Live data from Hacker News

Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

cnbc.com

51–60 of 254 posts

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#51
post #16

Apologies for the meta: I feel that our understanding of trust and antitrust, along with the legal and regulatory premises... Just isn't very useful in the 21st century. I understand the motivation, and justification for employing antitrust. Google's business model, and much of modern tech economy is really all about Monopoly-like market power. In fact, one of the main concerns for AI investors is price competition,…

>Now that it's history, we can look back and learn that the antitrust case just didn't matter one way or another. Nothing was really gained by victory, and nothing would have been lost by defeat.

You are missing the fact that the US administration did change and Microsoft was not broken... similar to the fact google/alphabet escaped that too

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#52
post #32
post #4

“Android provides more choice for everyone and supports thousands of businesses. This judgment fails to recognize our significant investment to ensure Android remains open, interoperable and free,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC. Sure. Which is why alternative stores like F-Droid are under threat now. https://keepandroidopen.org/

>This judgment fails to recognize our significant investment to ensure Android remains open I wonder if that could be considered contempt of courts.

It's perfectly fine to disagree with a court's decision, what's the crime here?

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#53

> U.S. ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told CNBC that Europe “can’t over regulate” and hit companies with “huge fines” if it is going to participate in the AI economy. Imagine what these companies are doing in the US to their citizens, if ambassador is ready to defend them for violating rules/laws

[deleted]

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#54
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he just found out, that's exactly what the EU can do. And as he's about to find out, the EU is way too important a market for the American economy to ignore or pull out of. Play on your neighbour's yard, obey their rules.

I think rather, that it is the EU who cannot live without US cloud services and AI-services. Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

> Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

I think the EU member states would declare it a matter of national emergency and nationalize the relevant assets, with every other country these American companies sell to taking notes and considering doing the same pre-emptively, providing a huge investment boost to EU tech companies (and almost certainly China) while tanking the US economy, and poisoning the ability of the Americans to sell to Europe for the next hundred years.

You don't win the opium wars by threatening to cut off the supply of opium.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think rather, that it is the EU who cannot live without US cloud services and AI-services. Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

We would build our own alternatives. Russia is a much smaller market (120 million people) and they have their own tech companies.

> We would build our own alternatives.

Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? The gap between US/China and the EU in AI is becoming wider by the day.

Russia has like 3-4 large tech companies (Sber, Yandex, VK, and maybe Ozon). And they completely rely on foreign hardware. I don’t even want to imagine how could Russia start building frontier AI in these circumstances.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#56
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google made Android open source for free and you can even see this on this on HN as everyone glazes GrapheneOS. Without Android there would not be an entire ecosystem of software. Google even complied with a previous rulings about search engine choice and browser choice. In fact Android has always allowed you to set those things. As usual Europe can't innovate so just taxes people out of their market entirely. Why wo…

> Google made Android open source for free And Hitler built the highways in Germany. What does that even prove? They can still abuse Android for vendor lock-in, or as a sales funnel to their commercial offerings, or as a data source for a myriad of things users did never really consent to. > As usual Europe can't innovate so just taxes people out of their market entirely. Yawn. Last time I looked, big tech is still w…

[flagged]

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#57
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he just found out, that's exactly what the EU can do. And as he's about to find out, the EU is way too important a market for the American economy to ignore or pull out of. Play on your neighbour's yard, obey their rules.

I think rather, that it is the EU who cannot live without US cloud services and AI-services. Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

If they did that, their pension system (in huge parts built on stock) would collapse. The American tech market is largely saturated, and needs room to grow. The EU is a market of almost 500 million people with a lot of money. The US simply cannot ignore it.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#58
post #16

Apologies for the meta: I feel that our understanding of trust and antitrust, along with the legal and regulatory premises... Just isn't very useful in the 21st century. I understand the motivation, and justification for employing antitrust. Google's business model, and much of modern tech economy is really all about Monopoly-like market power. In fact, one of the main concerns for AI investors is price competition,…

Yours is a common misunderstanding about antitrust being about prices. That is a distinctly American view, and not useful for analyzing European antitrust decisions. Read https://www.newyorker.com/business/adam-davidson/teddy-roose...

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#59
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might need to reconsider how open Android actually is given the recent moves.

You don't even know how good you have it. With incentives like this what company would make anything open in the future? You're punishing them for it. They're gonna make it like iOS precisely because of rulings like this.

I'm sorry, but what does "pre-installation deals with smartphone makers" have to do with being open?

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#60
These fines are no longer sufficient.

We all see that Google does not care about fines.

It is time to:

a) split up Google b) but the responsible CEOs and higher ups to court c) allow competition to happen again by having basic laws that can not be bypassed by mega-corporations in general

Post reply on HN