Live data from Hacker News

Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

reuters.com

51–60 of 135 posts

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the fines do have an effect - Google now withholds a lot of launches from the EU, sometimes temporarily until they have time to have lawyers check them against DMA requirements, but mostly permanently. Ironically the part of Google most likely to persist in launching for the EU is Ads, since money is at stake. All the free, consumer-benefiting services are most likely to be curtailed in the face of aggressive reg…

> All the free, consumer-benefiting services Those are just more avenues for Google to collect data to shove ads down everyone's throats. Good that regulations keeps Google from releasing more pf their shit here. Governments should really tighten the screws there.

The ads are getting shoved regardless. The content of the ads are based on personalization data.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#52
post #2

$1.5B is significant, but the bigger question is whether this actually changes how dominant platforms rank their own services. Is this real accountability for anti-competitive behaviour, or just another cost of doing business for Big Tech? My cynicism is tell me that unfortunately it is the latter.

It was about behavior 9 years ago

Internet wont be human steered by the time this is over

Just agents running x402 payments over mcp servers

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#53
People aren't going to like this, but taking a page from Apple, Microsoft, Sony (iPhone, Xbox, Playstation), the solution to constant antitrust charges stemming from competitors on your platform....is to kick them off the platform. You can't be anti-competitive if you have no competitors.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if I’m understanding this (maybe I’m not), a company could make a service competitive to an Alphabet product, then sue them for not using it? For instance, if a company started up an ad business, are they going to sue and win, because Google uses their own ad service in Search instead of this new competitor? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

You're not understanding this. A company can create a new search engine and Google Search isn't obligated to even mention it. The issue is when achieving market dominance and new service is integrated into the dominant product. You clearly haven't been around long enough to have caught a lot of discussions on this topic over a decade ago.

But is searching for products a new product line, or just a natural extension of searching for webpages (many of which are about products)? Where do you draw the line between merely improving the monopoly product and abusing the monopoly?

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#55

People aren't going to like this, but taking a page from Apple, Microsoft, Sony (iPhone, Xbox, Playstation), the solution to constant antitrust charges stemming from competitors on your platform....is to kick them off the platform. You can't be anti-competitive if you have no competitors.

Pretty sure Google would loose its search business if Google search only contained websites owned by Google.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#56
post #4

> PriceRunner is considered to have suffered damage as a result of Google having illegally favoured its price comparison service for many years Why would Google NOT favor it's own service at it's own product? How is that illegal?

Why would Microsoft NOT favor its own products? How is that illegal?

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#57
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumer, who have never paid google a cent despite using their services daily for the last 20 years, likley spending a solid portion of their waking life on one of google's platforms, has never benefited? And you think local players are going to look at users with this comically detached worldview and be like "Yeah, we want to build services for that group of people to use"?

Google doesn't make money from you "paying a cent". They make money from you paying advertisers who pay Google. So the relevant metric is how much you spent on Google advertisers.

Raise your hand if you have ever intentionally clicked on a Google ad.

Raise your hand if you use an ad blocker.

I rest my case.

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Swedish courts NOT favor their own national economic interests? How is that illegal?

Well if the Swedish courts stomp on Google in the name of national interest, maybe the US will stomp on Sweden in the name of national interest. Now consider where Klarna gets the most of their money from.

Let’s wait until USA tacos and offers to pay reperations. How many billions of dollars was it USA was going to secure for Iran in exchange for peace?

Re: Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages

#60
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not like klarna are nice

Quite. At least Google delivers some value to society, despite being mostly evil. Klarna is exclusively parasitic, getting people needlessly into debt and pushing a buy now pay later mentality for luxury products.

And burritos
Post reply on HN