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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

#191

Post by adam_arthur »

nalekberov wrote: post #169

Well, I guess occasional $4.7B fines are just the cost of doing business for Google. They have a monopoly in multiple categories, such as search engine, online advertising and strong dominance in maps and video hosting -- surely at this point money isn't an issue for them anymore.

I'd like to see a world where the data vendor is separate from the app/UI product vendor.

e.g. anyone could build a skin over map data, short form video data, long form video data, short form text content.

Data vendor makes money through selling the data, app vendors make money through either subscriptions, ads, or selling new data back to the data vendor.

The market for pretty much everything would become intensely competitive and price much closer to marginal cost of service.

However, PII+personal data would become more of a concern with this model.

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

#192

Post by 9dev »

carlosjobim wrote: post #173
9dev wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's one thing all historians agree on, it's that collaboration has always been the winning strategy in human history. If the US had never opened up their innovations to the world, they wouldn't have been able to extract the gargantuan amount of money from it they did. If the US had not instated the Marshall plan after WW2, there would never have been as close ties between Europe and the US. If American compani…

Hold on. Some people and institutions in the US are massively benefitting from what other Americans gave and are giving to the world. What they sometimes have been forced to give.

I don't think I implied they aren't, care to elaborate?

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

#193

Post by heftig »

plantain wrote: post #155
lopis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much happened since 2018 that this ruling feels ancient now. It was about Google making unfair deals with OEMs: > In 2018, the European Commission slapped Google with the record-breaking penalty on the grounds that it abused Android’s mobile dominance to give unfair advantage to its own apps via pre-installation deals with smartphone makers. While this specific problem is much better today, specially since of the…

If only this was applied evenly. Why is every Samsung/LG/literally every non-Pixel device full of uninstallable crapware?

You mean un-uninstallable crapware? This has at least a technical reason: Preloaded apps are part of the read-only system image and cannot be removed. "Disabling" should be equivalent, though.

It's not just preloaded apps, though. A few months ago I prepared a Lenovo tablet for an elderly friend, and if I had just tapped through the OOBE wizard (which presented pages upon pages of optional crapware) without reading, it would have installed 20-30 preselected "popular" apps, mostly games. I had to manually deselect every single one.

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

#194

Post by 9dev »

petcat wrote: post #157
bluecalm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a culture thing. There are even smaller markets like Taiwan that developed industries EU didn't. Western EU countries are very risk averse, anti-business and has too conservative hierarchy to develop this kind of culture. You can see it as early as in school system where the focus is on rising the floor while forgetting about the ceiling.

They'll blame it on WWII but both South Korea and Japan were similarly devastated and both managed to develop world-class technology industries in the ensuing decades. Europe is the outlier and it's pointing to something fundamentally wrong that it was only able to produce a handful of interesting technology companies in all these years.

You're just blinded by propaganda. Europe has produced thousands upon thousands of interesting technology companies - it's just that very few of them are information technology companies.

Claiming that something is wrong with Europe in general because it didn't produce interesting technology is an utterly ridiculous and uninformed take.

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

#195

Post by dgellow »

nozzlegear wrote: post #188
bilekas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, these are anti-trust fines. If you want to participate in the EU zone, you can't have monopolistic behaviors. It might sound strange for the US, but you can't simply corner a market and then claim it's innovation and 'good for the customer'. The EU has a LONG history of these regulations, it's nothing new but the more rich a company becomes the more these fines are just the price of doing business. Instead, here'…

> Instead, here's a wild take. Why don't they just follow the regulations and continue to make profits. Far more likely that Google is just going to follow Apple's lead and stop releasing new features in the EU that the rest of the world gets to enjoy. From The Washington Post: > Behind all this lies the dream that Europe could be a “regulatory superpower.” It wanted to create a market too big to skip that would, by…

Fine with me. You think the EU should change its regulations because foreign companies might not release some features directly? sounds like a non issue

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

#196

Post by lkey »

cbg0 wrote: post #147
Luker88 wrote: post #65

This was from 2018, and google has gotten worse. Do the fines get reapplied for the 8 years that passed while they did nothing? Google has what, 100B+ revenue in EU? This is a once-only, 4% fine from 8 years ago. Still too little.

The point of fines is to correct behavior, not to cause financial ruin.

And yet, history and the present moment shows that fines alone do not change behavior. They are simply incorporated into the budget. Google has revenue far in excess of the fine due to their monopolies and that will continue to unabated.

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

#197

Post by cbg0 »

lkey wrote: post #196
cbg0 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of fines is to correct behavior, not to cause financial ruin.

And yet, history and the present moment shows that fines alone do not change behavior. They are simply incorporated into the budget. Google has revenue far in excess of the fine due to their monopolies and that will continue to unabated.

I'm not sure I follow; they were given 90 days to comply with certain requirements from the EU, which they did, and the fine was something extra that took a while to resolve in the courts.

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

#198

Post by clownpenis_fart »

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.

[dead]

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

#199

Post by WarmWash »

chinathrow wrote: post #129
lukan wrote: 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/

> Sure. Which is why alternative stores like F-Droid are under threat now. I would love to read the internal memos one day when Google decided to make their lifes hard.

When they saw everyone with a closed platform (apple, nintendo, sony, microsoft) not deal with any of this anti-competitive mess.

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

#200

Post by ralferoo »

eastbound wrote: post #168
hnfong wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disagree with the judgment as long as you follow the orders.

[flagged]

> In France at least, you cannot disagree with a judgement.

This feels like it can't possibly be true as written. Given that France has a court of appeals, that rather suggests that you can disagree with a judgement.

Your argument would also suggest that continuing to maintain your innocence after being found guilty would mean you're committing a further offence.

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