This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Finally the fee numbers are starting to look appropriate for the size of the fucking company. Would love to see a few more 0's though
Sadly it doesn't, Google is currently the most profitable company on the planet, with them making 120 billion in pure profit 2024 and estimated to make even more this year, so this fine, for anticompetitive stuff going back to 2014, is less than 2.5% of their one year profit.
And there's absolutely zero chance that they gained less than 3 billion from that, so this fine is just part of the cost of doing business.
That's like the median income family in the US ($84k) getting hit with a ~$1k fine (remember, profit comes after expenses are paid) because they didn't pay their taxes for over a decade, with no requirement of actually paying any of those taxes.
Look I am all for increasing fines but people need to stop discussing a fine's impact in terms of global revenue etc.. It is useful but in cases like this the question is do you think that 2.5% of their profits came from this one action, because if not then it was a net loss and the fine will discourage it going forward because it doesn't make sense.
I would much rather over tune the fine than make it a cost of doing business, in general accountants think backwards to most people and they won't tell the higher ups to change anything until it really affects the bottom line.
My point was it isnt a cost of doing business, if your costs are more than your earnings then it is just bad business.
We dont have a view of how much profit this infraction earned them but I would have a hard time believing it approached 2.5% of their global profit.
Any bean counter is going to love pointing out a fuck up of someone else that they can take credit for remedying.
You don't believe that the anticompetitive ad stuff Google has been doing for 11 years approached 2.5% of their one year profit?
Its worth remembering that EU fines are not one and done, if you don't fix the problem they fine you repeatedly.
Except so far the only time they've actually gotten any fines paid by anyone significant, the initial multi-billion euro fine on Meta was settles for only a few hundred million euro after half a decade of litigation and ended up including all subsequent fines in what was forgiven despite them continuing the activity. In theory it should dissuade them, but the companies being fined that really deserve it have annual profits greater than most countries' GDPs. They can litigate indefinitely against the entire EuroBlock and keep making a profit from the activities while doing it.
Yeah, just as they promised. For every fee they up the numbers. This time they are also ready to do more than hurting their wallets directly, which is much more interesting.
Otherwise Google will just treat is as a cost of doing business.
The us admin will work to cancel it, as long as google is up to date on their protection money paid under the table through layers of shell companies. Also a specific extra commission. It is exactly like that. These guys are the most corrupt us Administration ever. And they are making money hand over fist under the table in addition to the 3.6 billion extra they have already made that they would not have. They being the president's share of business ventures. His appointees are getting paid too you can bet.
