Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google hit with €1.5B fine from EU over advertising

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 414 posts

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

#171

Post by kittiepryde »

adventured wrote: post #156
hopler wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's one part of the story. There's only one tech company in all of Europe that can easily digest a $1.7 billion fine. SAP is Europe's most profitable tech company by far. About $4.5 billion in net income ($7b in operating income). The US has at least 16 tech companies at that level of profit or higher. Just Microsoft + Google + Amazon + Facebook + Apple = $185 billion in annual operating income. In terms of sales,…

Is profit and annual operating income supposed to be equivalent?

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

#172

Post by metafunctor »

swift532 wrote: post #109
metafunctor wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was kidding, of course. Profit margins, even for Google, let alone a small digital business, are a fraction of revenue, typically negative.

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

#173

Post by adventured »

hopler wrote: post #130
boudin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, if Apple opened it's OS to OEMs, it would be hit. Apple isn't getting fined for it's app store which is essentially the same structure as Google's OEM hardware setup

> Apple isn't getting fined for it's app store

They're working on that, give it some time. The complaint from Spotify gets the ball rolling. The EU will do the rest. Two or three years from now they'll have a $4 billion fine for Apple.

"Spotify announced this morning that it’s filed an antitrust complaint against Apple with the European Union, alleging that the iPhone maker is harming consumer choice and stifling innovation via the rules it enforces on the App Store."

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18263453/spotify-apple-ap...

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

#174

Post by matt4077 »

jorvi wrote: post #150
matt4077 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good faith interpretation would be that the US has the most advanced system for financial regulation, while the EU is better (or emphasises) antitrust and privacy regulation. Both seem to perfectly consistent with New York being the world's premier financial center and Europe being somewhat renown for stronger consumer protection. (which leaves Volkswagen as a terribly embarrassing example of regulatory capture in…

> A good faith interpretation would be that the US has the most advanced system for financial regulation One only has to take a peek at the HSBC cartel scandals to know that's patently bullshit.

?

HSBC is a British bank. Yet, skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Controversies it appears almost all investigations and fines were the result of SEC and other US investigations.

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

#175

Post by Dylan16807 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #168
Dylan16807 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive or contradictory - oak trees sprout from acorns. If their growth is stunted then they won't scale.

Stopping something before it even tries to scale is different from making scaling itself hard, and the comment is implying the latter.

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

#176

Post by Nasrudith »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #60
kypro wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good for US tech because it is yet another cost and restriction EU startups have to face before they can grow to scale and profitability.

Protecting your customer's privacy is already a "cost and restriction" regardless of where you live; is this how you feel about all the regulation you have to conform to if you're processing payments?

Really I would prefer the payment system was robust enough that it would do no more harm than publishing your past shopping lists but that is a separate topic.

That has always frustrated me - we have cryptographic signatures. An order should involve only an invoice signed by the end user, the merchant checking it vs your public key and then submission to the credit card processor.

Even if done with "black box calculator functions" to the end user it should be layman usable.

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

#178

Post by freeflight »

mhsabbagh wrote: post #105
isostatic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And I thought I was "paying" for that by having 15 minutes long "ads" thrown at me every for every 5 minutes of content I watch.

YouTube seems to be getting really bad in that regard, even worse than TV.

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

#179

Post by WA »

lagadu wrote: post #149
WA wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "Let's make rules that cripple our competitors and see how long we can get away with it." - "What can we earn?" - "Billions." - "What's it going to cost?" - "Less than what we're going to make." - "Let's do it!"

Should be noted that besides the fine they have to change how they operate in regards to the subject matter (which they always have, as described in the article).

True, but if you get away with this for years, it can be part of a strategy. The risk, of course, is that if you do this too often or too obvious, you could be forbidden to sell your product. But then, Google might be too important to be shut down for non-compliance.
Post reply on HN