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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

#251
post #194
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."

Where did you expect them to go?

I had no idea, and was just sharing what I found

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

#252
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, that sounds like a good argument to not allow incorporation.

Do you have another suggestion for how to get icky things done which must be done?

Your argument is predicated on the fact that ‘they must be done’. I disagree.

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

#254
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.

Not leveraging dominance in one area to push a different area is the basis of our anti-monopoly laws.

While I agreed the shopping issue was an issue of leveraging dominance, this seems more reasonable, if you want to monitize our free service, you have to use us to do it. At the moment I cannot come up with an example of that situation that would be an antitrust violation.

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

#255

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…

> - Fines account for This is maybe not as comforting as you think it sounds. 1.5B is 1% of the budget that you describe below, which is non-trivial -- that's make or break money. I'm guessing it exceeds the total annual contribution of several member states (I tried to find the actual budget, but talk about incomprehensible documents [1] -- what's an "own resource"? What's with the obsession with sugar?). To that en…

I think I know where you are coming from, for a nation 1% is significant, but I don't think you realize what the EU budget is used for.

47% subsidies for farmers, 30% regional support subsidies (e.g. they might co-found an R&D project in an outermost region in a country):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union#P...

So mostly subsidies. If there's a deficit, they can cut the regional subsidies which I believe are mostly individual projects with relatively short timespans.

The farming subsidy is more like social security, I think you'd have riots in France if you cut that significantly. Which is sad.

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

#256

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.

Sure, but I for one would pay €3 a month to not have google harvest any data from me. If they're making €100 a month from me, that's one thing.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've gotten some 20+ seconds unskipable ads. That's the moment when I simply switched to MPV for watching youtube videos as the ads keep squeezing through every adblock filter I've tried once in a while.

Perhaps I should have worded my statement a little differently. I meant that you can always skip the ads that are essentially entire videos.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of already happened: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/google-fined-e2-42bn-for-e...

As in: didn't happen, and Google was fined correctly: "Evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival service appears on average only on page four of Google’s search results, and others appear even further down. Google’s own comparison shopping service is not subject to Google’s generic search algorithms, including such demotions."

I can't wait to walk into a Walmart and see poster ads for Best Buy near its entrance. Why is Walmart abusing its dominance as a retailer ? (This line of reasoning actually makes sense to some people.)

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-mi…

Eh. YouTube isn't a very good platform for music, and it's even worse if you aren't paying for the premium service. Why wouldn't you use something like Spotify?
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