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I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .." What ? Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean.

by 1971genocide 12y ago

I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .." What ? Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean. I don't understand what EU's problem is. If they don't like google and android please ask your tech graduates to create their own. The EU is an funny organization. they are not democratically elected. Their policies is the reason half of EU is bankrupt. The EU should be fined for bankrupting entire generations of young people in Greece and promoting the largest transfer of wealth from poor European nations to rich European nations. Even assuming Google did participate in behaviour that is anti-competitive that market that google dominates was created by google ! I like china's approach to this where they forced their countrymen to create powerful competitor to google. The emphasis should be promotion of wealth creation and not redistribution. Why doesn't Europe have its own homegrown search giant ? An EU company would clearly have massive advantage due to the language barrier. The EU should be paying people to create companies to compete with google. Or atleast make it a priority to do so. What happens when google refuses to pay the fine and starts backtracing or treating the EU market as "not worth it", has the EU though about how it will effect consumers ?

rbehrends 12y ago
> I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .." EU fines for anticompetitive behavior are assessed as a percentage of turnover. As a basic rule, it is set at up to 30% of annual sales related to the infringement (modified by aggravating and mitigating factors) multiplied by the duration of the infringement, plus a base amount of 15%-25%, and capped at 10% of annual turnover.
Atropos 12y ago
The fine amounts being thrown around are mostly bad journalism. The law allows a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover, but even in most hard-core cartel cases, they will not go into the upper bound. And especially in this case, it is not clear if Google will be fined in the end at all - the Motorala SEP case ended without a fine as well: http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/04/eu-settles-sep-antitrust-case-with.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/04/eu-settles-sep-antitrust-...
Tarang 12y ago
> Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean. The fines broke big long after BP's fine. BNP Paribas was fined a staggering $9bn just last year. The fine was selected as the limit of 10% of the annual revenue in the previous year.
Crito 12y ago
> "Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean." BP was not fined as much as they should have been, therefore the EU should go easy on all other companies from now on? How does that make any sense?
- 1971genocide 12y ago
  No, Everyone should be fined based on how much damage they have caused on the environment,civilization, etc Do you seriously think google has done damage worth 6.4 BILLION ? BP,Shell,Nestle have caused real damage to real humans and the environment and there seems no outrage or investigation towards them. Banks in germany have clearly destroyed lives of people financially and no one is asking any questions ? Google allegedly tweaked its algorithm to make it slightly inconvenient for people to use alternative services and now we need to fine google 6.4 BILLION ?
  - ocdtrekkie 12y ago
    Google has absolutely done more than $6.4 billion worth of damage to society. Google's arbitrary automatic penalty systems put people out of business on a daily basis.
    - lamuerteflaca 12y ago
      Of course, what you do not include is that google has enabled businesses to make trillions of dollars. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
arikrak 12y ago
> I like china's approach to this where they forced their countrymen to create powerful competitor to google. Right, it's not like China just blocks all of Google entirely or anything...
- tormeh 12y ago
  I think you're talking about the same thing.
matt4077 12y ago
This is a bit childish. Firstly, the EU is democratically elected: the parliament is elected directly. The commissioners are appointed by democratically elected governments and subject to the parliament's approval. Secondly the EU competition bureaucracy has never shown a bias against American (or even non-EU) companies. If you check http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistics.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic... (page 3) you'll see that of the 10 highest cartel fines, 9 went against EU companies. One was LG Electronics. Thirdly, the idea that any company the size of google would abandon the European market in some sort of spiteful retreat is laughable. Europe has a strong track record in terms of the rule of law and google will have a fair chance to present their arguments. Fourthly, there shouldn't be spaces before punctuation.
pluma 12y ago
The punishment isn't proportional to the damage, it's proportional to their income. Whether that is just or not is a different question.
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
> Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean. So? The thing with corporations is, if they do something bad and you give them a small fine, they'll just consider it a write-off expense. Corporations lack morality. They are not human, they cannot be reformed. If you want them to behave, you have to make their bad actions hurt. You can't just lock them up, either. Thus, a big fine is the only way to force them to act.

rbehrends 12y ago

> I wouldn't be suspicious until I read ".. fine of 6.4 billion .." EU fines for anticompetitive behavior are assessed as a percentage of turnover. As a basic rule, it is set at up to 30% of annual sales related to the infringement (modified by aggravating and mitigating factors) multiplied by the duration of the infringement, plus a base amount of 15%-25%, and capped at 10% of annual turnover.

Atropos 12y ago

The fine amounts being thrown around are mostly bad journalism. The law allows a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover, but even in most hard-core cartel cases, they will not go into the upper bound. And especially in this case, it is not clear if Google will be fined in the end at all - the Motorala SEP case ended without a fine as well: http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/04/eu-settles-sep-antitrust-case-with.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/04/eu-settles-sep-antitrust-...

Tarang 12y ago

> Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean. The fines broke big long after BP's fine. BNP Paribas was fined a staggering $9bn just last year. The fine was selected as the limit of 10% of the annual revenue in the previous year.

Crito 12y ago

> "Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean." BP was not fined as much as they should have been, therefore the EU should go easy on all other companies from now on? How does that make any sense?

1971genocide 12y ago
No, Everyone should be fined based on how much damage they have caused on the environment,civilization, etc Do you seriously think google has done damage worth 6.4 BILLION ? BP,Shell,Nestle have caused real damage to real humans and the environment and there seems no outrage or investigation towards them. Banks in germany have clearly destroyed lives of people financially and no one is asking any questions ? Google allegedly tweaked its algorithm to make it slightly inconvenient for people to use alternative services and now we need to fine google 6.4 BILLION ?
- ocdtrekkie 12y ago
  Google has absolutely done more than $6.4 billion worth of damage to society. Google's arbitrary automatic penalty systems put people out of business on a daily basis.
  - lamuerteflaca 12y ago
    Of course, what you do not include is that google has enabled businesses to make trillions of dollars. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

arikrak 12y ago

> I like china's approach to this where they forced their countrymen to create powerful competitor to google. Right, it's not like China just blocks all of Google entirely or anything...

tormeh 12y ago
I think you're talking about the same thing.

matt4077 12y ago

This is a bit childish. Firstly, the EU is democratically elected: the parliament is elected directly. The commissioners are appointed by democratically elected governments and subject to the parliament's approval. Secondly the EU competition bureaucracy has never shown a bias against American (or even non-EU) companies. If you check http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistics.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic... (page 3) you'll see that of the 10 highest cartel fines, 9 went against EU companies. One was LG Electronics. Thirdly, the idea that any company the size of google would abandon the European market in some sort of spiteful retreat is laughable. Europe has a strong track record in terms of the rule of law and google will have a fair chance to present their arguments. Fourthly, there shouldn't be spaces before punctuation.

pluma 12y ago

The punishment isn't proportional to the damage, it's proportional to their income. Whether that is just or not is a different question.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

> Even BP didn't get that big of a fine when they polluted half of the Atlantic Ocean. So? The thing with corporations is, if they do something bad and you give them a small fine, they'll just consider it a write-off expense. Corporations lack morality. They are not human, they cannot be reformed. If you want them to behave, you have to make their bad actions hurt. You can't just lock them up, either. Thus, a big fine is the only way to force them to act.