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Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

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Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#191

Post by Normille »

origin_path wrote: post #146
Normille wrote: post #70

Cool. The EU does have its [many!] faults. But they have a pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights and consumer choice. Next up I'd like to see them do the same for the plethora of incompatible cordless power-tool systems out there as they did with insisting all mobile phones standardise on a USB connector.

"consumer choice ... insisting all mobile phones standardise" Although it's not the most important thing in the world, forcing standardization through law is the opposite of giving consumers choices.

That's a bit of a disingenuous comment though. I'd make a distinction between forcing standardisation on something like a power supply connector and forcing standardisation of actual products themselves.

Standardisation of the former means we don't have to have half a dozen sockets on the wall because every domestic appliance manufacturer uses a different design plug... or have each of those sockets provide a different voltage because every appliance manufacturer opted for a different voltage.

Standardisation of the latter leads to waiting 15 years for your Trabant.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#192

Post by robertlagrant »

cyphar wrote: post #86
robertlagrant wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that giving the power to overseas nations to criminalise and incarcerate US citizens has no downsides.

Believe it or not, committing a crime in a foreign country as a US citizen will result in you being incarcerated in said country regardless of your citizenship status.

I do believe it. But that's not relevant, because OP is talking about an additional power.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#193

Post by 6510 »

deelowe wrote: post #137
beAbU wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that I agree with this statement. Many of the packs that I've seen the inside of has balancing circuitry included. Also worth considering these packs are charged separate from the tool. So this means the tool cannot control the charge rate etc. Lastly, based on my luddite eyes, the difference between makita, milwaukee, bosch, dewalt and ryobi batteries seem to me to only be a different keying in the plas…

Of the tools you listed, none are made by the same company. At least for their primary products. All of the large format packs have pins for each cell, so charging with a standard balance charger is pretty easy. You can find plenty of schematics for homemade controllers online. Where they differ however, are the other pins. Some use a communication protocol like SMBUS. Some have dedicated pins for specific things lik…

But in all honesty, that is their problem. They chose this road and knew there were riches on it but also risks.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#194

Post by izacus »

moffkalast wrote: post #182
izacus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way this EU ruling is setup, they want your Android not only ship with other stores, but allow sales with exclusively those stores as well. Just like the case with Chinese phones now - I have bunch of people in my family angry because they bought Huawei and they now can't use their banking apps because it's an incompatible build of Android that requires publishing in a Huawei AppStore to work. That's worse. That'…

> because it's an incompatible build of Android sigh I guess it's impossible to go 5 min without somebody wrecking the ecosystem. I don't understand how they can even manage to be incompatible, it's fucking Java, or more commonly these days just a wrapped PWA.

I mean, in days of Android 4.x, Samsung wasn't able to not mess with core Android APIs for any release (and the bugs weren't even same across different models of the same darn phone).

My favorite bug in career is when we found out that OneUI (2? Don't remember the version exactly.) redefined @android:color/white resource. It was blue.

So anything that was set to white in your app was blue on that one model. That's the quality you can expect from the companies EU is trying to protect here. -_-

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#195

Post by robertlagrant »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #97
robertlagrant wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that giving the power to overseas nations to criminalise and incarcerate US citizens has no downsides.

Both individuals have committed crimes (perjury, for starters) here in the United States as well. We can jail them here!

They can certainly be jailed for crimes, yes.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#196

Post by nilsbunger »

gwerbret wrote: post #170

A summary of the original findings by the European Commission (1): "By decision of 18 July 2018, the Commission fined Google for having abused its dominant position by imposing anticompetitive contractual restrictions on manufacturers of mobile devices and on mobile network operators, in some cases since 1 January 2011. Three types of restriction were identified: 1. those contained in ‘distribution agreements’, requi…

#2 is the same thing Microsoft got busted for by US antitrust in the late 90s. Microsoft had required computer vendors to NOT sell computers with other OSes (eg Linux). At one point they insisted computer vendors pay for a Windows license on all computers they shipped, even ones shipped without Windows.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#197

Post by fatboy »

6510 wrote: post #178
fatboy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a bit trickier. If Makita or whoever was forced to change their batteries, anyone with a big catalogue of their tools would be pretty miffed. Also, I've mentioned this on hn before, there is already the Cordless Alliance, which does exactly this. Sadly, there's only a couple of useful-in-a-mainstream-sense brands in there: Mafell and Metabo. The rest are very niche.

I just sold some tools for 5 euro each. They need new batteries but company is gone. Makita can just continue to sell their old batteries while their new tools use a standardized form factor. They could also make an old type battery with replaceable cells.

I have five or six Makita 18v batteries and a load of their tools. If they only make new tools with the new battery they are potentially making me quite miffed. If I want the new tool I need also the new batteries and charger. Also I'd need multiple batteries because you can't really only have one.

Personally I'd be happy for that situation because of the big upside, but I can see why a company would not want it.

Plus, the most logical thing to do is not make a new standard, but pick an existing one. But who gets to be the golden brand whose battery system remains unchanged?

I would love it to happen but I can't see it happening for a while.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#198

Post by johnday »

dahfizz wrote: post #160
trasz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This law results in people landing in jail for being poor: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cruel-an...

This law results in people landing in jail for being habitual criminals. Being poor does not excuse criminal behavior.

On the other hand, it appears that being rich does excuse criminal behavior - that is, if you hire a lot of people and get them to work in an office, and they commit crimes, the company gets fined and you don't go to prison (almost always).

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#199

Post by cyphar »

robertlagrant wrote: post #192
cyphar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, committing a crime in a foreign country as a US citizen will result in you being incarcerated in said country regardless of your citizenship status.

I do believe it. But that's not relevant, because OP is talking about an additional power.

In that case the argument should be about whether or not it should be a criminal offense at all (meaning whether European CEOs should be jailed in the case of malicious actions against their users). The fact it would theoretically extend to people in the US (good luck extraditing them) is IMHO not really an important thing to consider.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#200

Post by DoughnutHole »

timmg wrote: post #168
tmoravec wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights Are you sure EU has "pretty good track record" with these fines of Google, FB, et al.? If anything, I'd say the EU puts a mild theatre every now and then, and gives the US giants a free pass otherwise.

> and gives the US giants a free pass otherwise. Probably because I work in tech in the US, but that has not been my view. What was the fine that the EU put on VW for intentionally cheating on emissions standards? And how does that compare with the many fines Google has gotten?

Volkswagen has definitely been fined less than Google - they were fined about a billion. The difference is though that the EU wasn't really prepared for the Volkswagen fraud - there was no standing law setting enormous fines for companies engaged in an emissions fraud of that scale like there is for GDPR violations. Since the scandal they brought in legislation to prevent it in the future, including fines of up to €30,000 per car sold violating the emissions guidelines.

EU regulator powers operate with an honestly fairly limited scope based on the laws passed by parliament and the commission. There's no EPA like organisation with broad powers to persue companies for most forms of misbehaviour like there is in the US - that's left to the member states, with countries like Germany and Italy individually prosecuting Volkswagen executives for fraud.

The difference with GDPR and anti-trust violations is that the EU has been deliberately granted the power to exact severe fines on companies for each individual offence. If post-scandal Volkswagen had been caught falsifying emissions again and again (similiar to Google's repeated GDPR violations) they might have been hit with more and more fines of the severity that Google has.

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