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Google to pay $60M for misleading representations
- xchip 4y ago$60M, provided they have 60M users, that means a penalty of $1 per user. And I bet they have more users than that, so that is why companies keep on doing this, because it is damn cheap.
- gpm 4y agoAustralia has a population of 25 million, so it's very unlikely that they have 60 million users. The product in question is Android, 15 million is probably a reasonable guesstimate and nicely divides to $4 per user. Still not a ton, but not quite as low as you're suggesting.
- 37 4y agoFTA: The ACCC’s best estimate, based on available data, is that the users of 1.3 million Google accounts in Australia may have viewed a screen found by the Court to have breached the Australian Consumer Law.
- gpm 4y agoOops, read over that, thanks :)
- andyferris 4y agoHmm so roughly 27 USD per user over the 2 year period in question, or US$13.50 per annum per user. Roughly how much revenue (and profit) does Google make per Android user per year through targetted ads, etc (over and above e.g. an iPhone user)?
- ClassyJacket 4y agoThis occurred in Australia, Australia uses Australian Dollars. Thus they are not being fined USD, they are being fined AUD. USD does not have anything to do with this discussion whatsoever.
- swores 4y ago60M / 1.3M = au$46.15 = us$32.85 Splitting hairs but by the time I noticed you'd done a currency conversion (which had made me think your number was way off) I figured might as well be accurate. Edit: while being pedantic, I'll also point out that halving for a "per annum" amount doesn't really make sense considering the estimate of 1.3M users is ones who "may have viewed a screen found by the Court to have breached the Australian Consumer Law" during the two years, not who were exposed to two years worth of anything.
- kurupt213 4y agoFacebook was making $50 per user before apple crippled them, so I would assume Google makes at least that much
- ErikCorry 4y agoGoogle makes less profit from an Android user than an iPhone user. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more-iphone-android https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/29/google-ea...
- ErikCorry 4y agoLol the truth hurts!
- boredumb 4y agoDoubtful they have 60 million users in Australia for a lot of reasons. Also $60,000,000 isn't damn cheap.
- lern_too_spel 4y agoOr because these are two different apps and users don't actually find this confusing. The same thing happens on iOS. You can toggle location usage for Google search and location history in Google Maps.
- dahart 4y ago> so that is why companies keep on doing this Google already stopped this, so which companies are you referring to? This fine is only for Australia, and Google has had to pay billions in fines globally, which is not cheap and has changed their data collection practices. The suggestion that fines aren’t working isn’t accurate.
- spaetzleesser 4y agoIt feels like government agencies and companies have found a spot where the fines aren't too much for companies to stop but enough for government to be financed. It's not about deterrence but about mutually beneficial arrangement.
- eitland 4y agoGood. Still wait for Google to be punished for abusing it market position to push its browser in a much worse manner than Microsoft pushed IE back in the days. For those who are new to this game: Microsoft was basically punished for bundling a browser with their operating system. If that was punishable (and thankfully it was), what should we say about the worlds largest advertising company pushing their browser in ad spots so valuable that no others were ever allowed to touch them (the otherwise clean front page of Google)? And of course: with its current behavior, MS should of course be punished again for its abusive use of a dominant position when it tries to stop people from downloading other browsers and tries to prevent people from setting other browsers as default.
- bugfix 4y agoMicrosoft now is doing the same with Edge. If you want to change your default browser on Windows 11 you need to individually click and select it for every file extension/protocol.
- eitland 4y agoI tried to mention it above, so yes, I absolutely agree.
- kenjackson 4y agoI just tried this, there's a "make XYZ your default browser" button at the very top of the page, which changes the default for most of the relevant file extensions. Some, like MHT, it doesn't. Not sure why. But they have everything on one page, so for the extensions it missed, you can easily change. That seems about as simple as one could make it. Is your concern that it didn't change every extension to whichever browser you made the default?
- naet 4y agoI always find it boggling that apple can require all browsers use webkit on ios... it seems so similar to some of the MS stuff you mention.
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- netzego 4y agoThis "[...] sends a strong message to [other] digital platforms [...]" that it is not possible to compete with any FAANG at these shady business battlefields. But these so called "penalties" just solidify these monopolies by raising the bar too high for everybody else but them. Virtue signalling at it's best.
- exabrial 4y ago$60M is "cost of doing business" for Google when they make something like $200B. Pocket change fines like encourage them to continue to break the law. Call me back when the fines hit 25% of revenue earned. Then we'll see some changes.
- bogomipz 4y ago>"“This significant penalty imposed by the Court today sends a strong message to digital platforms and other businesses, large and small, that they must not mislead consumers about how their data is being collected and used,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said" This is a company that made $257 billion last year.[1] How is that penalty significant exactly? It's practically a rounding error. How does Gina Cass-Gottlieb make that statement with a straight face? I almost think these folks are more interested in putting a check in the win category in order to feather their resume than they are in trying to meaningfully deter these companies from these practices. [1] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q4_alphabet_earnings_release.pdf?cache=d72fc76 https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q4_alphabet_earnings...
- senttoschool 4y agoAustralia has had a thing against Google. In Australia, News Corp (Rubert Murdoch) dominates the media landscape.[0] They have the power to dictate who wins elections and who loses. Thus, politicians bend to News Corp will. One of the results of this dynamic is that politicians forced Google to start paying News Corp to show news links in Google News in Australia but not anywhere else in the world.[1] [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/fact-file-rupert-murdoch-media-reach-in-australia/100056660 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/fact-file-rupert-murd... [1]https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/17/news-corp-agrees-deal-with-google-over-payments-for-journalism https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/17/news-corp-agre...
- pilgrimfff 4y agoWhatever Australia has against Google, there’s no question that Google completely lied about location tracking being buried in the “Web and App Activity” setting. Washington DC, Washington state, Indiana, and Texas are suing Google for the exact same thing. In this case, Google is guilty as sin.
- denton-scratch 4y ago> Australia has had a thing against Google. Is there someone that doesn't?
- Thorentis 4y ago> have the power to dictate who wins elections I hope you're kidding. That power has belonged exclusively to Facebook, Google, et. al. for at least the past 8 years.
- bsaul 4y agoi've always wondered where the money is going in those kinds of trials. It's supposed to be a compensation for damages to the consumers, but are the consumers ever getting any money from the fine ?
- netrus 4y agoFrom my quick reading, it's a penalty, so it's not necessarily supposed to be a compensation, but a deterrent. So I guess the answer is that the money goes to "everyone", which is fine in my book (otherwise you have all the overhead of registering who gets what, which leads to a large chunk going to law firms).
- andyferris 4y agoCorrect, the fines are those set in legislation and collected by the government. I suppose in the US you might say Google was found guilty of a "corporate misdemeanor"? I think the ACCC overlaps with some functions of the FTC; they are the investigator and prosecutor in such cases. (It's worth noting that while Australia does have class actions for collecting compensation, here civil cases can never collect punitive damages so it's probably hard to extract a large sum from Google through that route in this particular case).
- leksak 4y ago“This significant penalty [...]" is it really a significant penalty when Google has deep coffers?
- Silverback_VII 4y agoif you open those coffers you may be surprised at how many mindless worms are eating away their precious content.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spoonjim 4y agoIt is when pretty much every country without a tech economy does this to the big players every few months
- mvc 4y agoIf the "tech economy" is going to hoover up consumers from all over the world, it should expect to contribute it's fair share of the costs of maintaining civilisation in those societies. Maybe if they didn't restructure their organizations so as to avoid taxes in all but the lowest tax jurisdictions, they wouldn't be fined by places where they actually make the money.
- spoonjim 4y ago“Deserve ain’t got nothing to do with it.” Both tech companies and governments are doing what they are doing because they can.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago> If the "tech economy" is going to hoover up consumers from all over the world, it should expect to contribute it's fair share of the costs of maintaining civilisation in those societies. How is this not different from how a mafia operates?
- squarefoot 4y ago$60M seems a lot to normal people, but what if Google earned say $61M with that practice, therefore they were aware it would turn as a gain for them? I mean, the penalty should be of course proportional to the offense, but prosecutors should also calculate in some way the benefits so the penalty works as a serious deterrent in the future. Also, part of the fee should be compensation for the users involved, even if that would be a few bucks, as it's important they're made aware that they were lied to and how, so they can develop more resistance to false advertising or mistreatment of their personal data in the future.
- zulban 4y agoIndeed. And even if they only earned $6.1M doing this, if they did something similar ten times but were only caught once then it's still worth it.
- junofan 4y agoInstead of more rules and bigger penalties on the books, what if the ad company and the phone company were separated? Then other phone companies could work with the ad company, while other ad companies could work with the phone company. Consumers would have more choice. I don’t believe one big entity selling phones and ads carefully regulated by government officials will lead to desirable outcomes in the long term.
- shadowgovt 4y agoThe Australian government lacks the authority to do that without putting a level of onerous restraint on trade on a foreign company that could get them in trouble with the WTO. The United States government could, hypothetically, pass laws that recognize Google's gestalt of overlapping businesses as a new kind of monopoly and break it up. If you're American, there are some candidates interested in this and they aren't too hard to find.
- harles 4y agoIn this particular case it’s estimated that 1.3m people viewed the screen. A fine of ~$60 / user seems pretty hefty and a good deterrent.