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EU Google Businesses The Almighty Buck

Google Fined Nearly $1.7 Billion For Ad Practices That Violated European Antitrust Laws (washingtonpost.com) 126

Posted by msmash from the eu-strikes-again dept.
European regulators on Wednesday slapped Google with a roughly $1.7 billion fine on charges that its advertising practices violated local antitrust laws, marking the third time in as many years that the region's watchdogs have penalized the U.S. tech giant for harming competition and consumers. The Washington Post: Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's top competition commissioner, announced the punishment at a news conference, accusing Google of engaging in "illegal practices" in a bid to "cement its dominant market position" in the search and advertising markets. The new penalty adds to Google's costly headaches in Europe, where Vestager now has fined the tech giant more than $9 billion in total for a series of antitrust violations. Her actions stand in stark contrast to the United States, where regulators -- facing a flood of complaints that big tech companies have become too big and powerful -- have not brought a single antitrust case against Google or any of its peers in recent years, reflecting a widening transatlantic schism over Silicon Valley and its business practices.
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Google Fined Nearly $1.7 Billion For Ad Practices That Violated European Antitrust Laws More

Google Fined Nearly $1.7 Billion For Ad Practices That Violated European Antitrust Laws

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  • $1.7 billion = small potatoes (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nothing will change until some of the higher-ups at these big tech companies are jailed, or killed.

    • Re: $1.7 billion = small potatoes (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Fines aren't enough, clearly. They need to be prevented from continuing their practices. What will it take? Injunctions? Orders? Monitoring? Extraditing and physically inprisoning offending executives? A ban in the EU entirely?

      • Re: $1.7 billion = small potatoes (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Breaking them up. Anything less will be brushed off by senior execs. Their stock price fluctuates by more than that every day.

        Google, FB, and a few others need some very serious anti-trust review.

    • Nothing will change until some of the higher-ups at these big tech companies are jailed, or killed.

      You don't need to go that far. Fining the CEO or the board would be alternatives. At that point there is personal interest to ensure internal process and procedures.

    • Indeed. Forcing Google to fork over $1.7B is like forcing me to fork over a couple of hundred dollars - it would annoy me, but it wouldn't compel me to change whatever ways that resulted in that fine, especially if they contribute to my income.

    • ... until some of the higher-ups ... are ... killed.

      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. The "higher-ups" are focused on corporate bottom-line profit and growth. Make it financially painful for the leaders, on a personal basis, for a long time. Don't punish the stockholders or regular working schmucks for the boss's fjnork-up.

  • Google needs to Bribe (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google needs to push its weight around. Time to go dark. Let see how well European companies do without Google.

    • There are plenty of alternatives. Google knows they can't do this, or they'll just drive people to competing search engines and competing cloud document providers. Even if they manage to get the laws changed, they'll have lost a significant user mindshare and will have an incredibly tough time winning it back.

  • On the selection of villains (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @07:27AM (#58303648) Journal

    Her actions stand in stark contrast to the United States, where regulators -- facing a flood of complaints that big tech companies have become too big and powerful -- have not brought a single antitrust case against Google or any of its peers in recent years, reflecting a widening transatlantic schism over Silicon Valley and its business practices.

    No matter where you're from, it seems likely there exists more animus against a successful foreign company dominating a local market.

    In the US, for instance, our current angst with Chinese domination in certain tech areas is rearing its ugly head as persecution of Huawei.

    • Google and Facebook, with all of their market penetration, can't hold a candle to the threat that Microsoft still poses to the PC industry. Microsoft is still dictating terms to hardware manufacturers (TPM, Restricted Boot), and are still able to do unfettered harm to users without so much as giving a single shit.

      The EU is still barking up the wrong tree.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by green1 ( 322787 )
        I haven't seen it listed in this case, but I know that Microsoft was one of the lead companies pushing the anti-trust actions against Google in the previous cases.

        Seems that the EU is quite happy to do Microsoft's bidding, so I wouldn't expect them to turn on MS too soon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Europe doesn't see Google as a foreign company - that's the whole point.

      Google has substantial business and multiple subsidiaries in the EU. It operates under EU. It pays EU taxes. It employs people in the EU. And therefore, it is subject to EU antitrust laws.

      Ars is reporting that they will need to introduce a browser choice screen for Android, similar to the one Microsoft had for Windows.

    • No matter where you're from, it seems likely there exists more animus against a successful foreign company dominating a local market.

      It always seems like that to the outside but that is a misanalysis. The EU quite happily fines EU companies constantly. The difference is it doesn't make the news outside of the EU since it's not newsworthy, and also due to relative sizes the relative fines (which take into account both market effects as well as ability to pay) are usually significantly lower.

      Now while it does look like Google is a healthy target for the EU the reasoning behind it makes perfect sense too, but not for the reasons you think.

      • You make an interesting argument. Still, even within the individual EU countries, some tribalism in the form of favoring the business of an Italian company in Rome exists. It's human nature. The world, and even Western Europe, is not completely above it.

        • On a business side that is 100% correct. I'm in Germany at the moment, I had a vendor from Texas call up to meet and discuss how he will get more business in Europe. I said you better start at the low hanging fruit and work on our Dutch and Belgian plants because ... your main competitor is German. It doesn't matter how good your are there's a big barrier to overcome against local companies.

          I was talking exclusively about the legal side of EU enforcement. That often looks one sided but that's largely becaus

  • For our own selfish business needs (long gone is Don't be Evil)

    • Protecting their brand by not having web sites mix their search and ads with others is evil? That's a pretty low bar for evil. This wouldn't hurt competition or innovation- competitors were just as available, and any web site that puts up multiple search boxes would look ugly and amateurish - they wouldn't get much traffic anyway.

  • The EU annual budget is roughly €150 billion. That comes from a handful of countries who are net contributors, (the UK is the third biggest contributor). Fining US corporations is a fairly painless way to boost the budget.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      US corporations won't be fined if they don't break the law. What is the point of having laws if you don't uphold them?

    • Re:Expect more fines - particularly if the UK leav (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @08:46AM (#58303952)

      Unlike the US, there are still places in Europe where size, wealth and power don't provide immunity from prosecution when a corporation violates the law.

      • Re:Expect more fines - particularly if the UK leav (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @10:23AM (#58304422)

        Unlike the US, there are still places in Europe where size, wealth and power don't provide immunity from prosecution when a corporation violates the law.

        The thing is, in the US regulators are designed and tasked with protecting US companies from prosecution, as we've seen with the FAA, Boeing and the 737-MAX fiasco. This means they assume that everywhere else is the same. Its quite inconceivable to some Americans that the EU applies the same rules and regulations to EU companies as they do to foreign ones, ergo in order to quell the congnitive dissonance there must be an anti-US conspiracy.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Fishy ( 17624 )

        except that isnt true.

        When apple formed a cartel and illegally engaged in price fixing for ebooks they were given a slap on the wrist by the EU, and only the USA took action. Why, because in the cartel were Hachette (french) and Macmillan (German).

        Its often see-no-evil when EU firms are involved in illegal activities.

      • Unlike the EU, the right of the accused to know the exact nature and cause of the accusation against them [cornell.edu] is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The EU never told Google what they thought Google was doing wrong. Just that it was "anti-competitive." The way the EU handles these cases is they inform Google that they're facing an anti-trust judgement, but never state exactly what the problem behavior is. Google had to come up with a proposed solution, present it to the EU, and the EU rejected it without ex

        • Only mention of "solution" in the discussion (before mine), but no details. Guessing from the context, but I am willing to wager some quatloos it was NOT a real solution and I would like to see more details. Actually, from reading your comment again, it is not clear that the google actually offered any pretense of a solution, which could certainly explain why you didn't offer a link to it.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The EU never told Google what they thought Google was doing wrong. Just that it was "anti-competitive."

          Huh? Read the fine article: "Sites that participated in Google’s “AdSense for Search” program could take advantage of Google’s search tools on their Web pages, and users who searched those sites would see results alongside ads served up by Google.

          But Google for a time prohibited those third-party sites from using rival ad services, then required prominent placement of its own ads — two of the many restrictions on AdSense customers that led the European Commission to conclude in

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sd4f ( 1891894 )
          I'm not familiar with the specifics, but they probably didn't have to tell google because it's not a criminal matter. If it were a criminal matter, then people should be going to jail, not so much just fined.

    • Fining US corporations is a fairly painless way to boost the budget.

      Errr horseshit. The law doesn't care about where corporations come from, and there's nothing painless about multi year protracted legal battles against incredibly wealthy and well resourced opponents.

      Now here's a thought, rather than getting all upset that a USA based company is in trouble with a another country, instead point out how that USA based company actually complied with laws that have been on the books since the 60s (before the precious budget contributor of the UK even joined the EU).

  • Funny (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Article is hidden behind a cookie wall in violation of GDPR because they are trying to force consent for personal tracking... Hope someone complains to the respective authorities and the publication is slammed with a fine as well

  • ...on my feed. But three times?

    Why does /. suck as much as Duke?

  • Prof. Randy Picker at the Univ. of Chicago has a good course - Internet Giants: The Law and Economics of Media Platforms - that includes a fairly in depth look at the EU's history of fines against American tech companies in the guise of anti-competitive practices. Microsoft, 2004, $578 million, began a string of significant fines by the EU. They went after Intel, Apple, Google, et al. They had MS jump through hoops to satisfy the regulators. MS Media Player - nope, no good. MS web browser - nope no good eit

  • ....if Britain isn't going to, then SOMEONE has to start paying Brussels' bills!

  • The fines should have been bigger, and included jail terms for the senior executives.

  • So the corporate cancer google has become a monopoly, eh? What a shocking problem. Not.

    In solution terms:

    (1) The google can divide itself into competing companies.

    (2) The parts improve faster because of REAL competition.

    (3) PROFIT!

    For simplicity, I left out a few intermediary steps. For example, the part about how we would get more freedom by having more choice (which can be implemented even if many (or even most) people are too lazy to be more free). Also the step where the parent holding company (Alphabet

  • It would have been nice if the summary had listed key reasons leading to sanctions. Even the article itself takes it time before finally spelling them out:

    Google for a time prohibited those third-party sites [that used Google’s AdSense for Search] from using rival ad services, then required prominent placement of its own ads. (...) “There was no reason for Google to include these restrictive clauses in their contracts except to keep rivals out of the market,” Vestager [(the European Union’s top competition commissioner)] said at her news conference.

  • EU laws apply to EU companies and companies that operate in the EU. That is what they are, not a scheme against ultra-nationalist fantasies. Every day I find myself wanting the world to become truly multi-polar again, like it was before the fad of superpowers. This is already happening due to growth rates, the EU and China will soon be doing more business together than the US with both combined. The AU (African Union) is starting to shape up as a meaningful entity especially the smaller ECOWAS military coop

  • Why doesn't Google Legal Team flag these illegal contracts?

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