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Apple does not have a monopoly dominant position. In my country I think they are like 10% of the market. You can't abuse your dominant position if you don't have one.
In my country, iOS are more than 50% of the market. I haven't been able to find any EU-wide numbers though, which are the important ones in this case.
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That's not what a monopoly means, yeah you can buy an iPhone but Android has 75% market share in Europe, that's why it's a monopoly.
The problem with this definition is that it also assumes that if you have 75%+ market share you're likely having a similar share of the profits which is not the case here. If you take profit into account it's really at best a 50-50 market for Google.
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Let's talk about 'stupid' again once US tech giants start paying appropriate taxes on their profits generated in Europe without siphoning them off.
how about correcting the tax laws then, this is a bad way to try and get the money from them...
This might shock you, but not every country in the world believes companies should have free reign to do whatever the fuck they like. It's not like deregulation is a requirement for capitalism.
The real problem here is the minority of Americans who live with their heads firmly up their own arses and don't have any concept of the wider world - of which America is literally only one entity amongst a great many of others. You assume that everyone is envious (which, by the way, is the correct term. "Jealousy" - as you described it in one of your other comments - doesn't refer to possessions) of America when in actual fact we just want American businesses to play by the same rules as European businesses do when those companies do business in Europe. You're not being singled out because we have the same expectation for companies of all nationalities; regardless of the continent they reside. It just so happens that American businesses are some of the worst offenders (possibly due to your culture of anything goes in business?). However as you have also pointed out, European companies do also get penalised when they break the rules too. So you aren't a special case.
But honestly, given the stunts Boeing pulls, your various business lobby groups that affect overseas legislation (eg the breast milk vs formula was), the recent changes to trade relations Trump has made, and all the other numerous indiscretions America make to put their own industries first; you are hardly in the position to take the moral high ground when it comes to international business relations.
Can Google just close shop in the EU and ignore the fine? Nothing they provide really mandates they have a physical presence.
If Google packs its bags they'll be the ones feeling most of the pain. And such a drastic move would have consequences on any business Alphabet tries to do in the EU over the next decades.
Given the enormous amount of anti-competitive behavior we see every day in the news, I can't help but feel this fine seems a bit arbitrary.
Can Google just close shop in the EU and ignore the fine? Nothing they provide really mandates they have a physical presence.
Sure, if they don't want to get any revenue from the whole European Union anymore. Fortunately the EU is a big enough market so that Google doesn't have any leverage here.
We're all a lot better off, even people that use iOS, because there has been real competition in mobile. This is essentially choosing which business models the EU thinks should win.
Can Google just close shop in the EU and ignore the fine? Nothing they provide really mandates they have a physical presence.
Google leaving the EU would be, for the company, like Google leaving the US – firing half their staff, losing half their revenue and profits, etc. Absolutely not worth it.
Can Google just close shop in the EU and ignore the fine? Nothing they provide really mandates they have a physical presence.
To put that into context: > Despite being a record fine, Alphabet generated about the same amount of money every 16 days in 2017, based on the company’s reported annual revenue of $110.9 billion for the year.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/external/html/budgetataglance/...
Fines paid to the EU go straight into its own general budget. Combined with the nature of the EU Commission as judge, jury and executioner in cases like this, it is a severe conflict of interest. Member state are refusing to pay more into the budget and the UK is leaving, which will create a massive budget hole. The EU is strongly incentivised to levy fines for vaguely defined, highly debatable "crimes" on US tech firms in order to avoid their own internal political disputes over funding.