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Before anyone makes the argument that the EU should have no jurisdiction over an American entity, please remember that Google sells its services in Europe. It's

by flexie 3y ago

Before anyone makes the argument that the EU should have no jurisdiction over an American entity, please remember that Google sells its services in Europe. It's well within the jurisdiction of the EU to regulate how anyone does business here. Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legislation on its own companies.

1over137 3y ago
>back when America enforced antitrust legislation on its own companies A great book about that era is "Goliath" by Matt Stoller.
panragon 3y ago
>Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. Not to discredit the rest of what you're saying, because it is true the EU has jurisdiction and that anti-trust is a lost art in many places in the world. Still, saying Google Ireland 'alone' is a bit funny when Google (like all multinationals) is known to take advantage of Ireland's tax laws to funnel as much of their EU business through. Whatever money Google is making in Ireland isn't just what they're making from the Irish market, it's also from whatever they're making everywhere else in the EU who's origins are ambiguous enough to not be attached to any single country.
- Detrytus 3y ago
  Yep, and that's how you get Ireland's GDP per capita artificially inflated to $114k, when in reality it should be maybe a third of that...
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Eh, we can’t really complain. The international capitalist system owes Ireland a bit more; its predecessor, colonialism, screwed Ireland over for generations.
    - Detrytus 3y ago
      But the point is that Ireland does not really benefit from this money - it is only an accounting trick. Google funnels money through Ireland, but does not employ many people in Ireland, and does not pay much taxes there. In the end, the living standard of typical Irishman is closer to countries with $40-45k GDP, such as Italy or France, than to countries with $100k GDP, such as Norway or Switzerland.
      - inamorty 3y ago
        This is not true. If anything Ireland is too reliant on a few multi-national corporations. In 2022, corporate tax was the second highest income stream for the state: https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/4992b-exchequer-surplus-of-5-billion-in-2022-corporation-tax-surpasses-vat-ministers-mcgrath-donohoe/ https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/4992b-exchequer-surplus-...
      - resolutebat 3y ago
        This article suggests Google employed over 8,000 people in Ireland in 2018, and it's quite likely that number has grown since. https://9to5google.com/2020/03/02/google-dublin-coronavirus/ https://9to5google.com/2020/03/02/google-dublin-coronavirus/
        Detrytus 3y ago
        Which means one employee per $6 millions of revenue. Which is exactly what I’m talking about: their actual presence in Ireland is much smaller than you would expect from revenue number alone, which again supports my claim about “accounting trick”
      - toast0 3y ago
        Because big companies are funneling money through Ireland, they usually need some corporate presence there. Because they already have a small office there, and there's a large English speaking population, when they want a bigger office in Europe, Ireland is a likely choice. If they weren't already in the country for accounting purposes, they might choose different locations for offices.
- heywhatupboys 3y ago
  well, that still means they have to follow Irish law. Just like shipping companies register their ships in other countries, that means they have to follow their laws too.
  - Detrytus 3y ago
    yes, but that's not the point of GP comment. Saying "Ireland alone has $50B turnover" might make someone think: "Wow, if they make so much money from such a small country, then how much do they make in the entire Europe?". And the answer to that is: $50B. There's not a single euro-cent is earned in Europe that does not go through Ireland.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  You can't have it both ways though. You don't get to take advantage of Irish law to reduce your tax/costs, but then also say that Ireland (and the EU) has no jurisdiction over you.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    But that's not the claim being made.
    - throwaway462910 3y ago
      It's the claim being pre-emptively argued against though
      - bbor 3y ago
        Not sure there’s anyone in here arguing for google. Poor little google, being bullied by all us hackers…
        sensanaty 3y ago
        You should check out the thread, lots of people throwing themselves in front of the firing line because I guess they think that messing with Google will somehow translate to messing with their own startups or whatever.
        panragon 3y ago
        Or they just work for Google, of which there's a reasonable amount of members here, but yeah.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        The comment they replied to already explicitly stated that the EU has jurisdiction. They're not pre-empting anything.
      - panragon 3y ago
fredgrott 3y ago
equally good and bad as the fractured tax policies of Europe is what allows Gogle to avoid US corporation taxation.
- roomey 3y ago
  I think it is fairer to say US tax law allows Google to avoid US corporation tax no?
LatteLazy 3y ago
A better argument is simply that the US routinely (and selectively) enforces its rules well beyond its borders. So why shouldn't anyone else with the clout needed...
- pwb25 3y ago
  Can't wait for the chinese or indian SEC to start suing US nationals for different exotic financial wrongdoings on some half hidden rule
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    It is a bad approach, but it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: no nation will be the only one NOT to pull BS like that...
  - dtech 3y ago
    You've slipped down quite the slope to go from antitrust of companies operating in the jurisdiction to foreign natural persons.
    - pwb25 3y ago
      Not really. When did the Chinese CFTC do something like this to any american? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash#Evidence_of_market_manipulation_and_arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash#Evidence_of_m...
      - LatteLazy 3y ago
        Just for balance, the US had Canada arrest a chinese national who had never been to the USA, for doing business with Iran (and then a bunch of other weird charges) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou China then "co-incidentally" arrested 2 Canadians. The whole thing is a shit show and it would be better for everyone if countries were more reasonable and agreed to avoid a "race to the bottom"
WastingMyTime89 3y ago
> The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legislation on its own companies. The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020 and is asking for pretty much the same disinvestment for pretty much the same reasons. The EU is trailing the US by two years here. I'm eagerly awaiting the trove of patriotic comments which will undoubtedly follow the posting of such an article and will most likely entirely miss the point as usual.
- Gareth321 3y ago
  > The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020 and is asking for pretty much the same disinvestment for pretty much the same reasons. While true, 2.5 years later there is still no action. In that same time period, the E.U. released the largest anti-monopoly technology law in its history, the Digital Markets Act. This will take effect near the end of the year and impact all major tech companies. I think it's clear that U.S. antitrust is ineffective at present.
  - bbor 3y ago
    They’re advancing in spurts - a few events this year. Remember when the justice department suggested that google sell its buy side advertising unit, and somehow “what if we just spun it off into its own Bet?” got proposed. Good times. Perhaps the most brazen “FU” from google lawyers in the history of the company
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
I used to believe that company breakups should happen automatically when they reach 1% of the country's GDP. There are lots of ways companies could avoid having the government decide how to break them up such as issuing dividends instead of hording cash, spinning off non-core businesses, setting up independent IP companies that would license back IP to the core company (and as an indpendent company, be required to license to anyone else at similar rates), and things like that. The problem comes in if one country follows this paradigm but then you have a company like Samsung that's over 20% of their host country's GDP and there's no appetite in the host country to break them up. How can your domestic companies that are limited in size compete with those of other countries with no limit on their size?
- gylterud 3y ago
  How about an automatic nationalisation in stead? Where you take companies which have grown too big out of the private ownership’s hands.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Too dangerous unless it's a service that should be a vital government service. You do not want your government to basically have a permanent monopoly on everything. This just gives power to authoritarian to rise.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Democracy allows authrotarians to rise in and of itself. Recent ones include Orban, Erdogan and Trump. Historical ones include, yes I know, Mussolini and Hitler.
  - toyg 3y ago
    This is Hacker News, you can't say the N word here.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
donatj 3y ago
> breaking up of monopolies What’s the monopoly here? There are tons of successful ad companies.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  You've hit the nail on the head regarding the difference between the EU concept of antitrust and the American one. EU antitrust law is grounded in harm to companies. If there are many companies, but one has sewn up the market so strongly that others can't really have a chance to prosper, the EU will step in. American antitrust law is grounded in harm to consumers. The US regulators won't go after a successful ad company because other ad companies say it's too hard to compete with them; it'll go after them if consumers say "We don't have any choice but to do business with X, and X's prices are too high / X is too exclusive / X is only doing business with us in market sector A if we agree to use them also for market sector B." That additional bar to regulation means the EU may very well have cause to act before the US does if Google is big enough to muscle around other ad agencies and set the terms by which they can exist, even if they do exist.
- xps 3y ago
  Please name one credible Google Ads competitor.
  - knowriju 3y ago
    Err... Meta / Microsoft /Yahoo ? Also depending on how you look at it, you can buy ads to showcase your business in Amazon, Apple as well.
- bbor 3y ago
  I recommend you look into it a bit more if you haven’t - there are buyside and sell side competitors, but google massively controls both markets, which it uses to grow both businesses. For example, the justice department found slides from a project that favored its buyside customers when running supposedly impartial auctions on the sell side - in layman’s terms, brazenly fucking over their competitors. Allegedly. The best part is of course that the google engineers named it “project bernanke” after the Fed chairman, since they thought of it like QE, I.e. “giving out free money” to people who used their buyside products. I’m still not sure if that was a criticism of QE or if they’re honestly that submerged in the Google Kool-Aid… All of that is small potatoes to the main way in which google is a monopoly though: they run the only ad exchange. Trust me, it helps. Facebook spent many billions trying to stand up a competitor and ultimately gave up, which should tell you how valuable that privilege is
pwb25 3y ago
and american government agencies try to rule over all countries or citizens all the time too. Or try to make them follow their anti piracy laws
spacebanana7 3y ago
There are real questions about how much authority the EU has over an American entity. Can the EU only regulate activities in the EU or does it have global jurisdiction? On one hand, if Google simply restructured, spun off or sold its EU ad business the competitive landscape wouldn't change that much. I'm not sure whether a new European competitor could ever become a peer to Google if it could only compete in the EU market because of the network effects in the ad business. Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses? Also how would the EU enforce rules outside of its geography? How complaint would the US court system be in enforcing European decisions?
- Longhanks 3y ago
  What makes you think the EU would have the slightest jurisdiction at all over any entity outside of its member states? The only reason they speak about Google is because Google does business in the EU.
- piva00 3y ago
  > Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses? That's already what the USA does to global companies operating inside the US. That's exactly how Cuba has been under a blockade from the US, for example...
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    Sanctions are different from antitrust. With sanctions the US can declare that third parties must choose between doing business with the US and Cuba / ZTE. Because of it's large economy the US would be confident that most of those parties would choose to choose the US over the company / small country. Antitrust enforcement is many ways more difficult than sanctions enforcement because third parties must be compelled in 'how' rather than 'whether' they do business with a company. Even the US would've struggled to break up ZTE / Huawei etc into smaller companies across every jurisdiction for antitrust. Doing so in China would've obviously been impossible but even enforcing this in the Gulf States & South Korea would've stretched the limits of US power.
golemotron 3y ago
I'll applaud the first large US company that leaves the EU market entirely and makes a claim of non-jurisdiction. It's overdue. In fact, I don't think they have to go that far. Other countries are free to block internet services or sanction their own citizens for using them. It should not follow that placing a service on the web makes you subject to the jurisdiction of anyone who chooses to use it.
- bantunes 3y ago
  Why should it not? If you're providing a service (presumably for profit), shouldn't you be bound by rules other commercial service providers have to follow in that jurisdiction as well? If not, you'd be at a massive advantage.
  - golemotron 3y ago
    It's not being provided in that jurisdiction. If you are hosted/domiciled in a country foreign users are entering another jurisdiction when they access the service.
    - bantunes 3y ago
      If you're taking money in that jurisdiction, why is it not "being provided"?
      - golemotron 3y ago
        Another way to look at it is that customer is sending money to another jurisdiction. Countries can and do pass laws about whom their citizens can trade with. It seems like that is a better route than inventing jurisdiction over foreign companies.
        bantunes 3y ago
        Again, if you "pass laws about whom their citizens can trade with" isn't that having jurisdiction over a foreign company?

by flexie 3y ago

1over137 3y ago

>back when America enforced antitrust legislation on its own companies A great book about that era is "Goliath" by Matt Stoller.

panragon 3y ago

>Google Ireland alone had a 50B euro turnover. Not to discredit the rest of what you're saying, because it is true the EU has jurisdiction and that anti-trust is a lost art in many places in the world. Still, saying Google Ireland 'alone' is a bit funny when Google (like all multinationals) is known to take advantage of Ireland's tax laws to funnel as much of their EU business through. Whatever money Google is making in Ireland isn't just what they're making from the Irish market, it's also from whatever they're making everywhere else in the EU who's origins are ambiguous enough to not be attached to any single country.

Detrytus 3y ago
Yep, and that's how you get Ireland's GDP per capita artificially inflated to $114k, when in reality it should be maybe a third of that...
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Eh, we can’t really complain. The international capitalist system owes Ireland a bit more; its predecessor, colonialism, screwed Ireland over for generations.
  - Detrytus 3y ago
    But the point is that Ireland does not really benefit from this money - it is only an accounting trick. Google funnels money through Ireland, but does not employ many people in Ireland, and does not pay much taxes there. In the end, the living standard of typical Irishman is closer to countries with $40-45k GDP, such as Italy or France, than to countries with $100k GDP, such as Norway or Switzerland.
    - inamorty 3y ago
      This is not true. If anything Ireland is too reliant on a few multi-national corporations. In 2022, corporate tax was the second highest income stream for the state: https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/4992b-exchequer-surplus-of-5-billion-in-2022-corporation-tax-surpasses-vat-ministers-mcgrath-donohoe/ https://www.gov.ie/en/press-release/4992b-exchequer-surplus-...
    - resolutebat 3y ago
      This article suggests Google employed over 8,000 people in Ireland in 2018, and it's quite likely that number has grown since. https://9to5google.com/2020/03/02/google-dublin-coronavirus/ https://9to5google.com/2020/03/02/google-dublin-coronavirus/
      - Detrytus 3y ago
        Which means one employee per $6 millions of revenue. Which is exactly what I’m talking about: their actual presence in Ireland is much smaller than you would expect from revenue number alone, which again supports my claim about “accounting trick”
    - toast0 3y ago
      Because big companies are funneling money through Ireland, they usually need some corporate presence there. Because they already have a small office there, and there's a large English speaking population, when they want a bigger office in Europe, Ireland is a likely choice. If they weren't already in the country for accounting purposes, they might choose different locations for offices.
heywhatupboys 3y ago
well, that still means they have to follow Irish law. Just like shipping companies register their ships in other countries, that means they have to follow their laws too.
- Detrytus 3y ago
  yes, but that's not the point of GP comment. Saying "Ireland alone has $50B turnover" might make someone think: "Wow, if they make so much money from such a small country, then how much do they make in the entire Europe?". And the answer to that is: $50B. There's not a single euro-cent is earned in Europe that does not go through Ireland.
madeofpalk 3y ago
You can't have it both ways though. You don't get to take advantage of Irish law to reduce your tax/costs, but then also say that Ireland (and the EU) has no jurisdiction over you.
- thfuran 3y ago
  But that's not the claim being made.
  - throwaway462910 3y ago
    It's the claim being pre-emptively argued against though
    - bbor 3y ago
      Not sure there’s anyone in here arguing for google. Poor little google, being bullied by all us hackers…
      - sensanaty 3y ago
        You should check out the thread, lots of people throwing themselves in front of the firing line because I guess they think that messing with Google will somehow translate to messing with their own startups or whatever.
        panragon 3y ago
        Or they just work for Google, of which there's a reasonable amount of members here, but yeah.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      The comment they replied to already explicitly stated that the EU has jurisdiction. They're not pre-empting anything.
    - panragon 3y ago

fredgrott 3y ago

equally good and bad as the fractured tax policies of Europe is what allows Gogle to avoid US corporation taxation.

roomey 3y ago
I think it is fairer to say US tax law allows Google to avoid US corporation tax no?

LatteLazy 3y ago

A better argument is simply that the US routinely (and selectively) enforces its rules well beyond its borders. So why shouldn't anyone else with the clout needed...

pwb25 3y ago
Can't wait for the chinese or indian SEC to start suing US nationals for different exotic financial wrongdoings on some half hidden rule
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  It is a bad approach, but it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: no nation will be the only one NOT to pull BS like that...
- dtech 3y ago
  You've slipped down quite the slope to go from antitrust of companies operating in the jurisdiction to foreign natural persons.
  - pwb25 3y ago
    Not really. When did the Chinese CFTC do something like this to any american? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash#Evidence_of_market_manipulation_and_arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash#Evidence_of_m...
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      Just for balance, the US had Canada arrest a chinese national who had never been to the USA, for doing business with Iran (and then a bunch of other weird charges) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou China then "co-incidentally" arrested 2 Canadians. The whole thing is a shit show and it would be better for everyone if countries were more reasonable and agreed to avoid a "race to the bottom"

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

> The breaking up of monopolies used to be in the toolbox of American antitrust policies, back when America enforced antitrust legislation on its own companies. The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020 and is asking for pretty much the same disinvestment for pretty much the same reasons. The EU is trailing the US by two years here. I'm eagerly awaiting the trove of patriotic comments which will undoubtedly follow the posting of such an article and will most likely entirely miss the point as usual.

Gareth321 3y ago
> The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020 and is asking for pretty much the same disinvestment for pretty much the same reasons. While true, 2.5 years later there is still no action. In that same time period, the E.U. released the largest anti-monopoly technology law in its history, the Digital Markets Act. This will take effect near the end of the year and impact all major tech companies. I think it's clear that U.S. antitrust is ineffective at present.
- bbor 3y ago
  They’re advancing in spurts - a few events this year. Remember when the justice department suggested that google sell its buy side advertising unit, and somehow “what if we just spun it off into its own Bet?” got proposed. Good times. Perhaps the most brazen “FU” from google lawyers in the history of the company

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

I used to believe that company breakups should happen automatically when they reach 1% of the country's GDP. There are lots of ways companies could avoid having the government decide how to break them up such as issuing dividends instead of hording cash, spinning off non-core businesses, setting up independent IP companies that would license back IP to the core company (and as an indpendent company, be required to license to anyone else at similar rates), and things like that. The problem comes in if one country follows this paradigm but then you have a company like Samsung that's over 20% of their host country's GDP and there's no appetite in the host country to break them up. How can your domestic companies that are limited in size compete with those of other countries with no limit on their size?

gylterud 3y ago
How about an automatic nationalisation in stead? Where you take companies which have grown too big out of the private ownership’s hands.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Too dangerous unless it's a service that should be a vital government service. You do not want your government to basically have a permanent monopoly on everything. This just gives power to authoritarian to rise.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Democracy allows authrotarians to rise in and of itself. Recent ones include Orban, Erdogan and Trump. Historical ones include, yes I know, Mussolini and Hitler.
- toyg 3y ago
  This is Hacker News, you can't say the N word here.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

donatj 3y ago

> breaking up of monopolies What’s the monopoly here? There are tons of successful ad companies.

shadowgovt 3y ago
You've hit the nail on the head regarding the difference between the EU concept of antitrust and the American one. EU antitrust law is grounded in harm to companies. If there are many companies, but one has sewn up the market so strongly that others can't really have a chance to prosper, the EU will step in. American antitrust law is grounded in harm to consumers. The US regulators won't go after a successful ad company because other ad companies say it's too hard to compete with them; it'll go after them if consumers say "We don't have any choice but to do business with X, and X's prices are too high / X is too exclusive / X is only doing business with us in market sector A if we agree to use them also for market sector B." That additional bar to regulation means the EU may very well have cause to act before the US does if Google is big enough to muscle around other ad agencies and set the terms by which they can exist, even if they do exist.
xps 3y ago
Please name one credible Google Ads competitor.
- knowriju 3y ago
  Err... Meta / Microsoft /Yahoo ? Also depending on how you look at it, you can buy ads to showcase your business in Amazon, Apple as well.
bbor 3y ago
I recommend you look into it a bit more if you haven’t - there are buyside and sell side competitors, but google massively controls both markets, which it uses to grow both businesses. For example, the justice department found slides from a project that favored its buyside customers when running supposedly impartial auctions on the sell side - in layman’s terms, brazenly fucking over their competitors. Allegedly. The best part is of course that the google engineers named it “project bernanke” after the Fed chairman, since they thought of it like QE, I.e. “giving out free money” to people who used their buyside products. I’m still not sure if that was a criticism of QE or if they’re honestly that submerged in the Google Kool-Aid… All of that is small potatoes to the main way in which google is a monopoly though: they run the only ad exchange. Trust me, it helps. Facebook spent many billions trying to stand up a competitor and ultimately gave up, which should tell you how valuable that privilege is

pwb25 3y ago

and american government agencies try to rule over all countries or citizens all the time too. Or try to make them follow their anti piracy laws

spacebanana7 3y ago

There are real questions about how much authority the EU has over an American entity. Can the EU only regulate activities in the EU or does it have global jurisdiction? On one hand, if Google simply restructured, spun off or sold its EU ad business the competitive landscape wouldn't change that much. I'm not sure whether a new European competitor could ever become a peer to Google if it could only compete in the EU market because of the network effects in the ad business. Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses? Also how would the EU enforce rules outside of its geography? How complaint would the US court system be in enforcing European decisions?

Longhanks 3y ago
What makes you think the EU would have the slightest jurisdiction at all over any entity outside of its member states? The only reason they speak about Google is because Google does business in the EU.
piva00 3y ago
> Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses? That's already what the USA does to global companies operating inside the US. That's exactly how Cuba has been under a blockade from the US, for example...
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  Sanctions are different from antitrust. With sanctions the US can declare that third parties must choose between doing business with the US and Cuba / ZTE. Because of it's large economy the US would be confident that most of those parties would choose to choose the US over the company / small country. Antitrust enforcement is many ways more difficult than sanctions enforcement because third parties must be compelled in 'how' rather than 'whether' they do business with a company. Even the US would've struggled to break up ZTE / Huawei etc into smaller companies across every jurisdiction for antitrust. Doing so in China would've obviously been impossible but even enforcing this in the Gulf States & South Korea would've stretched the limits of US power.

golemotron 3y ago

I'll applaud the first large US company that leaves the EU market entirely and makes a claim of non-jurisdiction. It's overdue. In fact, I don't think they have to go that far. Other countries are free to block internet services or sanction their own citizens for using them. It should not follow that placing a service on the web makes you subject to the jurisdiction of anyone who chooses to use it.

bantunes 3y ago
Why should it not? If you're providing a service (presumably for profit), shouldn't you be bound by rules other commercial service providers have to follow in that jurisdiction as well? If not, you'd be at a massive advantage.
- golemotron 3y ago
  It's not being provided in that jurisdiction. If you are hosted/domiciled in a country foreign users are entering another jurisdiction when they access the service.
  - bantunes 3y ago
    If you're taking money in that jurisdiction, why is it not "being provided"?
    - golemotron 3y ago
      Another way to look at it is that customer is sending money to another jurisdiction. Countries can and do pass laws about whom their citizens can trade with. It seems like that is a better route than inventing jurisdiction over foreign companies.
      - bantunes 3y ago
        Again, if you "pass laws about whom their citizens can trade with" isn't that having jurisdiction over a foreign company?