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This comment isn’t helpful and adds nothing to the conversation. When someone makes an argument regarding ‘x’, the correct response is a rebuttal to the argument on its merits. Not “why are you defending x?”
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Italy's unconsolidated budget for 2025 is projected to be around 700 billion euros in revenue and 900 billion in expenditures: https://www.rgs.mef.gov.it/VERSIONE-I/attivita_istituzionali... So yeah, whoever talks about these fines as a strategy for fixing the budget knows nothing about the actual budget of a G7 state, these fines are completely immaterial to Italian fiscal policy. For perspective, that's roughly equ…
From a post I saw on reddit: > In 2024 EU fined US tech companies €3.8B meanwhile public internet tech companies paid only €3.2B in income tax How is it not a major budget contribution to have fines on American companies bigger than revenue from your entire tech industry? That is a de facto tax, particularly when they announce these new fines monthly like clockwork.
This report is indicating around 800B in value for the sector (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...)
While other reports have significant higher numbers https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/tech-europe-is-worth-4000-bil...
Surprised by the negative comments here. Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store. Now a government fines them for it and some people are upset?
Ok, but can you give me an example of even ONE specific commenter who has made inconsistent comments on this topic in different threads? “HN” is lots of different people with lots of different opinions. Different threads select for different commentators. This is not unusual (nor has it been the other thousand times people have commented on the inconsistency of HN).
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It would be terrific if this happens. Can give room for alternatives to grow in the EU. Even the rest of the world would love it. So far only China has managed alternatives - and only thanks to govt exclusion. US behemoths just eat everyone else up - even in the global South.
I’m sorry to disappoint you but the EU is unable to create any usable alternatives to US tech chiefly due to lack of SWE talent (among other things). Anyone remotely competent sees the 40k senior SWE salaries offered by European tech companies and immediately crawls through glass just to work at a mid-tier company in the Northern California area of the United States.
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Ok, but can you give me an example of even ONE specific commenter who has made inconsistent comments on this topic in different threads? “HN” is lots of different people with lots of different opinions. Different threads select for different commentators. This is not unusual (nor has it been the other thousand times people have commented on the inconsistency of HN).
These posts should really have a poll on HN, so we know what HN thinks about the case.
Not once have I wondered what "HN at large thinks" because it simply doesn't matter. What HN-the-collective thinks about things-in-general just isn't interesting, people's individual thoughts and opinions though, is so much more valuable to read and interesting.
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I’m sorry to disappoint you but the EU is unable to create any usable alternatives to US tech chiefly due to lack of SWE talent (among other things). Anyone remotely competent sees the 40k senior SWE salaries offered by European tech companies and immediately crawls through glass just to work at a mid-tier company in the Northern California area of the United States.
Once they pay "modern" US health insurance (esp after a layoff) and also need to raise a family, the vast majority will crawl back through lava.
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This comment isn’t helpful and adds nothing to the conversation. When someone makes an argument regarding ‘x’, the correct response is a rebuttal to the argument on its merits. Not “why are you defending x?”
Because if Apple can't defend itself even with the lawyers they can afford, it means that they really are breaking the law.
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I think people would sympathize more if it was something like "Apple makes choosing a different default browser or email client unnecessarily cumbersome" -- instead of "Apple makes you double-opt-in to sharing your private data with even more advertisers"
But that's not the story here. I hate ads as much as anyone, but this action is a matter of market competition, not privacy. They're completely different fights and intelligent people ought to be able to distinguish between the two. Anti-competitive behavior by Google, Apple, Meta, etc. is what got us into this mess with tracking and privacy violations in the first place.
Nope.
This is literally about apps having to ask the user for permission before they can track them.
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Italy's unconsolidated budget for 2025 is projected to be around 700 billion euros in revenue and 900 billion in expenditures: https://www.rgs.mef.gov.it/VERSIONE-I/attivita_istituzionali... So yeah, whoever talks about these fines as a strategy for fixing the budget knows nothing about the actual budget of a G7 state, these fines are completely immaterial to Italian fiscal policy. For perspective, that's roughly equ…
From a post I saw on reddit: > In 2024 EU fined US tech companies €3.8B meanwhile public internet tech companies paid only €3.2B in income tax How is it not a major budget contribution to have fines on American companies bigger than revenue from your entire tech industry? That is a de facto tax, particularly when they announce these new fines monthly like clockwork.
1. As someone already mentioned, taxes != revenue
2. On top of that, "public internet companies" != "entire tech industry"
3. On top of that, tax evasion and creative accounting by "public internet companies" companies is well known, documented, and is subject to additional fines (not as often or as much as they deserve)
4. On top of that "announce these new fines monthly like clockwork" speaks volumes about the state of the "public internet companies" and there continuous disregard for the law.
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It is a nationalistic thing. When foreign governments fine "American" companies, they get all up in arms, while constantly asking the US Government to provide better consumer protections and promote competition. This position commonly ignores that these fines are against these companies position within the market for which they're fined. Meaning that the EU will look at the EU profits and fine relative to those, so t…
This whole procedure started after Meta (that meta) reported apple to the authority, it's not even an investigation that was started by the authority of its own volition
This is literally about users having the ability to say no.