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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

#101

Post by zaarn »

black_puppydog wrote: post #75
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."

sounds reasonable to me. this way, you get a disincetive to break antitrust rules for google, while not opening up a fight for shares of the money by their competitors afterwards. EUR 1.5b (~$1.7b) is a nice sum to fight over, after all. edit: of course, how big the disincentive is is up for debate. :P

1.5b€ isn't a lot; Germany + France + UK = 5 Trillion (5,000 billion) as a sibling comment mentioned. They don't care about 1 billion here or there.

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

#102

Post by throwaway808080 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #97
amelius wrote: post #28

With 500 million EU citizens, that's about €3 per person. This makes me wonder, how much does Google make from showing ads to one person?

About $8 billion revenue per quarter for EU + Middle East, let's say roughly 60% of people in Europe use the internet and > 90% of them use Google. Therefore: 8,000,000,000 / (500,000,000 * 0.9 * 0.6) = $29.63 per person revenue per quarter. Could be as much as +- $10 given how arbitrary (research based, but still guesswork) my inputs were... Somewhere around $100 per person per year seems insane but I guess how much…

That $100/person isn’t spending by individual users. They are spent by companies advertising and paying for clicks.

Guess how many times an average person clicks on an ad knowingly/unknowingly.

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

#103

Post by nilsocket »

One makes the law and then punish if somebody doesn't follow it.

It seems EU is digging laws to earn money from American companies.

It's very weird when EU punishes someone by digging up their past and without looking into oneself of the horrible atrocities one have done.

While in this case, it seems to make sense to say we aren't responsible for what's done in past.

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

#104

Post by wlll »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #64
wlll wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is GDPR a mess? As an EU citizen (for the time being at least) with personal data I want to protect I'm quite happy with it. As someone starting a startup there's compliance I need to do, and it's work for sure, but I still (again, for now) live in the EU as a citizen, and I still have personal data that I don't want to lose control of so on balance I'll take it. article 13 is bad for sure. They don't get everyth…

As a EU citizen I like my personal data protected. I left facebook and all other networks except Twitter and usually do not give data for any coupons in shops. GDPR is a mess not from the goal but the implementation. Currently no one knows how to implement GDPR correctly - e.g. how to exchange business cards, how to store information from sales leads etc. Compare this with PCI compliance (which is about CC data prote…

> Currently no one knows how to implement GDPR correctly - e.g. how to exchange business cards, how to store information from sales leads etc.

The only time I've seen it be a problem for people is when they are playing fast and loose with people's data.

I mean, exchanging business cards is (I would suggest) in invitation to start a conversation. I'm not personally worried about that. It's definitely not an invitation to store my data in a leads database indefinitely though.

Does not being able to indefintely store people's data in your database without getting permission first make your life harder? Good, that's the point.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: _Codemonkeyism@ycombinator.com

To: Bob@from.accounting

Subject: Great chat!

Hey Bob, thanks for handing me your business card the other day, can I add you to our sales database? We will contact you whenver we think we have some suitable widgets.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

From: Bob@from.accounting

To: _Codemonkeyism@ycombinator.com

Subject: Re: Great chat!

Take a hike _Codemonkeyism! / Sure, go ahead!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

> Compare this with PCI compliance

I've done PCI compliance, it's largely bullshit IMO. It does certify compliance with something, but it's not a particularly useful way of working out wether a company is storing peoples data securely.

> but will lead to a lot of fines for companies that want to do everything the right way.

Well, we will have to see, but I doubt it. Sure, there will be companies that want to protect people's data, but can't for whatever reason (developer time etc.), but the solution there is "don't do it". If you can't secure people's data, don't store it. "It's a bit beyond our capabilities" isn't an excuse.

> Article 13 is the same mess. Good in intention of making YT pay for the content they use and which is copyright protected, but _impossible_ to implement in it's current form.

Yep, totally agree.

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

#105

Post by mhsabbagh »

isostatic wrote: post #89
amelius wrote: post #28

With 500 million EU citizens, that's about €3 per person. This makes me wonder, how much does Google make from showing ads to one person?

Hopefully far more than €3 a year. What price do we sell our personal data for?

The price of using Google.com, YouTube.com, Gmail.com and many many other services, for free.

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

#106

Post by zaarn »

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 does have some effect; rumors are that Google will start a Browser-Choice dialog similar to Microsoft on Android soon. [https://www.golem.de/news/android-google-fragt-nutzer-kuenft...]

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

#107

Post by mattmanser »

est31 wrote: post #54
okket wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a commentary in the German media in context of Brexit that I think really think sums the EU and her role in the world up nicely: "Brexit shows what we have in the EU. She clears up issues among neighbors, grating them into rules and sometimes unsatisfactory compromises. But she grates them small, in a civilized and peaceful way. That's her big achievement." (rough translation by me, sorry) https://twitter.c…

In Germany we say that the EU has replaced the battleground with the negotiation table. That's what it's got the Nobel peace prize for and I think it deserved it.

I don't think there was any prospect of war between the EU countries while the USSR was around, it seems folly to pin peace to an institution when it was a greater enemy that actually united us.

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

#108

Post by zaarn »

cbg0 wrote: post #88
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even if they absorb it, accounting for R&D and other expenses on a product, the profit margin could be sufficiently ruined for the entire product to no longer be viable or a competitor could take over the market easily.

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

#109

Post by swift532 »

metafunctor wrote: post #99
deugtniet wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely: google has a 2017 revenue of 109.65 Billion US dollars. that's up to 5 % (conversion rates guessed) of it's total REVENUE. This will hurt their profits even more. A fine of this magnitude really makes the difference between funding a new product / moonshot or not I figure.

Nah, I think 10x the fine and you're really starting to hurt.

50% of revenue sounds more like chopping off an arm or a leg than starting to hurt.

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

#110

Post by icebraining »

nilsocket wrote: post #103

One makes the law and then punish if somebody doesn't follow it. It seems EU is digging laws to earn money from American companies. It's very weird when EU punishes someone by digging up their past and without looking into oneself of the horrible atrocities one have done. While in this case, it seems to make sense to say we aren't responsible for what's done in past.

> It's very weird when EU punishes someone by digging up their past and without looking into oneself of the horrible atrocities one have done.

What does this mean? Who is "one" here?

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