EU fines Google €890M for competition breaches over search and apps

Skimmed (without AI).

Look like feature request lists.

Yes. But what this discussion so often misses is.. So is the US.

The US needs military bases, it needs general market access, it wants to sell military equipment and so on and so on. The US is already being reckless with the relationship and diversification is underway, but how deep the split will be is in large part determined by how the US wants to behave going forward.

It's like a divorce, there aren't really any winners here (in terms of wealth, assets, ...). So it's a tightrope both need to walk, balancing each other's interests.

US tariffs on EU automotive manufacturing, industrial equipment, chemicals, electronics, fashion, textiles, and luxury food and wine, would be only slap on wrist.

The real danger of US retaliation for EU are: export tariffs on US LNG, loosing arms exports for Ukraine. This the real EU delicate balancing act.

> there is a real danger of US retaliation

This would make some sense under normal circumstances. However the Trump administration isn't "retaliating" except in the same sense you saw ICE "retaliating" by murdering unarmed protesters.

Violent bullies respect strength to the extent they respect anything at all.

I think that's the point; much like how Canada isn't blinkimg every time the US jacks up whatever nonsense tariffs.

They know it's going to hurt and they can't just order their own country -- or in the case of the EU; countries -- to fully decouple and so they're using the pain to encourage the creation and growth of alternatives.

Nobody says it isn't painful or that it isn't going to suck but it's viewed as inevitable rather than something to be avoided.

Presumably that’s covered by article 30 of the law: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/1925/oj#art_30

Yeah, 1bil sound like a lot but it's about 0.2% of just their annual revenue. I don't think they're too worried tbh. Barely even a slap on the wrist.

They figured out that part too

Have you applied? What's your project?

These fines go toward the EU's general budget as "other income" which reduces the amount that member states must contribute annually for the budget to balance. So the EU partially funds itself by leveraging fines like this on AliExpress, Google, Meta, Apple, etc. and the trickle-down savings to member states is then (presumably) used to fund public works and social services locally.

Goverment coffers fund public works.

Fines is for the government. Damages are for others (and sometimes govt).

this comment always comes up and it's _wrong_.

The goal of the regulation is to get the operators to comply, which they usually do after fines (EDIT: and litigations and whining, of course), because the costs of infractions are increased if they don't comply.

The maximum fine the EU can impose with the DMA is "10 % of its total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year". I think this would hurt even Google. And I think a billion dollars is not nothing.

When fines became casual? Is it like taxes?

I suggest that whenever Google get fined less than. $1B, they get an instructional booklet reminding them of how to count that low.

well, Meta[0] is getting sued for a 1.4 Trillion$ by many US states combined if that interests you.

[0]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/meta-says-it-s-staring-...

'a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money'

...but this is a private(ish) business, it doesn't have a printer in the back yard, a billion is a lot no matter how you look at it, especially if they're now facing a tough choice between cannibalizing their results with AI summaries or having AI competitors eating their lunch.

Well it's 15% or their Q2 spending, to put things into perspective.

This fine is more of a warning shot. The DMA allows for fines of up to 10% of global revenue or 20% in the case of repeat offenders.

These 890M are a first warning. Now Google has some time to react, but if they don't implement what is required of them, another, higher, fine will be issued.

20% of global revenue is not just cost of doing business, to any business.

fine = previous_fine²

Yep. If a train ticket costs 100 euro and the fine for freeloading is 5 euro, you'd be a fool to buy a ticket.

Don't blame Google for pushing boundaries. That's what people (and corpos) do in any competitive activity. Do blame our politicians for being incompetent and ill-meaning.

That's an interesting comment. I noticed already years before AI emerged that Google ruined its search engine. I am not sure AI per se kills search engines, but interestingly the other search engines also suck immensely. Even from the User Interface, which is strange to me. Qwant just copy/pasted Google's horrible UI. DuckDuckGo is praised for reasons I don't understand - it also produces really low quality results. It seems nobody is able to come up with really good search engines anymore - they always end up being absolute horrid jokes in this or that area.

Also apps need to be allowed to conduct their transactions outside the appstore and the appstore must allow them to advertise that.

What are you wittering on about. Get a grip.

Tariffs so far are on paper entirely, and in practice still overwhelmingly, paid for by the buyer.

So go ahead, make the stuff you buy from us 10x more expensive with you (not us) paying the difference to your government, then be surprised by how many of your factories can't run because they can't afford stuff they need that only we make.

Or, shock, substitute us with China.

But either way, you're hitting yourself and calling the pain a sign of victory.

Google knowingly and _intentionally_ breached the law.

A fundamental rule for capitalism to work well long term is that oligopoly and similar should not exist and must be rained in or outright split up if they exist. If that rule isn't followed capitalism turns from a tool which can support democracy to one which will sooner or later tear it apart. It's basically the economic version of the number one rule of democracy: "never concentrate too much power into two few people".

This also isn't just some theoretical thing, if you look through history having too much money/power in to few entities(1) always sooner or later lead to suffering of people, injustice and collapse.

Lastly it's worth noting that historically companies often do challenge such fines and managed to cut them down by quite a bit, that is iff they actually started being compliant by then. Sadly the end result is often still that, the economically benefit of huge companies systematic breaking the law, outweighs their penalties. I mean they often do calculate the most likely level of penalties into their cost-benefit analysis.

(1): Through it should be noted that this is about effective power, not theoretic power. It isn't rare through history to have people which theoretically are autocrats with absolute power, but practically the power is spread quite widely and in turn them having a brain fart, mental decline, megalomaniac, irrational hate against some groups of people etc. didn't lead directly to atrocities being committed.

sylware:

3 - stop writing comments only in english, stop favoring your 'anglosphere' linguistic bubble

What exactly monopoly is here?

Looking at NIS2, that mindset is actually developing: "personal liability for members of management bodies".

This is the fine after it got influenced by the political branch. It is a sign towards the companies that the law still bites and has to be adhered but reduced in this case to a level where it can be accepted by Google without major escalation in trade politics.

> Trump gonna respond to this with an escalation for sure

This is basically the equivalent of the weekly nuclear annihilation threat from the Moscow direction ;)

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_final_warning

Trump has tariffed Canada 50% allegedly because of wildfires. He acts randomly, your actions don't matter either way.

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That's one read. For me it feels like practically (ASML, ARM, SAP not withstanding) their only "contribution" to tech is fines and exporting regulation. Sometimes this works out well (usb-c on iPhone), but most of the time it feels like if they want software, hardware, or the web to operate the way they want, perhaps they should try to actually produce some of it instead of being wholly reliant on others while also trying to dictate the terms. I also don't really feel like Trump will do anything, mainly because neither he, nor anyone else before him has any track record of attempting to block or slow EU overreach into US tech interests. Or maybe I'm just cranky and pessimistic.

Pretty well, to the point where the US administration complains that there's a trade imbalance. (which is true for manufactured goods, false when we count in services)

Mistral and ElevenLabs seem to be doing pretty well.

Also, here in the U.S., we’ve managed to screw up so badly on data privacy and basic rights that the EU has been systematically replacing their entire tech stack with sovereign components.

On a huge decline and the people are dissatisfied which leads to populist parties becoming more popular and the current governments trying to hold their power by passing draconian laws.

I used to come here for the intelligent discussion, but it's turning into X.

Could a mega-project like Linux have originated in the US instead of a Finnish bedroom? I have my doubts tbh, it takes an absolute madman to start such an obviously doomed project without any business potential ;)

We are getting used to the news about our decadence and decay coming from the West as regular as they did from the East before. Not sure what it means for anyone involved

How is the US doing with their Tariffs?

Is that supposed to be a snark? Do better. I prefer that we didn't miss the boat on caring for each other, not shooting each other constantly, and generally not feeling we're better than anybody else, and the need to point it out on HN.

Doing just fine calling most of the american insanity for what it is. Beating apple and the likes into submission and making them produce actually somewhat good products.

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It’s July, you won’t get a response from any European for at least another month

How is the US doing? Seems like the missed boat is the Titanic.

I'm not familiar with the Act. Can you explain how it would kill theses startups?