Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's not the claim being made.
It's the claim being pre-emptively argued against though
The comment they replied to already explicitly stated that the EU has jurisdiction. They're not pre-empting anything.
EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
281–290 of 361 posts
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#282>EU is “concerned that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the so-called ad tech stack.” There are plenty of competitors in the ad tech space. China created TikTok. Korea created KaoKaoTalk. Even Japan created Line. Meanwhile, the EU, for all it's antitrust regulation, hasn't created anything substantial. Perhaps, it's the burdensome regulation that's the problem.
Read it more carefully :) google has no (meaningful) competitors in the Ad Exchange business. Isn’t that some bullshit??
Fair enough. This does sound like a more reasonable concern than their other antitrust fines.
To be fair, this article does a very poor job of explaining by conflating "Google's ad business" with AdX.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unlike the U.S., E.U lawmakers can't be bought. I'm curious if you're so naive to believe that or if you were trolling and wrote that with a straight face. Because cronies like Ursula Von Der Leyen would like to disagree with you.
if EU lawmakers could be bought in the same way US ones can, there is absolutely no way that GDPR or the DMA would have been enacted. this isn't to say that they are completely unbuyable, but look at how much the companies affected had to lose. literally tens of billions in some cases. there's evidence online that they were pumping money into any channel possible to try and stop the DMA, but they failed
If US lawmakers could be bought the same way that EU ones can, there is absolutely no way that they would have increased the corporate tax rate from 19% to 25%.
/s
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#284Google operates an exchange for a digital asset, is a major vendor/trader of said asset on that exchange and operates an algorithmic trading platform to enable people to buy and sell on that exchange. On top of that the algorithmic trades are a "black box" with no audit trail, and no public insight into how it operates. If that sounds familiar, think illegal crypto exchanges... Obviously "ads" are not "securities", b…
To expand your point further, in any given market that has online sales, if even one entity gives them CPA targets, they have a damn good idea how much a new customer is worth in that market.
At that point, google has no motivation to ever sell you clicks or impressions below that value, as they already know how much each click they send is worth to you.
Once you have two players in the market, you are basically haggling with google over 1-2-3% differences in your bidding, and google is switching you from position 1 and position 2 in the search results.
On top of that, google sales people are basically employed to come to you and say: "Look, on this keyword your competitor is bidding 2% more than you. You should optimise for it and pay the same". This sounds like a good game until you realise if everyone is optimising properly, the only winner here is google.
No one really has any leverage here except google, and they can squeeze everyone as hard as you are willing to squeeze your margins.
I've seen multiple markets over the last few years where google ads are basically break even for the entire industry. This is absolutely insane, but it's what an aggregator does.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#285These rulings for a company of Google's stature/importance are always funny to me. How quickly would public opinion change if Google decided to just shut off their service in the EU for a day? Monopolistic breakups that serve the public's best interest are one thing. But how many people actually care that Google might represent a monopoly? Does it actually affect people negatively if the result is a positive online u…
> How quickly would public opinion change if Google decided to just shut off their service in the EU for a day? Reframed: If you disrupt customers to avoid complying with local law, customers will perceive YOU to be the problem at least as much as local regulations. I believe this is a REALLY dangerous move with very little upside and enormous risk for the company under almost any circumstances, which is probably the…
>Reframed: If you disrupt customers to avoid complying with local law, customers will perceive YOU to be the problem at least as much as local regulations
Is this actually true in practice? Anecdotally Italians seeemed pretty annoyed they coudldn't use chatgpt for a while.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#286Before anyone makes the argument that the EU should have no jurisdiction over an American entity, please remember that Google sells its services in Europe. It's well within the jurisdiction of the EU to regulate how anyone does business here. Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legisl…
I'll applaud the first large US company that leaves the EU market entirely and makes a claim of non-jurisdiction. It's overdue. In fact, I don't think they have to go that far. Other countries are free to block internet services or sanction their own citizens for using them. It should not follow that placing a service on the web makes you subject to the jurisdiction of anyone who chooses to use it.
Why should it not? If you're providing a service (presumably for profit), shouldn't you be bound by rules other commercial service providers have to follow in that jurisdiction as well? If not, you'd be at a massive advantage.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Europe would return to the dark ages if all American tech companies pulled out overnight. But it is a humorous thought that the only way there can be European alternatives is if there are no American companies to compete against. What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation? >None of its services are critical to maintain a stable society. Except Android, Maps, Search, Gmail, YouTub…
> What is it about Europe that puts it so far behind the US and Asia in innovation? How far behind is Europe?
None of the top tech companies are European, so quite far.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, we can’t really complain. The international capitalist system owes Ireland a bit more; its predecessor, colonialism, screwed Ireland over for generations.
But the point is that Ireland does not really benefit from this money - it is only an accounting trick. Google funnels money through Ireland, but does not employ many people in Ireland, and does not pay much taxes there. In the end, the living standard of typical Irishman is closer to countries with $40-45k GDP, such as Italy or France, than to countries with $100k GDP, such as Norway or Switzerland.
Because big companies are funneling money through Ireland, they usually need some corporate presence there. Because they already have a small office there, and there's a large English speaking population, when they want a bigger office in Europe, Ireland is a likely choice.
If they weren't already in the country for accounting purposes, they might choose different locations for offices.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses? That's already what the USA does to global companies operating inside the US. That's exactly how Cuba has been under a blockade from the US, for example...
Sanctions are different from antitrust. With sanctions the US can declare that third parties must choose between doing business with the US and Cuba / ZTE. Because of it's large economy the US would be confident that most of those parties would choose to choose the US over the company / small country. Antitrust enforcement is many ways more difficult than sanctions enforcement because third parties must be compelled…
When it comes down to it - it's the same thing with the EU - they can decree that Google be broken apart or stop doing business in the union. Or pay a massive fine based on global profit or exit the union.
Re: EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the point is that Ireland does not really benefit from this money - it is only an accounting trick. Google funnels money through Ireland, but does not employ many people in Ireland, and does not pay much taxes there. In the end, the living standard of typical Irishman is closer to countries with $40-45k GDP, such as Italy or France, than to countries with $100k GDP, such as Norway or Switzerland.
This article suggests Google employed over 8,000 people in Ireland in 2018, and it's quite likely that number has grown since. https://9to5google.com/2020/03/02/google-dublin-coronavirus/
Which means one employee per $6 millions of revenue. Which is exactly what I’m talking about: their actual presence in Ireland is much smaller than you would expect from revenue number alone, which again supports my claim about “accounting trick”