Google Suffers Setback in Court Fight to Topple Record EU Fine (bloomberg.com) 19
Google lost most of the first round of its battle to topple a record $4.3 billion European Union antitrust fine that struck at the heart of the US tech giant's power over the Android mobile-phone ecosystem. From a report: In a boost for EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, judges upheld the vast majority of the European Commission's arguments, but cut the penalty to 4.1 billion euros after finding faults in some of the regulator's analysis and that Google's right to a fair hearing had partly been infringed. "The General Court largely confirms the commission's decision that Google imposed unlawful restrictions on manufacturers of Android mobile devices and mobile network operators in order to consolidate the dominant position of its search engine," the Luxembourg-based EU tribunal said in a statement. The Android case is one of a trio of decisions that have been the centerpiece of Vestager's bid to rein in the growing dominance of Silicon Valley. She's fined Alphabet's Google more than 8 billion euros and has since opened new probes into the company's suspected stranglehold over digital advertising.
Re: (Score:2)
Problem solved.
You mean like "Brexit"?
What do we call that move, 'cause Goo-Gone is already taken...
Re: Just pull out of the EU (Score:4, Informative)
I would not bother running operations in Europe. Why bother?
An answer to your question, summed up in a single concept.
Overseas tax havens.
Ireland could stay afloat on the trillions of untaxed dollars there.
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Ireland could stay afloat on the trillions of untaxed dollars there.
No they couldn't - because if they taxed them, they'd go somewhere else.
They perceive themselves to be ahead by not taxing them and living off the other spending (and jobs with taxable income) that fall out of the operations that support the tax haven.
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Ireland could stay afloat on the trillions of untaxed dollars there.
No they couldn't - because if they taxed them, they'd go somewhere else.
We used to have a decent idea of just how fucking HUGE a billion dollars is. Today it's dismissed as peanuts, so an entire island floating on cash I felt was quite a literal and facetious way of describing tens of trillions.
Regarding perception, they know they are The Donor Class, which is the entire reason the tax haven is legal and allowed to exist.
Re: Just pull out of the EU (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is the EU takes privacy violations seriously.
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"I would not bother running operations in Europe. Why bother?"
Because it is a market with a population significantly larger than the USA, similarly wealthy and has a highly educated population. Doh.
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The "grand" American edumucashun system has unfortunately put a global value on the claim of "highly educated".
Don't show me your degree. Show me you earned it. Otherwise, you're a fucking idiot with an overpriced piece of paper, and there's plenty of those to go around.
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You are a fully qualified arsehole.
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Because only a fool would cut off a market as large as the US (if not larger in many areas) because they can't comply with its local reasonable privacy laws, while at the same time having to kowtow to China, etc. in their jurisdictions.
Also "They can hit the web site like anyone else": If you do business in the EU... in any way... even as a US company with a website... you are subject to EU legislation, taxation, etc. just like everyone else as soon as you're dealing with EU data or money. Even just takin
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And compliance is really easy: Stop selling people's data or collecting arbitrary and unnecessary data on people who often aren't even your customers. It's actually easier and cheaper to comply that just say "Fuck you, we're not going to follow the law" to an entire continent of lawmakers, politicians, lawyers, financiers, businesses and millions of customers, and then get fined anyway.
Wrong.
It would be "easy" if shareholders only cared about compliance. They don't. They care about profits, and the fact that so many are saying "Fuck you" tends to say a LOT bout what shareholders actually want.
Fines, are almost always worth it. And Greed lobbies to keep fines that way.
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Pretty please?
--signed, EU
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Have fun with Bing searches, Yahoo mail, and only iPhone devices.
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Good luck with that. Google is not stupid enough to ignore a market with 447M people and an average disposable income at around the same at the US.
and quit the UK (Score:2)
while you are at it.