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Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

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Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#81

Post by pdkl95 »

cm2187 wrote: post #37
AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does indeed need to be broken up, but much less than Microsoft. Google has actually done good for the whole world with their open source initiatives, opening of webm, etc - plus all(?) of their products are easily replaceable, unlike say windows which has exclusive programs written for it.

I don't define surveillance capitalism as "good for the world".

I suggest that anybody downvoting this read this[1] article for a surprisingly comprehensive overview of how Google et al are ruining democracy and (mostly-)free society as they shift our economy from the traditional forms of capitalism that were built on mass-production, finance, etc into ^surveillance capitalism^ based on omnipresent surveillance and behavioral manipulation.

The social, political, and economic damage Google is causing as one of the leading forces pushing the world into surveillance capitalism vastly outweighs the "good" derived from a few technical trivialities.

[1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and...

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#82

Post by Dylan16807 »

kypro wrote: post #69
Dylan16807 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very small cost that all companies should already be able to handle if they're to be trusted with personal data.

It's absolutely not a small cost. It cost the last startup I worked for around two weeks of development time, plus in many cases it prevents us (or adds massive restrictions) on collecting contact information from leads. It has certainly affected the bottom line of companies like Facebook and Google, but they can afford to take the hit, not all startups can. I'm not really disagree that companies "should" do it. But…

I'm not sure how to react to you implying that it hurts small companies more than big companies, and that it's an impediment to scaling.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#83

Post by kerng »

martin_a wrote: post #19
feketegy wrote: post #10

Then look at GDPR, which is a mess imho, and article 13 too

GDPR is quite good actually, we will just need to find a way to use its power for good.

Agreed. I think it's one of the biggest privacy achievements ever. We have been seeing a tremendous normalization of defiance with how user data is frequently unknowingly misused and it's time for correcting this. GDPR is a good start, hopefully US soon follows.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#84

Post by wlll »

kypro wrote: post #69
Dylan16807 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very small cost that all companies should already be able to handle if they're to be trusted with personal data.

It's absolutely not a small cost. It cost the last startup I worked for around two weeks of development time, plus in many cases it prevents us (or adds massive restrictions) on collecting contact information from leads. It has certainly affected the bottom line of companies like Facebook and Google, but they can afford to take the hit, not all startups can. I'm not really disagree that companies "should" do it. But…

I'll take my data being protected over your ability to scale any day, and remember, if a US company wants to do business with EU citizens they still need to comply.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#85

Post by matt4077 »

kierenj wrote: post #35

I was wondering where funds from such a fine go: "Fines imposed on companies found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers."

That happens to most fines, everywhere.

In case this is in accusation of corrupt practices aimed to increase the EU budget, note:

- Fines account for - The EU budget is relatively small compared to national governments' budgets. EU: 150 billion, Germany + France + UK = 5 Trillion (5,000 billion). That's leaving out 24 smaller economies. National governments have a lot of input in the decision-making process and couldn't care less about a billion here or there. Especially if it risks impacting perceived rule of law.

- In any large bureaucracy, individual decision makers have incentive structure that often diverge fundamentally from those of the organisation as a whole. A prosecutor will have no financial or career advantage tied to the EU's finances. In this specific example, the commissioner responsible (Vestager) is somewhat likely to leave the commission after the May elections anyway, because of another pro-competition decision that was decidedly more important and not appreciated by France and Germany, namely prohibiting the Siemens and Alstom merger.

If you sum up all the fines collected by continent, you will see that (a) EU companies pay fines roughly equivalent to their share of economic activity in the EU, (b) Asian companies pay comparatively more, and (c) US companies are actually fined far less than their share of the economy would suggest. The most likely explanation is that rather high standards of enforcement and corporate governance in the US require less EU intervention.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#86

Post by chewz »

perttir wrote: post #23

That's small money for the Google. Last year they gave Google €4.34bn fine and in year 2017 they gave Google €2.42bn fine.

It seems like EU's policy of retribution on Big Tech for US fining European banks.

https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/european-banks-face-dispro...

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#88

Post by cbg0 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #70
yulaow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fine is only part of the EUC action, the fined entity has also the obligation to change their behavior as suggested by EUC to stop asap their abusive actions.

How do you reconcile this with the knowledge they’ve been fine $x billion every year for the past 3 years (at least?)? At what point does Big Corp run out of things to abuse? If the fines just become a cost of doing business the finance and legal teams can probably get creative and invent new ways of mashing up old abuses over time. I think the underlying theme here, then, is that the fines are necessary but not suff…

There's nothing really stopping the EU from making the fines larger if they don't correct their behavior. The point of a fine like this isn't to completely cripple a company, but to make it understand that there are very real consequences.

It's very simplistic to look at their yearly revenue and say they can just absorb it. If the money they made off of an activity like this was less than the fine, absorbing it won't make sense.

Re: Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

#90

Post by Semaphor »

chii wrote: post #73
askmike wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It applies to everyone who wants to serve EU customers. As for startups: depending on what kind of personal data you are collecting, being GDPR complicit shouldn't take more than a day. If it takes longer you are building a business around personal data, and I think you should know your stuff (not just GDPR, but also what kind of data you are collecting and why).

> being GDPR complicit shouldn't take more than a day. either you're overly optimistic, or you have some 100x rock star doing the impl. because it took over 1 year to implement all of the GDPR required features for me, and we don't even store that much private data!

> it took over 1 year to implement all of the GDPR required features for me

> we don't even store that much private data!

What do you store? Because I can't imagine what would take that long.

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