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Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

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

#131

Post by ben_w »

hparadiz wrote: post #108
ben_w wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh man you wanna talk about benefits? I actually don't even think the US should have given the internet to the world. It's basically been one giant gift. You didn't give the internet to the world. The world made it by copying stuff you had no power to prevent them copying. Also, the rest of the world had other networks, the US version (TCP/IP) just happened to win enough mindshare to replace e.g. https://en.wikiped…

[flagged]

I reply to people when I can demonstrate they're wrong, or if I think I can extend upon what they have said with further details (including by naming existing answers to their perfectly good suggestions).

Perhaps you should ask yourself why all my recent replies to you *contained links*.

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

#132

Post by sveme »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #39
9dev wrote: 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.

Which is when we'd enter economic warfare between the EU and US, something which no one wants to experience. If that were realistically threatened, and we've seen motions in that direction, it's about political and economical survival and we'd see a massive loss of market for US tech.

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

#133

Post by glimshe »

input_sh wrote: post #83
glimshe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU can certainly do a lot, with the exception of producing their own major tech companies.

The end goal shouldn't be "monopolies, but European", the end goal should be no monopolies.

Is ASML "European" or a "monopoly" under your definition as one can't be both?

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

#134

Post by 9dev »

petcat wrote: post #127
9dev wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You might want to look up where Linus Torvalds created Linux. He also immediately relocated to the US and made the Linux Foundation an American company though.

That still doesn’t take away from the point that innovation does happen in Europe; the first version of Linux was created and released while he was at the university of Helsinki. If you want another example, Fraunhofer created the MP3 format, which went on to revolutionise the world of digital audio. Many of the LLM foundational science came from European scientists.

However, when it comes to ones to turning science into products, the USA seems to have an edge quite often. It’s just not as mono-dimensional as GP framed it.

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

#135

Post by shmeeed »

xienze wrote: post #19
frollogaston wrote: post #5

These are basically meant as tarriffs, right?

More like an ATM. Need some money? Let an American tech company operate with no issue for years and then one day "whoa we checked and you've been violating for years. Who knew? That'll be five billion Euros please."

That's one way to see it, if you squint hard enough.

As I see it, a company unlawfully gained billions by breaking the law while doing business in our jurisdiction.

There's nothing "vaguely defined" about european privacy laws. Google just chose to ignore them best they could, and thought they'd get away with it because they're so big.

The fact that it took years to build a solid case against their myriad of corporate lawyer weasels isn't the gotcha you think it is.

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

#136

Post by myko »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #39
9dev wrote: 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.

Not anymore :)

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

#138

Post by rcxdude »

Ravus wrote: post #94
abc123abc123 wrote: post #39

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.

> In the cases provided for by the law and with provisions for compensation, private property may be expropriated for reasons of general interest. Excerpt from article 42 of the Italian constitution. This would cover, for instance, the entire eu-south-1 availability zone in AWS. I'm sure that other member states have their own provisions and you need to keep in mind that Google/Amazon/Microsoft employees in the relev…

That kind of thing is very much a nuclear option, though. Firstly because the state that does it needs to be very confident it can operate the asset it seizes without overseas support, and secondly because doing so tends to be bad for business in your country in general, as people understandibly get nervous about having stuff in places that have shown a willingness to just take it.

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

#139

Post by rcxdude »

petcat wrote: post #115
PurpleRamen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU can live fine without US cloud services, and it's not very dependent on AI at the moment. If access would be cut off, companies would just switch to other solutions, which BTW are already there. The question is more how much time they would have to switch and adapt. An unannounced zero-day cut off would be of course harmful for a while (days, weeks, maybe months), but on most parts could be probably solved in a sh…

The EU is doing the exact opposite of switching away from US tech. In fact they just announced that the new EU digital ID wallet is going to require Google or Apple device attestation. That is two US companies in complete control of the fundamental digital ID system of the entire EU. Everything they say about "digital sovereignty" is performative nonsense because they simply have no other options and no capacity to b…

This is bad largely due to the effect on individuals who may find themselves banned from such services with no due process. As a threat to the EU's sovreignty as a whole it's one of the easier things to move away from if it gets weaponised (in comparison to cloud services that are intertwined with a country's economy and bureaucracy)

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

#140

Post by Ravus »

rcxdude wrote: post #138
Ravus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the cases provided for by the law and with provisions for compensation, private property may be expropriated for reasons of general interest. Excerpt from article 42 of the Italian constitution. This would cover, for instance, the entire eu-south-1 availability zone in AWS. I'm sure that other member states have their own provisions and you need to keep in mind that Google/Amazon/Microsoft employees in the relev…

That kind of thing is very much a nuclear option, though. Firstly because the state that does it needs to be very confident it can operate the asset it seizes without overseas support, and secondly because doing so tends to be bad for business in your country in general, as people understandibly get nervous about having stuff in places that have shown a willingness to just take it.

Completely agreed, it is rational to de-escalate by several steps (e.g. to have cloud providers "spontaneously" decide to split into different, actually autonomous but still privately owned, corps, which in turn is a threat to returns of the home corp so they would put pressure on the US government not to escalate this far politically, and so on).

It's just that the possibility of the "nuclear option" works as a deterrent.

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