I read that: the point is that 2.4bn just isn't all that much given what it does to the value of the company. It's probably a risk worth taking as long as you

I read that: the point is that 2.4bn just isn't all that much given what it does to the value of the company. It's probably a risk worth taking as long as you can get away with it. And yes; that means you'll need to eventually adapt - not because 10m a day is necessarily enough to actually enforce that, but also because this kind of stuff is gamable; complying with the ruling without much risk of competition at this point is pretty easy. And you'd need to make the calculation that even if 10m a day were acceptable for the gain, simply ignoring high-profile judgments against you may have worse ramifications down the line. I'm not saying it's nothing: it's that it's a risk worth taking given the gains. If you're building a trillion dollar company (i.e. google), then eliminating competition or accepting some judicial friction as a way to establish dominance in your (data-mining) field is perhaps acceptable or even wise. In that, these fines simply aren't punitive enough, especially since they come so late. And again - it's not black and white. The existence of such rules will alter behavior; it's just a question of whether the reaction will be legal mitigation tactics, a company-wide change in approach, or something in between. Put it this way: if you can corner a market worth trillions, risking how much loss is acceptable to reduce or eliminate competition? I'd venture that these fines are at least one order of magnitude too small to be really frightening (which isn't to say that the behavior google was convicted for deserves that amount, simply that anything less than that means that law can't really be enforced)