I love that you got one response calling it extortion, and another worrying that it might not have recovered all the money from the abusive practices.

The EU is threading the needle deftly here, I guess.

I think Google leaving EU will result in more good than harm by shaping a better landscape for innovation and competition.

> Google stopped operating search in China because at that point there was not a lot of money to be made for them in search there.

Source?

Back in 2010 when Google left, their search market share was close to 30%. It's hard to think there was no money to be made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

"Google still has around $20 billion yearly reasons to remain active in the EU."

That just means the fines are inadequate. The solution is to increase them until shareholders are noticeably hurt. Pressure from shareholders on Google's management to stop the offending practices would soon effect the necessary change.

I agree with everything you’ve said, but just would also point out that in addition to the fine, it is unclear how changing its practices is going to decrease existing (ill gotten) ad revenues going forward. Presumably these changes will hurt revenue or google would already be following them.

They'll be sure to stick around if there's still money to be made.

Here’s a case where leaving makes sense: Google was hit with a literal bazillion-dollar fine in Russia.

It is not only revenue, it is mining data, feeding it into Gemini and selling it back to people in the form of ML models.

If it helps to stop the reliance on American digital services and don't mind Google leaving Europe or the European Union. EU should start charging the fines they are allowed too for GDPR percentages of the world wide revenue.

The entire idea of "Oh they'll leave" is ridiculous, an empty threat from billionaires who are afraid of regulation.

The EU has 450M (+80M for UK & similar non-eu countries that are likely to follow the EU on such regulations) population to the US' 350M.

The moment the likes of Google, or Meta, or Microsoft, or whomever else leave the EU, they immediately create a market gap. A market gap that will then in short order be filled with a European company that, because of the population sizes, has a notable comparative advantage to the US tech company.

+ As much as HN's readership loathes to admit it, regulations like this are "Good, Actually". Google's monopolist practices are bad for both advertisers and services showing ads. Any would-be competitor that arises from Google leaving the market would, by virtue of being forced by law to not be so shitty, be the better option. (And yes, this does also apply to pretty much all of the other big tech regulations as well.)

Like, c'mon. "Monopolies bad" is capitalism 101. Even the US' regulators thought Google was going too far.

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I think it is more likely that Trump point blank tells them they aren't allowed to pay this and that the EU isn't allowed to fine them any longer.

No, they will not leave the EU because the EU is not reading the room right now. You think Trump will do nothing to protect FAANG? To be honest, despite being European, I'm surprised the US has let itself be pushed around for so long. I don't say I agree with it, it's just realpolitik.

Why not both ? ;-)

> Google has now 60 days

I hope I am wrong, and would be happy if that were the case, but I find these deadlines laughable. In reality Google will delay this in courts for at least 5 years. In which time they will make some extra billions, and then the fine will be cut to a quarter of the current value. And by then they will have invented a new way to abuse consumers, just different enough to be the object of a new investigation and new court case that also takes years.

I have my issues with how legislation is set up in the EU, but it's not like the commission can just make its own laws. The commission can only submit proposals, which then have to be approved (or changed) by the council and parliament. (In fact, the commission is the only party that can submit proposals, something that is very weird to me) As such, the commission is not part of the legislative branch, but the executive. The main job of the executive is to enforce the law, e.g. with fines.

In fact, this seems to be pretty similar to Sweden, quoting from [1]:

> Most state administrative authorities (statliga förvaltningsmyndigheter), as opposed to local authorities (kommuner), sorts under the Government, including the Armed Forces, Coast Guard, Customs Service and the police.

It appears that the swedish government can also initiate legislation, just like the commission (although the Riksdag can initiate on their own, something the European parliament cannot).

Also, fwiw: The fines can also be adjusted or cancelled by the court of Justice of the EU

Isnt the commission basically just he executive branch of the EU?

My understanding is Sweden's "SEC" (in US terms) is called Finansinspektionen. Wouldnt this EU commission be like the Finansinspektionen issuing a fine or revoking a license if a bank didnt comply with regulations? My understanding is the Finansinspektionen can do this sort of thing but has to go to the court for larger actions.

Perhaps the EU commission has a bit more leeway?

The problem with this is big tech companies are very adept at stringing court-based enforcement along, that would defer this punishment until well into the 2030s and even the 2040s for actually rectifying the issues.

Who does "enforcement" in Sweden? Is the police somehow under the courts? Same for things like consumer protection agencies, environment protection and so on? Are prosecutors somehow in the same group as the judges? That may work for you, but I see some potential for abuse there as well. I think that is how it turned out in Japan, once you are prosecuted conviction is a foregone conclusion.

You get that "myndigheterna" are under the government right? And that the government controls the authorities.

What do you say when Arbetsmiljöverket (labour regulation), Skatteverket (IRS), Ekobrottsmyndigheten (monterary crimes) take enforcement actions in Sweden and hand out decisions for fines and such?

The EU Commission does not make up rules anymore than these government agencies in Sweden does.

What's worse, doing anything at all without it involving any online advertising is nearly impossible, too.

"would’ve been a “nature is healing” moment for the web". I wish this was true.

The healing will be when all ads and marketing will be down to zero. This companies like Facebook and Google make their billions putting on your face what you don't want or need and someone else pays them good money for that.

You may think it's too radical but we must make marketing illegal. Then fix the web.

> would’ve been a “nature is healing” moment for the web.

A more likely scenario is that some other big techs like MSFT or Meta would acquire Chrome and replace the monopolist position. This is the sad truth that many people try to underplay; Nature won't heal by itself. The market is already structured to incentivize monopolist behaviors, thanks to the scaling nature of big techs. You need correction to the market itself, which can only be done by an extremely competent legislative body but we won't have that anytime soon. But at least the EU has done something with DMA so there are still some hopes.

I don't think we should expect much from the us justice system at the moment. All the biggest tech companies CEO were publicly donating millions on trump investiture, one can only imagine what else happens privately.

in my garden, if I see one rat it means there is at least a dozen more.

Running a browser without an ecosystem behind it is a money pit and would be worth almost 0.

> What the US couldn't do, Europe just did ?

The remedy phase in the US trial over similar ad tech issues starts later this month, so it is premature to call it “what the US couldn’t do”.

(You may be confusing it with the recent partial ruling in the remedy phase of the separate search antitrust case.)

The US just won two antitrust trials in a row against Google in the past year. One for Google Ads and the other for Google Search (the chrome one).

That’s a complete red herring.

This is not Europe racketing Google. Google is losing the same kind of trial everywhere in the world including the US for one simple reason: they are actually using anticompetitive practices in the ad tech market.

Honestly the most likely to benefit from this verdict are other American companies. You are welcome for us doing the enforcement your country refuses to do.

At this point there's about a hundred (or more) years of research, experience, law etc. in competition policy.

Competition doesn't necessarily just win in the mid-term. Competitions works - if the conditions are right, markets are anonymous and dynamic, not two-sided, not plaqued by information symmetries and - importantly - vertical entanglements. Competitions also works out in the long term. Like, take a hundred years and squint.

However, in the meantime of all this, there are many cases where the market outcome moves strikingly far away from the optimum. What that means is that the market situation destroys value (consumer welfare, societal roi, whatever)

You can scan the OP for about three sections and see that Google is violating any reasonable and established take on how market regulation, leading to an inefficient market outcome.

This is not some special European temperament. This is just standard and - just to make this clear - 100% American economic theory as previously applied and pioneered mainly in the good US of A. If this doesn't get applied in the US now, we may call this regulatory capture.

Personally, I feel it also really speaks to the situation that Google is lauded as representing the US tech scene. I disagree here. I think the US tech scene goes far beyond Google. Google ain't even a particular strength, probably more of a weakness by now.

By contrast, you could (and should) bring up about a million things the EU and the commision in particular does to stifle a EU tech scene. Bog standard application of competition policy ain't it.

> And before we "Just don't break the laws" take note of the fact the the EU has a dead tech scene.

What are you implying? That letting foreign companies break laws would help the tech scene?

Or that the attention is so limited that any attempt of enforcing law necessarily means there is less attention to fostering the tech industry?

(Neither of the above interpretations make any sense)

> Wouldn't it be something if the EU focused on fostering a tech scene rather than attacking it.

It really wouldn't.

We're having the wrong conversation here.

The reality is that these fines mean nothing for the average EU consumer. There's really no difference between a consumer in the EU, the US or China. As a EU consumer you win nothing from these fines. You won't be able to sue Google or any other company if they're abusing you or your data. You're just reading these stupid headlines about these huge fines and that's the end of it. Europe has huge power and could really change the way big companies work, but instead it chooses to do nothing but apply random huge fines here and there that change nothing in the grand scheme of things. It's a shame.

>the 4th time they have gone to the Google bank demanding a $1B+ ransom

Even if I accepted this premise, from a realpolitik lens, why not? The USA has gone to the 'taffif/trade war bank' like 40 times, so maybe fight fire with fire?

Do you think that the adtech industry "scene" is somehow exclusive to the USA? Antitrust enforcement doesn't appear out of thin air just to throw a spanner in the works just for the hell of it, it's because the local competition complained. You may not agree with it but they are "fostering" them as you wish.

I love these takes.

You don't like outsiders poisoning your wells? You should poison it yourself instead!

> And before we "Just don't break the laws" take note of the fact the the EU has a dead tech scene. I don't know how they expect competition to grow when they block all the sunlight in their tech fields.

Google is abusing his position to prevent other companies to compete, hence decreasing the likelihood of European tech companies emerging.

Beside, I don't see how having strong monopolistic companies is beneficial to Americans citizens beside the tech bros working in Silicon Valley ? American companies are being ripped off on advertising just as bad as european companies used to be, and obviously they were following google rip off on goods price and customer had to pay more.

> take note of the fact the the EU has a dead tech scene

Because American megacorps are killing it with their monopolistic actions?

I won't talk about the merits of huge fines being an approach to solving competition, but from the inside I can see a few ways that the EU pale:

1. While the EU operates as a body for rule setting, the individual members are still highly autonomous in a way that doesn't compare to the types of collaboration that's possible across states in the USA. This is worsened by language divisi ons.

2. Internally each country is trying to foster their country as the place to be to launch a "start up", but that fragmentation is almost certainly slowing down the formation of a European equivalent to silicon valley.

3. There isn't a competitive investment funnel to what's available in the USA and the USA benefits from "network effect" style advantages purely from being further down the road. So if someone in the EU has a good start-up concept, chances are they'll try to make it work with the big guns in the USA, or cash it out to a US entity.

4. The EU is incredibly shortsighted in allowing the sale of important tech companies to foreign entities (primarily US-based entities). Many of the bigger advancements of today started in Europe.

5. Similar to points 3+4, companies in the USA are often able to build more value with the IP they develop or acquire (on account of numerous factors including some inconvenient ones). So even when a EU start up has a good product it may not necessarily be as successful due to those factors.

6. The EU tends to write ambiguous legislation that is open to interpretation and at worst: intentionally vague. While some believe this is just trap setting for collecting fines, the consequence of vague rules is a loss of appetite to develop in that market. English speaking markets tend to have much more specific legislation and their governments are available to offer specific guidance. This is something that the EU lacks and a frequent complaint from the likes of Google et. al.

> Wouldn't it be something if the EU focused on fostering a tech scene rather than attacking it.

> If you don't want Google dominating your populations technology, try creating conditions to grow a replacement.

Talk about fallacy.

It would be better if US started dividing these giants thereby allowing other companies to enter the market.

And before you say something on AI - your companies don't follow your laws either - IP laws - should we remove these? I would advocate that yes, we should - they are nothing more than nuisance (with all the suing costs) in modern times anyway.

We had a tech scene before 2010s - you just can not outcompete these US state-sanctioned companies when they don't follow the law and US cries every time when sane control is applied. And then there is China to add to that with Temu. Add to that Amazon and fact that there is more than one digital market based in central Europe should be impossible - but they do exist.

And yes we DO have conditions and 'sunlight'.

Look at payment for example:

Google - late 2010s Apple - middle 2010s Central European payment systems - 2000s

Some countries reached banking transfer unification - i.e one system to payment transfer with every bank in middle 2010s IN BANKING SYSTEM ITSELF - so as long you have bank account you don't have to have any other transfer system - your bank does it for you - instant.

Yeah so why exactly we have even any competition with Google and Apple? Ah yeah google pushes it's solution with 'card number' (which if you live in central Europe only time you will use is with US companies) to android.

I still remember culture shock card number gave some people. When my family member was asked by Netflix to give card number he thought it was fraud - because NO ONE ever did that. It took enormous amount of persuasion (and call to the bank) that yes - card number is valid system. He asked me what blocks netflix from slurping all the money if he cannot see the bank website. He solved problem with (I kid you not) separate banking account where he transferred money before giving that account card number.

And before you have misconception - he was poor but did somewhat (more than most I would say) understand IT - he just did not have trust for his 1000$ pension to not be misused by Netflix employees.

More? How about Comparison shopping website?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-court-upholds-googles-...

Do you see pattern?

The issue is not that EU cannot make companies - it is that EU companies cannot survive in hostile US market that confuses capitalism with company owned oligarchy.

The thing about EU companies is that they are much more localised - after all they were historically created with country language in mind, not English, some today still don't exist on English web, so you will have trouble to even know about them. Most of them to this day only work in the same country.

American companies have 380M market + L2 + L3. They rarely limit themselves to country. EU companies have at best something in range 100M - but realistically if we talk about any other country this falls sharply to ten/s of millions of users.

You already have structural advantage.

US proved that cannot regulate and dismantle its molochs, your choice, but don't come to cry when EU looses patience.

Don't expect that if you try to build & hold monopolies in US because that makes US market "bigger" other countries will not punish you - it's unreasonable.

They’re in a panic. Euro boomers destroyed the place after their forefathers died to build it and keep it alive.

It also traditionally heavily anti Europe, for reasons

From what I quickly gather, these are the things Google did that are against the EU anti-trust rules:

- Companies advertising through Google were not allowed to collaborate with other advertising companies under Google's contract. - Google runs an ad exchange (AdX) where advertisers and advertising spaces can connect, and Google didn't share platform's data with other members, giving them an unfair market advantage. - They also manipulated the way deals were made on the platform to their advantage.

To me it sounds just wrong anyway that Google runs this platform where companies compete with each other but also Google itself, so they'll always have more control.

I think it's a good idea having these anti trust rules, because otherwise you'll eventually get a a gigantic monopoly economy, and I just think that's not a good idea.

Agreed. Megacorps where noone has actual honest skin in the game and every unethical decision can be paved over with money are bad news for most of us.

How would that work? Infraction > Officers quit; new set of officers > infraction > officers quit; new set of officers…

Almost 3bn euros is one hell of a cost of business though, that's approximately a euro for every 2.5 people on the planet

execs will jump with golden parachute after first strike.

Just another day in the office. European Commission... commission...

They should have force Google to sell to a EU buyer instead? Like the true, elected capitalist way?

One comes from an orangutan because he wants to get it hard and please his fanbase and the other is because a specific company broke a law of a region.

The two couldn't be more different than that. And I find it hard to believe your comment is genuine given the obvious difference.

Yeah, its not like the US is also pursuing an antitrust actions against Google, including one for its abusive ad tech practices.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-prevails-l...

They let them get away with tons for years/decades before doing anything serious

US big tech has become so hostile to democracy and human values it's laughable.

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Depends if it even gets paid. Probably a couple of years in dispute at least

That's a shallow dismissal, which is against the HN guidelines.

Only as a response to the US establishing anti competitive practices for their tech industry.

You can keep your US tech companies. In EU we actually need our own. It's long overdue.

It is almost like a 15% tariff on Google. I wonder who did that first.

US Tech Giants use tax optimisation created by the single market to avoid EU taxes to the tune of billions a year. That’s on top of them getting far too much access to public markets in the EU including for plenty of things EU companies are bared from by the Buy American Act in the US.

The idea that EU is somehow a mob boss shaking down American tech companies is plain ridiculous. Just take a look at the EU-US trade balance in service and you will understand in which direction the money is actually flying.

It is not that the EU can't compete, it is that the US don't enforce their own antitrust laws - and that the EU has to step in to ensure fair competition.

US tech does everything it can to forcefully monopolize a market; US tech gets fined by countries who care about it.

You don’t seem to understand how the EU works, or what it even is in the first place. A hint: it’s not a singular entity when it comes to "needing" money.

I'm looking forward to my north/south rail corridor funded by Google. Better than waymo.

It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with ideology.

This is a ridiculous take, the EU has a budget of 180 billion a year. People keep repeating this but its just idiotic.

> EU needs money; EU fines US tech companies. No surprise there.

And it’s just a coincidence that they chose a company engaged in wrongdoing which breaks their laws, huh?

Please, with this cynical edgelord shit.

Innovation consists of forming unbreakable monopolies and then jacking up prices apparently.

What did Google do that its competition didn't?