Slashdot Mirror
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.
So far the EU has hit Google with about $9.3 billion in fines over the last 3 years.
Seems to be working SOOO well...
... Furthermore if the US repeated similar pro-consumer laws (instead of tossing their citizens under the bus of big corps) they'd REALLY not be in a good situation. But it won't happen. Republicans hate poor and middle class Americans. The Dems introduce legislation and the Repugs block it. Every single time.
Just stuff your partisan bullshit lies.
Democrats have done SHIT to reign in Google or Facebook - probably because those two fonts of evil are strong supporters of Democrats.
The Data Care Act would be one such item, introduced by DEMOCRATS. The Republicans are against it and claim it is "detrimental" to the "free market". And the fines are working. Right to be Forgotten, for example has had Google make massive changes to how they operate in the EU. GDPR changed how Google, Facebook, etc all operate in the EU. Democrats protect privacy and the consumer. Republicans not so much.
Congratulations, you've been fooled.
The Data Care Act was an abomination that would have gutted state-level privacy laws because of federal supremacy:
(2) DUTY OF LOYALTY.—An online service provider may not use individual identifying data, or data derived from individual identifying data, in any way that—
(A) will benefit the online service provider to the detriment of an end user; and
(B) (i) will result in reasonably foreseeable and material physical or financial harm to an end user; or
(ii) would be unexpected and highly offensive to a reasonable end user.
That's IT . That's fucking useless - and it would have overridden all state-level privacy laws.
And guess who gets to define "detriment"? The same damn bureaucracy that's subject to regulatory capture.
If Google were writing a law to "regulate" itself, they'd call it The Data Care Act.