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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

#211

Post by freeflight »

sosodev wrote: post #204
freeflight wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not quite right. While you can get ads that are 15 minutes long they can always be skipped within 5 seconds. That's not even comparable to television.

That might be true, but one of my use-cases for YouTube is listening to music, over a tablet, while I shower

So these 15-minute "ads" pretty much lead to the situation that halfway through my shower I won't be listening to music anymore, but rather some tutorial on how to best light a photoshoot or a "documentary" how Hezbollah is destroying Europe.

Don't get me wrong here: They can have their ads, but throwing 15-minute ads between videos that average out at around 3-8 minutes just feels like a very bold choice.

And it's not like watching that 15-minute ad means you won't be bothered by them for a while, you can watch it and after the next 3 minute song, there will be yet another ad.

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

#212

Post by black_puppydog »

zaarn wrote: post #101
black_puppydog wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be a lot for any one of Google's competitors to fight over. That is, if the money were e.g. supposed to go directly to the competitors that were harmed here, there would be a huge allocation fight within minutes of this decision...

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

#213

Post by utopcell »

Veelox wrote: post #205

Just trying to get the facts straight. Google provided the ability to search your site. They also allowed you to show ads/make money from these searches. If you wanted to use this, you had to only show Google ads. I don't understand how that is illegal.

Eventually they are going to fine Google for showing only Google ads on Google's search page.

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

#214

Post by pessimizer »

Veelox wrote: post #205

Just trying to get the facts straight. Google provided the ability to search your site. They also allowed you to show ads/make money from these searches. If you wanted to use this, you had to only show Google ads. I don't understand how that is illegal.

Because forcing exclusivity is anti-competition. If you want a competitive ecosystem, you create laws that do not allow the largest player in a market to force customers to exclude their competitors in another market in order to use their primary product.

If you're a libertarian, you would think that's fine, but in a libertarian world one company would have 97% of the market, and if you wanted to use their electricity, you would be forced to buy your food from them.

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

#215

Post by pessimizer »

freeflight wrote: post #178
mhsabbagh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If everyone paid for youtube, they'd still show you ads every five minutes and harvest your information. Then people would be telling you that you have to suffer this because you don't pay for the bonus package.

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

#216

Post by boudin »

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.

Those aren't based on nothing. There is laws and being a tech giant doesn't grant the right to go around those. If those fines aren't justified, those companies can use the justice system in place to fight back, like everybody else.

It's not a free for all, get free money from tech companies with no legal background.

Antitrust laws aren't specific to EU by the way.

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

#217

Post by a_imho »

icebraining wrote: post #142
a_imho wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet my takeaway is it pays not to follow regulations.

I'd love to know how you got to that conclusion. Do you have internal reports from Google detailing the extra income brought by these behaviors?

They have been fined for abusing their position for a decade.

Actually I would really prefer if they were banned from conducting business in Europe. For a decade. No fines are needed.

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

#218

Post by VikingCoder »

utopcell wrote: post #213
Veelox wrote: post #205

Just trying to get the facts straight. Google provided the ability to search your site. They also allowed you to show ads/make money from these searches. If you wanted to use this, you had to only show Google ads. I don't understand how that is illegal.

Eventually they are going to fine Google for showing only Google ads on Google's search page.

That kind of already happened:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/google-fined-e2-42bn-for-e...

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

#219

Post by Consultant32452 »

sosodev wrote: post #201
yeahitslikethat wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the punishment for the crime is less than the crime itself, crime will perpetuate. If you steal 1.000,00€ from a bank, they don't fine you 1€. No. They send you to jail for years.

Exactly. Why should corporations get off easy when we don't?

I believe part of the purpose of corporations is to create an entity that is capable of doing "icky" things that might be unpalatable for a person to do, but need to be done nonetheless. Specific examples of "icky" things include building war weapons, producing/testing drugs that we know will kill some patients, performing tasks which create pollution which will kill people, etc. I want to be clear that I'm not proposing how anything should be, and am definitely not implying we should let corporations run amok. I'm just suggesting I believe we're lenient on the icky behaviors of corporations by design. It saves legislators from having to specifically carve out exceptions in the law to allow dangerous things things. Nobody wants their name next to something that sounds like, "XYZ is allowed to kill some people". Instead, they just try to corral them in when it gets to be "too much."

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

#220

Post by vnnkov »

sosodev wrote: post #201
yeahitslikethat wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the punishment for the crime is less than the crime itself, crime will perpetuate. If you steal 1.000,00€ from a bank, they don't fine you 1€. No. They send you to jail for years.

Exactly. Why should corporations get off easy when we don't?

Because we can't close corporations for a rules violation.
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