You as a prosecutor, who will you take to jail? whole committee? Those who voted in-favour? Somebody who brought the proposal? Only CEO?
Each of these decisions if done consistently over time, would invoke changes in companies, to get some fall-guys in right places.
Bet it was those who were asked about corruption and cut the microphone to those who really care.
We do deserve better in Europe.
This one is for Google. But Facebook and others do the same. How can we let them do this.
If you have responsability and let this happen, you just allow it.
Can you name any other company that if they owned Chrome it would've been better for the users and the web?
Mozilla? Red Hat? Valve?
What makes you think they'll suddenly do a good job when the funding goes away, and they have to now support a large userbase which pays $0 to use the product.
Already has a browser. With debatable success.
> Red Hat?
Would probably rather end up under the Linux Foundation and not RH. How development would then continue is up for debate.
> Valve?
They already use CEF for their Steam client IIRC, but I don't think they are too much interested in owning an entire browser. Especially considering Valve itself is a relatively small company emplyee wise.
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.
I agree that some sites make advertisements a massive eyesore, but that's a problem that can be solved in other ways.
The ads we see online now (and the tracking that goes with it) are what, 20 years old?
The type of marketing and advertising we live with now is a direct descendent of research and work done in the last century (thanks Bernays).
The whole point of Google was to get people answers to questions they have. Our current approach to advertising creates the problems in people’s heads only to immediately sell the solution.
This argument sounds intuitive, but are we really sure about that? People willingly seek out marketing materials to find things they want to buy. I've seen people flip through coupon books and catalogs as idle entertainment. That plus word of mouth may well be sufficient to keep knowledge of new products and such in circulation. Hell, it might even yield better-informed consumers, allowing the market to function more efficiently.
I've given some thought to this, and outright banning marketing sounds basically impossible. Not just from a "good luck getting that bill passed" sense, but in a practical one. Where do you draw the line on "marketing"? Presumably my writing a glowing review of a product I like won't be banned, and online banner ads will. I'm not trying to make a "the line is blurry therefore no regulation can happen" argument, rather I think "marketing" isn't really the right line. Specifically, what ought to be banned is the sale of attention. Anything where money or favors are changing hands in order to direct attention intentionally to your product, service, etc. So you can absolutely have a marketing page extolling the virtues of your brand. You cannot pay to have that page shoved in front of people's eyeballs.
Yes, I know that this kills the ad-based funding of the current internet. Let it burn. A mix of community-run free services and commercial paid services is infinitely preferable to the "free" trash we've grown dependent on.
To make an ethical argument: quantifying and selling human attention is gross anyway. Some things just don't belong on a market.
I had a decent idea. Not that it's easily practical, but it's more practical than other solutions.
Major problem today is information asymmetry. Google giving you free YouTube videos is front and center. Google paying for it by linking your location and this and that fingerprint from here and there is hidden in whitewashed language 3 settings menus deep. Many things are hidden in bottom right of a billboard in fine print, t&c fine prints, etc,.
What I propose is the law making sure that all information about the product that you intend to or are forced to by regulation to make public, public in the same measure. That is, if you're going to advertise "coca cola, open happiness" you also need to have in the same fontsize "39g of sugar" right next to it. Similarly google search bar needs to say what info of yours helped serve the ads you see, right next to the content paid for by those ads.
If you're going to hide less palatable stuff in your t&c, then marketing logos slogans all become illegal for you. And all information even positive ones must also be in fontsize8 t&c fine print.
Real estate ads can't put *artists impression at the bottom right of their ad in fine print, it has to be as big as the main tagline.
You get the idea. What I gave are just examples, slight variations of the idea that still focus on information symmetry as the main goal, will also work.
I think advertising has a huge, positive, 2nd order effect on the world.
in my garden, if I see one rat it means there is at least a dozen more.
There is a number of countries where Google has to deal with large levels of protectionist barriers (not the EU, these fines aren't that) and they still operate there. Korea is just one example. Because there's still a lot of money to be made. China isn't a counterexample: 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.
Why forfeit $20B in revenue in exchange for NOT having to pay $3B? I think that's an astute observation by the original commenter.
EDIT: FWIW I think your observation that the EU is threading a needle stands. It's a controversial topic that people are very passionate about.
I am not sure why but otherwise seemingly intelligent people seem to be incapable of internalizing that any cost, expense, or fine levied against any corporate entity will always, with 100% (not any other percentage) be rolled into prices. The minor headache of it lowering returns will also be offset and will not really make a difference to any meaningful degree. Most likely Google, just like other corporations that are exposed to this kind of risk, will have set aside a "war chest" they have been building up over prior years, which further would defray any real impact.
Then of course there is the fact that these fines are rarely ever the actual amount that will be paid in the end, and most of the time it can be distributed over time.
What people should really take away from this is that in the end it really is kind of an extortion racket by the EU, but not of Google, but rather of the advertising companies the end consumers who end up paying from he higher priced ads through product prices, and possibly the general Google customer base.
This would really only be an issue that materially impacted Google if there were some kind of real competition in the space, which there is not really. What the EU could possibly do that would have a notable impact is setting industry standards to, e.g., a universal ad format that is ad broker agnostic, e.g., your app, site, service, etc could just serve up ads from all kinds of places, a kind of free market of ads not dominated by Google.
But even with that, with Google's advancement in AI generated content, they will likely also dominate the ad generation market soon.
The oddest thing is that the EU and Europe in general has all but floundered in many ways regarding the generation of a competitive technology industry. But that's a whole different topic.
Of course, in a market with this degree of concentrated market power, those fines would have to be very very high indeed...
Google applying tariffs to itself in Europe might be something the EC may a) investigate and fine Google for ripping off Europeans, and/or b) approve of; they previously considered a big-tech tax to improve competition in Europe. Google would be doing them a favor, and Trump won't send them a nastygram this time around.
>build the fines into operation costs and bill that to EU customers or maybe all Google customers looking to serve ads in the EU.
Dude, 2.95 Billion $ is already steep, and I am sure that google used to get small fines when it was small in EU too, but its just that the rate at which google grows is more than the rate at which fines grow but I think that EU can't really make a really large number like suing google for 100 billion dollars. and I think that google already weighs in everything like the fines, the costs associated with exiting (stock price drops etc.) and they would actually just do whatever is more profitable to them of the following three options
A) stay in EU & pay the fines B) leave EU C) Follow EU requests
What is the fine amount which might change things into C) and not A) or B)
Because I think EU wants change not money, I am sure that they have plenty of money and they know that google isn't paying them out of their kindness. EU's people or even google itself isn't following EU laws and its affecting people living in EU. I wonder if someone thinks how much powerless EU might feel in that sense. They already have money, they want change.
That will make Google less competitive and allow more players on the market, breaking their monopoly. Not a bad outcome and probably exactly the point of these fines.
I doubt that google is a monopoly because they are the most competitive at what they do & thus have the market share. I have been using duckduckgo for honestly 3-4 years ago and I think that I have ublock so I don't see their ads but they are really nothing compared to google's ads and they rarely show even without adblocker (I think).
Duckduckgo is already really really competitive, You might argue that ddg uses bing and isn't independent but brave search is independent and comes really close to google to the point that you wouldn't know the difference.
I don't know the last time I used google but I love ddg's bangs etc.
I am sure that someone else can articulate what I am saying into something more logical as to why a monopoly can still exist even while being less competitive than competition.
And also I am saying that it is as easy as two clicks to change the default browser but it maybe speaks mountains that most people still don't switch from google to duckduckgo.
I sometimes want to recommend librewolf just because it has duckduckgo, ublock and sane defaults (except your web browsing deleted everytime/starting from clean slate (I think) and webgl stuff)
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.
A lot of it is a because the US brands are more recognizable and cheaper (due to dumping) and grow faster (due to the USA's VC glut).
IIRC a company like AirBNB was started in Europe, and was slowly growing, and couldn't get investment because "who would want this?" and then AirBNB was created, and then arrived in Europe, and they still couldn't get investment because "who wants a ripoff clone of AirBNB?"
The standard model for tech firms has been to run at enormous losses to push competition into bankruptcy or steal their users through subsidized service.
No European social media company could compete with e.g. Twitter, running at a loss for TWELVE years.
In more recent years, it's things like Uber. Subsidizing ride costs to crush existing taxi services & European taxi startups.
This is all, ostensibly, illegal under international law. You can't do it for cars or commodity goods. It's just not been enforced on the tech industry.
Some resources would definitely help me out here!
Also I think that I doubt how enforceable this is in tech industry as for the most part, they are selling a service and each service is different and thus have different price points and therefore the company should have the ability to decide prices technically.. so if they want to sell at a loss, theoretically nothing stops them from selling the service at a loss.
But I feel like the same logic applies to commodity goods. If two parties want to decide that they want to buy/sell at lower prices, why does the govt. interfere b/w them? Does this not impact their rights/freedom?
VC funding (I think) drives on monopoly creation. Maybe that's why we were seeing a huge amount of VC funding in AI because they think that they want to monopolize "intelligence" this time so its the end goal as they are trying to monopolize the means towards creation...
I really want to learn how US got VC trapped. The whole economy's system issue arises from VC. Like, AI hype started from VC spending billions which then justified the absurd AI growth in things like magnificent 7 on stock market.
We really have these billionaires pulling quite deals which secretly shape the world to a much larger extent and they don't do it because of some evil reason but a plain old reason: money.
But the fact that all they care about money makes the companies inside VC justify doing evil things because morality isn't the end goal, helping isn't the end goal. Its money and more money and even more money. Guess what? Exploitation pays the most short term and these VC's prefer short term too.
VC and corruption seems to be the worst issues that I think really influence way way more of the world secretly and thus making "democracy" as one HN user pointed out on a different thread, a "copium for the masses"
My hot take is that if they want to leave, then they can fuck right off. If you think your desires, profits, or business practices extend beyond democracy, then I don't need your business. Private enterprise should support and assist democracy, not the other way around (there's obviously some leeway there, but by and large).
Regulation may be good, but understand, actually, recognize, that it is also suffocating. People bragging that they have no weeds in their fields, when they have no fresh crops either....
Wait, weren't Merkel's "Fachkräfte" supposed to boost the EU economy to the moon creating tones of innovative companies? /s
>If you look at the list of europes biggest companies, it's the same companies as it was 30 years ago...automotive and oil and gas.
Irony is you're being downvoted into oblivion for being 100% correct, which makes a lot of people uncomfortable so you have to be buried in downvotes because nobody can or wants to address this issue.
And the biggest companies aren’t automotive, gas and oil.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/european-union/largest-compan...
Maybe therefore the downvotes
Really? How many of the illegal boat immigrants work in the German healthcare sector? Because last time I checked they were mostly EU workers who got their job before crossing the border. Actual doctors and nurses don't need to cross borders illegally to get a job. I wasn't talking about skilled, LEGAL immigrants like doctors and nurses, I was talking about the other „Fachkräfte“ that tend to make the news.
>And the biggest companies aren’t automotive, gas and oil.
Maybe he meant in the tech sector. Because I can't take the LVMH sweatshop seriously even if they're making a lot of money. And the other companies on the list, FANG are worth more than all of them combined. I think even Nvidia is worth more than all of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_E...
This is plainly untrue if you're talking about tech beyond the mag-7 sized supergiants.
> Regulation may be good, but understand, actually, recognize, that it is also suffocating. People bragging that they have no weeds in their fields, when they have no fresh crops either....
And yet it is the tech giants in the US, oh so praised for their size, that are the "weeds" in many regards.
What good is Google when it's reliant on an advertising monopoly itself built entirely on monopolistic and fraudulent exploitation of the rest of the economy.
What good is Amazon when it's reliant on crushing all other retail and local manufacturing?
I give them money, and in return I get stuff that "all other retail" failed to provide.
That's good.
Amazon crushed all other retail in the first place and therefore, now all other retail can't provide some stuff and you buy them from amazon
That isn't good.
Man I am thinking of this as an ouroboros. Amazon got big because they crushed all other retail and they crush all other retail because they are big.
I think that the ouroboros that I am talking about should be known as the monoboros (get it? I am trying to have some fun by mixing monopoly and ouroboros, I hope you don't mind it)
Europeans are much poorer on average though, so actual revenue figures are rather the inverse of these population figures (they actually skew much more to the US than that, but anyhow).
No matter what anyone does, he just moves the goal posts. Let him keep his ball.
And he’s, uh… very motivated by what others have to offer him… so FAANG clearly has some leverage there, but I don’t think it is necessarily a sure thing they’ll work something out.
The EU would use public funding to build some sort of Google alternative and it would take ages, would be mediocre and most money would go to waste. Instead of incentivising entrepreneurship, which is what they probably should do.
We live very well in the EU. We don’t have to have millions in savings in order to retire. Strong worker protection. Plenty of time off. Low crime rates. Most people fantasise with becoming rich, but as in, “I had a rich aunt that I didn’t even meet in my life and I was the sole heir” or “I won the lottery”, not as in “I grinded for the best 10 years of my life working 100 hours per week before I sold my company” that seems more prevalent in the US. Ordinary people here are super happy if they can buy a small place to live (not a humongous house) even if it takes 25 years to pay it in full, then finish work at 5 and take their kids to the park and have dinner at some restaurant on Saturday.
OTOH: I think the current US administration is the best think that could happen to the EU, a big wake up call. Suddenly there’s money to invest in Defense and that kind of thing.
Also, hopefully LLMs will diminish Google’s importance, and as long as there’s competitive models not from the US (Mistral, DeepSeek) we might be fine. But Google holds all the cards (data). With stuff like the Harvard animosity they might even stop attracting all the foreign talent.
Apple? There’s Samsung for phones at least. Amazon? They’ve become a Temu/Aliexpress. Facebook… huge win if they stopped doing business in Europe. MS? This is the year of Linux in desktop?
The Cloud is one of those things where the EU could build something competitive/alternative just with public funding. All running on Linux, of course.
But I still feel like some points raised by the gp might be right. And I was laughing a little thinking that someone critizing the EU already makes you consider them as an american.
Like its just funny.
Also, I feel like every country has problems but countries should honestly first and foremost try to stay away from corruption and the billionaires/rich people's influence in general and try to be impartial. I do think that EU might be good in that but still, I sometimes wonder if this all might be a facade in the sense that EU wants to work and they want to show something for it and so that's why they are fining google only almost 3 billion$. Like maybe my trust in political systems is a little too faded seeing US instititutions erode in days (speaking as non american but I really admired american politics, not anymore)
Look at the comments in this post. The always pro-privacy, anti-ads HN suddenly moaning about this fine. Now that’s super funny and worth of a good laugh. Of course it’s an America vs EU thing, patriotism trumps (no pun intended) all else.
Something like web search is basicallly part of a modern digital infrastructure. We don't want entrepreneurship in water or energy supply, I don't think we should rely on it in web search, because it will inevitably end up chasing profits over everything else.
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
> The Commission has ordered Google (i) to bring these self-preferencing practices to an end; and (ii) to implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the adtech supply chain. Google has now 60 days to inform the Commission about how it intends to do so.
It is on top of ordering them to fix the business practices. They can always issue more fines if Google doesn’t comply.
IMO some of us here want to see these companies hurt. That’s a non-goal for the EU, they are looking for compliance, not vengeance or something silly like that.
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.
Here in Sweden we have a legal tradition where the government doesn't have power over the enforcement of the laws-- parliament can make any law it likes, and it can be anything, but enforcement and the courts are isolated from the politicians.
I really don't like that the commission can make up rules, or fine people etc. It's a bad system. It should be done by an impartial regular, or prosecutor or a court. This kind of system opens up the commission to political blackmail and threats from powerful states, it opens up for corruption, it opens up for uneven enforcement, and there's just no reason to have the system this way.
You could easily imagine a world where Google was a big US government darling and where they put their weight on the commission and got an outcome that isn't in accordance with law, but with the right system, one more like the Swedish system, that won't be possible.
The EU Commission does not make up rules anymore than these government agencies in Sweden does.
The EU commission on the other hand actually has power.
As one other example, consider the Swedish terrorism law. There's no such thing as designating something a terrorist organization-- that's constitutionally impossible, instead it's determined by the courts. Meanwhile the EU commission can actually designate a group as a terrorist organization, no court case necessary.
>Ingen myndighet, inte heller riksdagen eller en kommuns beslutande organ, får bestämma hur en förvaltningsmyndighet i ett särskilt fall ska besluta i ett ärende som rör myndighetsutövning mot en enskild eller mot en kommun eller som rör tillämpningen av lag.
No authority [...] may decide how an administrative authority is to decide in a case involving use of authority against an individual[...]
Furthermore, the commission is not like a directors of an agency. They are politicians. I would compare them to government ministers, who are appointed in a similar way.
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 European Commission is both the executive and legal branch. They propose the legislation that the European Parliament can only approve or reject. On the other hand, the European Patliament can not propose anything at all.
The Commission is elected by member states and thus represents them indirectly.
While I agree this should ideally also be available to the EP, it doesn't make the EC a legislative branch. It's very much the executive.
Law comes from parliament alone, and the constitution does not permit for the executive (regeringen) to intervene in individual cases.
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
There's this stuff about clarifying the DSA, for example. They simply shouldn't have such a power.
The commission though, is literally doing things relating to individual cases, and they're politicians directly appointed by European governments.
Simply, it's not rule of law, it's rule by the council.
For example Danske Fragtmænd, challenged the Commission's decision that capital injections by Denmark and Sweden into Postnorrd did not constitute unlawful state aid.
(https://www.lexxion.eu/en/stateaidpost/what-competitors-must...)
> they're politicians directly appointed by European governments.
Just like Generaldirektörer in Sweden then.
I can't find any details about those past cases with regards to - did they actually ended up paying anything at all?
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.
If you don't want Google dominating your populations technology, try creating conditions to grow a replacement.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...
were not about monetary fines, they are first and foremost about changing practices (behavioural remedies). Microsoft didn't even pay any money, they had to change how they operated their business in the US.
Likewise with both the recent antitrust trials in the US against Google: In one government prosecutors wanted them to sell off Chrome, the other they are trying to break Google Ads monopoly by breaking it up.
This is not a system extracting billions of the dollar for the 4th time in a couple years. Especially as others have mentioned that this commission is also the one inventing the rules, so it can keep doing it indefinitely for new reasons.
They had to do that, or else what? Some form of cruel and unusual punishment that doesn’t involve fines?
Isn’t this process about compliance with laws too? They have had time to follow the laws but chosen not to.
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.
Why do you think Silicon Valley was in… Silicon Valley? It certainly isn’t because it monopolistically killed EU chip fabs!
They just didn’t exist, and went out of their way to be a huge hassle to exist, and the EU still doesn’t have decent chip fabrication abilities.
It’s the same for software.
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.
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.
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)
You don't like outsiders poisoning your wells? You should poison it yourself instead!
With the unprecedented extrajudicial approach the US has recently taken against certain recreational boaters in the Caribbean, perhaps they will realize Google is far worse and apply similar tactics.
Lawsuits will never amount to anything. And they are taking over the world. And in my opinion, they're verifiably more hostile than any boater I've ever been made aware of, including people on jet skis.
With the very substance of reality dissolving before our eyes, and considering we may be but a twitch of a jingo fingertip away from nuking the homeless, why not?
> The Commission has already signalled its preliminary view that only the divestment by Google of part of its services would address the situation of inherent conflicts of interest, but it first wishes to hear and assess Google's proposal.
aka, breaking a monopoly.
thanks god for Europe.
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.)