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Here is the most interesting sentence: "Prior period results excluding the effect of the European Commission (EC) fine of $5.1 billion have been included to fac
by nkg 7y ago
Here is the most interesting sentence: "Prior period results
excluding the effect of the European Commission (EC) fine of $5.1 billion have been included to facilitate comparison
to current quarter performance".
- joncrane 7y agoHow is that interesting? Seems considerate to the reader.
- hestefisk 7y agoThat’s called a pro forma P&L and perfectly reasonable.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoHonestly, the trippiest thing to me, is that European Commission fines being marked as an ordinary expense line (and likely one that will be used more in the future), they really are making it clear that violating the law and paying the fines for doing so is really just part of ordinary business to them. And obviously, the fines clearly aren't punitive enough to encourage them to revise this behavior.
- utopcell 7y agoYour conclusion makes no sense. Google had an obligation to report these fines. How else would they had done that ?
- rubyn00bie 7y agoThis is literally textbook how-to-do business, if the fines are smaller than what you earn from doing it, you keep doing it because it's profitable. It's why Facebook's $5bn FTC fine is laughable too. You need to fine them an amount relative to their market capitalization to really make 'em feel it, probably around 10%. I'd go as far to say, one would need fine them in the $50-$100bn range to really stop them from doing something (same for any of the $500bn+ companies). If it's profitable to be shitheads, they're are going to account for it, and be shitheads.
- utopcell 7y agoFB's net profit for Q2 was $1.6bn. Close to a year's profits were wiped out from this fine, which is roughly 1% of Switzerland's GDP. I don't see how this is laughable. A fine of 10% of market cap is close to the company's gross revenue. This is equivalent to a government owning the company. This "smells" like communism mentality.
- rubyn00bie 7y agoHow is fining them an amount large enough to deter their behavior communism? Full stop, how? What you're saying is that fines large enough to actually affect the company, to make their shareholders realize a loss of (monetary) value as a result of bad management, is communism? That to me is simply insane, and I'd highly encourage you to go take some upper division economics courses before rattling off what is and isn't communism.
- javagram 7y ago$5 billion is an enormous fine even for someone on the scale of Facebook. The idea that it won’t have any effect on Facebook’s behavior in the future is laughable.
- scarface74 7y agoWhy would it? Facebook is a public company but Zuckerberg has a controlling interest. FB does whatever he wants them to do.
- javagram 7y agoZuck is pivoting the company to privacy. https://m.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-social-networking/10156700570096634/ https://m.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focus... He loves money just as much as everyone else.
- utopcell 7y ago
- munchbunny 7y agoI think you're reading more into it than you should. The line where the EU fine is marked is in the table of revenue vs. costs & expenses as part of an accounting formula: "Revenue - Costs = Income from operations". Even if you were planning to stop paying it in 2020, where else would you list the fine?