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The EU's biggest fines on tech companies
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoAll the highlighted cases seem entirely reasonable uses of regulation to me. Do we want companies to be free to take payments from Intel to not use AMD, or run a cartel?
- mkirklions 8y agoThe microsoft ones? Where they werent allowed to package their media player with windows? Isnt itunes/apple significantly worse in the freedom to choose your software?
- mtgx 8y agoApple didn't/doesn't have a monopoly. Anti-trust rules are meant to encourage competition/restrain monopolists in order to help consumers (as stronger competition = win for consumers). You can argue whether or not that's "fair" for monopolists, just like you can argue that it's not fair that your taxes are redistributed to pay for someone else' kid to go to school or get healthcare, but that is the goal of anti-trust. But in my humble opinion, nobody should ever cry for a monopolist making billions of dollars a year.
- coldtea 8y ago>Isnt itunes/apple significantly worse in the freedom to choose your software? It's not about choosing your software. You can restrict the software in your platform as much as you want. Just not when you have a monopoly. MS at the time was at 95%+ of the market. As long as there's anybody else with a large chunk, you can do whatever you like restrictions wise. Anybody that don't like it can go there. Now we have Linux as a viable option as well.
- mywacaday 8y agoNot convinced Linux is a viable option. For the average consumer it needs to come installed by the manufacturer and a quick look at dell.ie shows the cheapest Ubuntu laptop @ €1168 ($1365)
- NeutronStar 8y agoApple doesn't force anyone to use it's software except itself. Google forced other companies to bundle Google Play Services on all devices or you don't get to sell Android phones. Apple never forced another company to use it's software on all devices or no devices at all.
- lmm 8y ago> Isnt itunes/apple significantly worse in the freedom to choose your software? Yes they are, and it's upsetting - but, sadly, with apple not being in a monopoly position, not illegal.
- tooltalk 8y agoThe difference here is that Apple doesn't sell or distribute their MacOS to other PC OEMs and dictate to them with how and what software packages they ought to ship their PCs. In another word, Apple is free to do whatever it feels like as long as they do it on their own hardware or at Apple retail stores.
- a_imho 8y agoCompanies not playing by the rules are fined, shocker. Guess we will have the same outrage when(if) GDPR hits, despite said tech companies are fully aware they are blatantly non compliant.
- sqdbps 8y agoJust one of these doesn't include a US company (surprise, surprise). CNN is not the only news outlets that won't question that obvious and peculiar pattern, perhaps it has something to do with their CEO (like most media CEOs) asking regulators to go after Google/Facebook: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/cnn-jeff-zucker-google-facebook-donald-trump-1202710332/ https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/cnn-jeff-zucker-google...
- mkirklions 8y agoI think LG is korean, but yeah this is the protectionism that Europe seems to cling to for the last 2 thousand years. No wonder the place has become a tourist trap while industries are in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
- jankey 8y ago[ citation needed ] Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_secto..., when adding up a couple of European countries I'd say it's third behind the China and the US.
- coldtea 8y ago>but yeah this is the protectionism that Europe seems to cling to for the last 2 thousand years. You say it as if it's a bad thing. Besides the US was the most protectionist country for most of its rise, well into the 20th century. >No wonder the place has become a tourist trap while industries are in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Ever bothered to check a list of the world's economies by size and population?
- thefounder 8y agoYou don't know what you are talking about....China is the most protectionist country...not to mention most from the Americas...
- andromedaworld 8y ago
- tristo 8y agoWould it be cheaper for those companies to walk away from european market?
- poooogles 8y agoDepends upon their European operations. Considering the size of the European market, probably not.
- thefounder 8y agomost of them make about 40-60% of revenue from Europe so go figure! Playing by the rules is not really that expensive. The fines they are getting are really small compared with the profits they are making.
- repolfx 8y agoIt depends very much on the definition of "walk away". Europeans use America-only firms all the time and can easily make cross border payments. There aren't really robust ways to stop US firms selling to the EU over the internet especially for services, which are excluded from tariffs via GATT. Whilst I don't think we'll see established firms "walk away" in the sense of closing down their EU offices, I think it's extremely likely that the next generation of startups will simply never choose to open offices in the EU to begin with. Sort of like how many companies ignore the Chinese market today because the problems that come with it offset the appeal of a large (much, much more captive) market.
- claudius 8y ago> There aren't really robust ways to stop US firms selling to the EU over the internet especially for services, which are excluded from tariffs via GATT. It’s rather easy to seize transfers made to foreign companies in violation of a local law. So while that foreign company then wouldn’t have to have a presence in the EU, it also couldn’t receive payments from EU companies or customers. Much the same way the US will complain if you transfer funds out of the US to terrorists or drug lords or whoever is politically unfavourable today.
- hartator 8y agoThese kind of regulations is just another form of protectionism. Is any make the life of Europeans easier? I don’t think so. It did kill any risks of having a real EU startup ecosystem despite being the first economy zone in the world.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoProtectionism? AMD reported the Intel case, Sun and Novell the Media player one. Philips are from the Netherlands. Ireland were judged to be providing illegal state aid. You might not like anti-trust laws but most places have them in some form or another, US included. They should probably be invoked rather more than they are. I don't see how any of that relates to the startup scene. European VC isn't the same as SV. Europe has multiple countries and languages so is far harder to grow with the ease you might in the US.
- jopsen 8y agoAll these rulings are applications of laws, they apply equally to all. This is not protectionism. The EU is all about free and fair trade. In fact the illegal tax schemes the EU have been fighting is very much a form of protectionism. One country may NOT give favorable tax incentives inorder to protect investments coming in.
- throwaway37585 8y agoYou don’t seem to know what the word “protectionism” means. Tax incentives are not protectionism.
- jopsen 8y agoHow is unfair tax incentives different from direct subsidies?
- throwaway37585 8y ago1. Unfair according to whom? You're presenting your opinion as if it were fact. 2. To put it bluntly, the fact that you equate tax incentives with direct subsidies suggests you don't understand economics. https://mises.org/library/no-tax-breaks-are-not-subsidies https://mises.org/library/no-tax-breaks-are-not-subsidies
- growlist 8y agoI find it a bit strange that these issues arouse such strong feelings of patriotism in some posters - to take the example of Apple, weren't they keeping billions of dollars offshore to avoid US taxes, and isn't that a thoroughly unpatriotic act? You could argue US consumers also benefit from many of these rulings. Also if I were to indulge in a little whataboutism I would point out that many accuse the US of far worse in exploiting vulnerable debtor countries through the World Bank and IMF; the idea of the poor, defencelessness US megacorp at the mercy of the villanous EU is risible.
- c3534l 8y agoAmazing that the EU is able to levy multi-billion dollar fines basically for attempting to monetize a free operating system, whereas in the US and Britain, felony conspiracies, price-fixing, and fraud get milquetoast slaps on the wrist.
- ForRealsies 8y agoWouldn't have anything to do with the EU desperately wanting a Silicon Valley of their own, would it?
- dunpeal 8y agoDon't forget the tech cartel that suppressed wages by non-poaching agreements. Several of the most prominent tech employers in the US illegally colluded for years to deprive employees of billions of dollars of wages. It was an open and shut case, with chief executives going on record about this illegal collusion. Result? Department of Labor investigates, finds them guilty... and they get a slap on the wrist for the tune of a few million dollars. To repeat, this collusion is a crime by US law. It's a violation of Section One of the Sherman Act. In the US, the legal balance of power has been tipped for decades in favor of employers: non-competes, mandatory arbitration agreements (which practically mean you can't sue your employer no matter how badly they mistreat you), etc. Both the laws themselves and their enforcement have steadily moved to favor and empower employers, while employees are deprived of any benefit of the legal system or their most basic rights (such as to change jobs). Most of us live in a bubble because we are engineers and work in California, which is relatively labor-friendly. Just wait until you get into a serious disagreement with your employer, or seek employment outside of California, say in New York or Seattle, where both non-competes and forced arbitration are perfectly enforceable.
- blub 8y agoYeah, but the the most shocking thing is the countless apologists for Microsoft, Apple, Google, Intel, etc. These companies were/are breaking the law and hurting societies and people through their greedy behaviour, and some criticize the EU for rightly punishing them. This kind of brainwashed behaviour is very very concerning. The corporations have succeeded in changing the environment in which people grow up and thereby manipulated them to protect the corporation like a discardable, yet useful drone.
- andromedaworld 8y ago> fined a record €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) for using its search engine to steer internet users towards its own shopping platform The EU is totally bonkers!!! And these fines are largely uncalled for. It's their site; why shouldn't a business up-sell to their customers? I know plenty of people who do it all the time. That's part of the point of being in business. If a user doesn't want to buy from Google, simply don't click the buy button.
- baud147258 8y agoI think it's called abuse of a dominant position, considering that Google has a quasi-monopoly in search engine in Europe.
- andromedaworld 8y agoI don't think there's anything wrong with a monopoly that isn't state enforced. Their IP, their servers, why shouldn't they enjoy a monopoly? Absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is when you involve the state in creating a monopoly that you have problems. Consumers continue to patronize a business to the point of it being a monopoly because it serves them well. In a free market environment, this cannot be a bad thing.
- smt88 8y agoWhy shouldn't they? Because it harms competition and because Google is a near-monopoly. That situation gives Google the power to kill competitors, and that's bad for everyone except Google.
- andromedaworld 8y agoSee my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17608171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17608171
- blub 8y agoChrist, this topic is rife with misinformation. Google search is the door to the internet for a majority of the world population. And then they had the brilliant idea to give their own services prime real estate on this door, thereby completely screwing alternative providers out of the traffic.