Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by antonvs » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 1:38 AM UTC

9dev wrote: post #105

antonvs wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A company facing market dynamism, price competition... Is unlikely to be investing billions in speculative r&d, for example. Simple solution: tax companies more heavily and use the money for public investment in research. The problem with people like Thiel is they’re incapable of thinking past their own self-interest, which makes many perfectly good solutions seem unthinkable to them. No one should listen to them w…

Unless your goal is creating a society that is centred around being the perfect habitat for Peter Thiel and Peter Thiel only, you should not listen to anything that guy says.

Good point.

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

#252

Post by abc123abc123 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 10:40 AM UTC

9dev wrote: post #166

dylan604 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More like several decades and 100s of billions of euros which nobody is going to pay And now you know where that $4.7B fine will be spent. Why spend your own money when you can spend someone else’s?

> Why spend your own money when you can spend someone else’s? Funny you would say that in defence of giant mega-corporations, externalising huge chunks of the cost they generate to the rest of the world. OpenAI decided to run the largest social experiment humanity ever undertook without asking any of us. Microsoft is powering up old nuclear power plants to cover for their AI data center consumption. Apple is manufact…

Can you prove that? The EU is fully free to decide on laws that hit exclusively US companies if they so want, with the hope of being able to generate revenue.

There is no law, constitution, court or parliament that explicitly forbids this.

Another indicator, that this is indeed a new business for the EU, is to look at the difference between southern europe and northern europe when it comes to the size of GDPR fines. It's enormous. Clearly the south has found a new way to revenue, since most, if not all of them, are more or less bankrupt.

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

#253

Post by RugnirViking » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 8:31 AM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #235

RugnirViking wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and you might think this is a small or pointless win, but the whole point of this is that because users have this choice, microsoft is forced to make internet explorer actually good so that people willingly choose it instead of abusing it to make life harder and worse for everyone else while making things easier for themselves. Hence internet explorer was killed and we got edge

EU is not the reason we got Edge, it's just that IE was thoroughly beaten by Chrome. So they made Chrome 2.

You don't think that Microsoft being forced to present a screen where the user selects a browser among several options contributed to that outcome in any way?

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

#254

Post by ben_w » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 12:52 PM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #5

These are basically meant as tarriffs, right?

No. A tariff is something paid to import a product or service, this is a fine for breaking laws.

If I visited the US, rented a car, drove it down a freeway at 120 mph, I'd likely get fined.

If I make a car and sell it and the buyer happens to be in the US, that buyer would have to pay the tariff.