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Google Hit With $3.45 Billion EU Antitrust Fine Over Adtech Practices (yahoo.com) 11

Alphabet's Google was hit with a $3.45 billion EU antitrust fine on Friday for anti-competitive practices in its lucrative adtech business, marking its fourth penalty in its decade long fight with EU competition regulators. From a report: The move by the European Commission was triggered by a complaint from the European Publishers Council and comes amid a threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to retaliate against the European Union for any push against Big Tech.

The EU competition enforcer had originally planned to hand out the fine on Monday but opposition from EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic on concerns about the impact on U.S. tariffs on European cars derailed EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera's plan. The Commission said Google favored its own online display technology services to the detriment of rivals and online publishers and that it abused its market power since 2014 until today.

Google Hit With $3.45 Billion EU Antitrust Fine Over Adtech Practices

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  • another inadequate fine, 1% of revenue. What do they care? Just a cost of doing buisness.

    • Based on Google's last quarterly numbers, that fine is equal to about three days worth of revenue.

      Google had $96.43 billion in revenue last quarter. Divide by 3 gets you $32.143 billion each month. Divide by 30 gets you $1.0714 billion each day. Times 3 comes out $3.2142 billion.

      It can't even be called a fine.

      • by Sebby ( 238625 )

        It can't even be called a fine.

        It can basically be called pocket change.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It can't even be called a fine.

        It is a step in an escalation chain. Hence, yes, it is called a "fine".

    • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @01:39PM (#65641332)

      What do they care? Just a cost of doing buisness.

      The next fine will be larger, and after that they could well face a complete prohibition to do ad business. This may only be enforceable in Europe, but would be pretty bad for them.

    • by flippy ( 62353 )

      another inadequate fine, 1% of revenue. What do they care? Just a cost of doing buisness.

      yep, just like the $500m judgment against them announced today in California. The extra revenue in that case has been estimated at $30b. Compared to that, 500m is absolutely "cost of doing business." If anyone wants to really have an effect, a "corporate death penalty" needs to exist. Put them out of business. Until then, they won't change.

    • another inadequate fine, 1% of revenue. What do they care? Just a cost of doing buisness.

      Viewed from the perspective of impact on corporate financial health or future business decisions, 1% is noise. Viewed from the perspective of corporate executives who are primarily interested in stock price appreciation, it's huge. Nvidia saw a huge stock price fall when they recently missed data center revenue expectations by 0.5%. The stock market is often not rational in the short term, but these swings are far more important to executive compensation than the corporate top or bottom lines.

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