to shape up as a meaningful entity especially the smaller ECOWAS military cooperation, as is ASEAN with naval treaties and increased shipping security all doing better than every former colonial power. This time multi-polarity is going to be permanent and world-wide, based on local strength rather than colonial exploitation to support over-sized powers.
Why doesn't Google Legal Team flag these illegal contracts?
Casteism
Its often see-no-evil when EU firms are involved in illegal activities.
If you did a few seconds research you would see that many large well-connected EU companies have been fined significant amounts for anti-competitive practices. But I don't suppose that fits your 'narrative'.