The European Commission today fined Google €2.95 billion for abusing its dominant position in the advertising technology market, despite the threat of trade retribution from U.S President Donald Trump.
The American tech giant is alleged to have distorted the market for online ads by favoring its own services to the detriment of competitors, advertisers and online publishers, the EU executive said in a press release.
↫ Jacob Parry at Politico
Not only does Google have to pay a pretty hefty fine – for corporate standards, as it’s still peanuts when looking at Google’s revenue, because class justice is real – the company also has to submit a plan within 60 days detailing how it’s going to end the illegal behaviour. Of course, Google is going to contest the fine, but the company is also running to daddy to cry and whine about how those damn Europeans won’t let it engage in illegal behaviour.
Last night, all the big US technology CEOs gathered for a dinner with Donald Trump, each taking turns gratuitously thanking and praising the big man for his amazing achievements during these first few months of his administration. Tim Cook, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and many more were all bending the knee and kissing the ring in what can only be described as a borderline pornographic display of fealty. Among them was, of course, the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, one day after Google laughed its way out of the courtroom.
“Well you had a very good day yesterday,” Trump said, calling on Pichai at the Thursday evening dinner. “Google had a very good day yesterday. Do you want to talk about that big day you had yesterday?”
[…]“I’m glad it’s over,” Pichai responded to Trump, causing an eruption of laughter from the other table guests.
“It’s a long process,” Pichai said. “Appreciate that your administration had a constructive dialogue, and we were able to get it to some resolution.”
↫ Jennifer Elias at CNBC
Mind you, several of those “other table guests” are also being investigated by a variety of arms of the US government for monopoly abuse and antritrust violations, and I’m sure their laughter was almost entirely self-serving. If Google of all monopolies can slime its way out of any serious consequences, what hope does that leave that the other tech giants will ever have to face the consequences of their abuse?
At least the European Union seems to be mostly holding its head high so far, but one can’t help but wonder how long the Phoenician princess can hold off the bull. The fact of the matter is that the European and US economies are heavily intertwined, and we let ourselves become utterly dependent on the US for our defense, too, and with Trump not deterred by Pyrrhic victories, a fallout is definitely not out of the question.
Trump intervention in 3, 2, 1… “The EU is unfair and not playing nice with the USA, let’s raise the tariff for EU to 50%”.
This seems like a distraction. They are using Google Play Integrity in their age verification app
Why are there no big tech companies in the EU? The UK, China, and Russia have their own tech companies, but the EU has none.
a_very_dumb_nickname,
They had some in the 1980 and 1990s, but managed to kill off all innovation.
Today, they try again with some French AI companies, but that is probably all the extent.
(No, SAP does not count. I’m not fond of Oracle either)
Forget France, Thierry Breton killed our tech gems (Bull, Atos, France Telecom) and the “French Tech”, it’s heavily subsidized on big Macron hype.
That is sad to hear.
France used to be one of the main centers for humanity (along with Germany, which is long gone now)
“Why are there no big tech companies in the EU? The UK, China, and Russia have their own tech companies, but the EU has none.”
That’s more a lack of knowledge on your side.
Lets hear your examples then.
Sure:
Andritz
ASML
AVL
Bosch
Dessault
Engel
SAP
Siemens
Trumpf
VA-Tech
Voith
And lets not forget, that ARM got big while the UK was a EU-member.
> And lets not forget, that ARM got big while the UK was a EU-member.
ARM was there before the EU was born.
ASML is like ARM – not a big tech, but a single product company. Basically a utility for big tech.
Bosch makes washing machines, and so on.
That’s your EU’s “big” tech, yeah.
Siemens probably the single one, which was.
I would say there is only: Spotify, Skype and Wise that were truly transformational that came in the EU in the last ~30 years.
Everything else is older, or unknown even if important. (Yes, ASML is important, but it is basically a niche).
And among those, Spotify depends on EU bullying to get more revenue, Skype was just shut down this year (thank you Microsoft! great achievement to buy the leading VOIP provider and making it bankrupt in remote work era), and Wise… is actually still strong. (Though now called TransferWise).
EU has been a very much desolate in terms of innovation, and we need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find some hardy examples that happened despite EU, not because of it.
I think SAP is being very underestimated in this thread. They are a software company with over 100,000 employees. Big tech by any measure.
“Bosch makes washing machines, and so on.”
I have bad news for you:
https://www.siemens-home.bsh-group.in/appliances/laundrycare/washingmachines
https://www.mitsubishielectric.co.jp/home/builtin-dishwasher/
https://www.lg.com/us/washers
https://www.samsung.com/us/home-appliances/laundry/
It’s very common for tech-companies to also produce home-appliences.
As I said: It’s a knowledge-problem on your side.
You name European and Korean chaebols as big tech, but those are not.
—stupid comment-function—
Cory Doctorow made a very interesting point towards the end of his talk titled “How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It”. Europe mirrored the DMCA to gain tariff-free access to American markets. Since the U.S. is now imposing tariffs, Europe has fewer incentives to maintain the legal restrictions preventing the reverse-engineering and modification of American tech products.
The same thing has occurred to me as well, WRT to Canada — don’t have to make it official policy, just slow-walk any enforcement pf US-based IP — and, at the same time, fast-track application/enforcement Canada’s privacy & anti-spam laws to US-based companies that operate here & are consistently the biggest/most egregious violators.
I have a feeling that this is going to become a go-to strategy for trade negotiations with the US over the (at least) the next 3 years & change — I would bet good money that there’s legislation being cooked all over the world, not with the goal of a implementing it, but just to as “that’s a real nice revenue stream companies based in your country make from our citizenry, it would sure be a shame if something bad were to happen to it”-style leverage.
It is basically the international trade equivalent of marking up a product one week, then reducing its price back to its original level next week & calling it a “sale” — but Trump & his base are dumb enough to look at that situation & go “wow, look the great deal we got!”, so it consistently works.
Just in case here it is the YouTube Video of what the press got of that dinner.
– – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYyaNm7UqFQ
Here it is the reference:
— https://youtu.be/WYyaNm7UqFQ?t=284
I think Sundar Pichai made a great job on moving the focus to return to the main subject. Sergey Brin is still an IT guy, he open up the mic for Sundar.