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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

#111

Post by matt4077 »

rat9988 wrote: post #100
matt4077 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 could…

> The most likely explanation is that rather high standards of enforcement and corporate governance in the US require less EU intervention. Or maybe the american political influence is stronger?

It would need to be stronger than EU member states' influence, which seems unlikely. I also don't remember ever hearing of even attempts to exert influence on these investigations.

Note that such agency actions are firewalled from even their EU/US/national political leadership. Even if Trump managed to convince Merkel to intervene, she wouldn't really be able to. To illustrate with a reverse example: Imagine Macron trying to get to get to a judge in a California District Court. There are multiple layers in between where they would tend to consider the call a prank and hang up.

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

#112

Post by DataWorker »

rat9988 wrote: post #100
matt4077 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 could…

> The most likely explanation is that rather high standards of enforcement and corporate governance in the US require less EU intervention. Or maybe the american political influence is stronger?

And maybe more capital is directed towards lawyers and litigation making it more expensive and difficult to extract cash from large US companies.

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

#113

Post by mstolpm »

throwaway808080 wrote: post #102
andy_ppp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So: who is giving the money to the companies that they use for advertising?

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

#114

Post by throwaway9d0291 »

isolli wrote: post #26
boggio wrote: post #21

> They were setting chrome as default browser in android. Also they did not allow changing the default search engine so easily. Isn't this the same case with Safari on iOS devices? Update: I posted this before the motivation was published.

I guess the difference is market share...

No, not really.

Basically the way the EU sees it, Google has a monopoly in a market: mobile operating systems. That is, if you're an OEM and you want to sell a device with an operating system, Google is currently the only place you can really turn. Apple exists but since it doesn't sell its operating system, it's not a participant in this market.

So the EU saw Google saying to OEMs "you can have Android but you have to install our stuff on it or pay extra" and decided that Google was using its monopoly position in one market (mobile OS) to give itself an advantage in other markets (app stores, browsers, search). They see this as anti-competitive.

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

#115

Post by icebraining »

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…

All the fines have been about the same time period (2010-2016), but on different products (Shopping, Android and now Adsense). It's not Google changing stuff and getting fined again.

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

#116

Post by flohofwoe »

mattmanser wrote: post #107
est31 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMHO the EU is a direct result of the two World Wars, not the Cold War (we're only starting to see the results of the Cold War now).

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

#117

Post by cbg0 »

Carnageous wrote: post #95
boudin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If iOS would have the marketshare of Android, it would be hit by the same regulations.

Agreed, and this needs to stop in my opinion. The EU makes an enormous amount of money by suing tech-giants over and over again without doing enough research to know what companies in this sector are doing.

They have a very good idea of what the tech giants are doing, don't you worry.

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

#119

Post by hopler »

matt4077 wrote: post #85
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 could…

> rather high standards of enforcement and corporate governance in the US require less EU intervention

More likely that US companies are so comparatively wealthy that even apparently large fines aren't as large as fraction of revenue. Anchoring fallacy.

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

#120

Post by chronogram »

chewz wrote: post #80
arethuza wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth remembering that a lot of people in the UK, possibly a majority by this point, are perfectly clear as to what we stand to lose if the UK leaves the EU. :-(

Pack your bags and come over here. ;-)

Oh agreed! And don’t forget the tea. Just skip the second referendum and let all the remain voters hang out over here, so we can have tea with baguette forever.
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