European Commission Fines Google €2.95b Over Abusive Ad Tech Practices
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The European Commission has fined Google €2.95B for abusive ad tech practices, sparking debate on the effectiveness of the fine and the EU's approach to regulating tech giants.
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You as a prosecutor, who will you take to jail? whole committee? Those who voted in-favour? Somebody who brought the proposal? Only CEO?
Each of these decisions if done consistently over time, would invoke changes in companies, to get some fall-guys in right places.
3bn sounds like a lot because we haven't gotten used to the absurd profit levels that these monstrosities have reached.
3B is pocket change to them
Bet it was those who were asked about corruption and cut the microphone to those who really care.
We do deserve better in Europe.
This one is for Google. But Facebook and others do the same. How can we let them do this.
If you have responsability and let this happen, you just allow it.
I believe the reason you got down-voted was because you comment did not add anything of productive to the discussion.
Can you name any other company that if they owned Chrome it would've been better for the users and the web?
Mozilla? Red Hat? Valve?
Already has a browser. With debatable success.
> Red Hat?
Would probably rather end up under the Linux Foundation and not RH. How development would then continue is up for debate.
> Valve?
They already use CEF for their Steam client IIRC, but I don't think they are too much interested in owning an entire browser. Especially considering Valve itself is a relatively small company emplyee wise.
What makes you think they'll suddenly do a good job when the funding goes away, and they have to now support a large userbase which pays $0 to use the product.
Red Hat has been acquired and is already well underway on the enshitification road.
Browsers are way too far from Valve's core business.
They're essentially apps that don't have to go through the app store.
The healing will be when all ads and marketing will be down to zero. This companies like Facebook and Google make their billions putting on your face what you don't want or need and someone else pays them good money for that.
You may think it's too radical but we must make marketing illegal. Then fix the web.
I agree that some sites make advertisements a massive eyesore, but that's a problem that can be solved in other ways.
This argument sounds intuitive, but are we really sure about that? People willingly seek out marketing materials to find things they want to buy. I've seen people flip through coupon books and catalogs as idle entertainment. That plus word of mouth may well be sufficient to keep knowledge of new products and such in circulation. Hell, it might even yield better-informed consumers, allowing the market to function more efficiently.
If my environment was not inundated with advertisement, I'd only be seeing more things that I'd be willing to pay for, not less.
>I agree that some sites make advertisements a massive eyesore, but that's a problem that can be solved in other ways.
Ads are not simply a way of getting your product in front of people. Ever wonder why ads are the fig leaf for mass surveillance? It's because they constitute some primitive, mild, poorly understood, but completely socially acceptable form of *non-consensual behavior modification*.
That this has been tolerated up to now is a historical contigency. Much like other civilizational essentials like tobacco products and leaded gas, as soon as someone prices in the externalities - whether through regulation or through disruption - the societal attitudes to them will quickly change from "unavoidable" towards "inexcusable".
Most of the things I own / purchase / use… I have neither seen a commercial for nor pursuaded by it if I saw it in passing. So there are other ways. Right now few of the largest companies on the planet contribute little-to-nothing to society other than showing garbage down people’s throats. Perhaps there is some happy medium but I don’t think society can ever reach it any longer
The ads we see online now (and the tracking that goes with it) are what, 20 years old?
The type of marketing and advertising we live with now is a direct descendent of research and work done in the last century (thanks Bernays).
The whole point of Google was to get people answers to questions they have. Our current approach to advertising creates the problems in people’s heads only to immediately sell the solution.
I've given some thought to this, and outright banning marketing sounds basically impossible. Not just from a "good luck getting that bill passed" sense, but in a practical one. Where do you draw the line on "marketing"? Presumably my writing a glowing review of a product I like won't be banned, and online banner ads will. I'm not trying to make a "the line is blurry therefore no regulation can happen" argument, rather I think "marketing" isn't really the right line. Specifically, what ought to be banned is the sale of attention. Anything where money or favors are changing hands in order to direct attention intentionally to your product, service, etc. So you can absolutely have a marketing page extolling the virtues of your brand. You cannot pay to have that page shoved in front of people's eyeballs.
Yes, I know that this kills the ad-based funding of the current internet. Let it burn. A mix of community-run free services and commercial paid services is infinitely preferable to the "free" trash we've grown dependent on.
To make an ethical argument: quantifying and selling human attention is gross anyway. Some things just don't belong on a market.
I had a decent idea. Not that it's easily practical, but it's more practical than other solutions.
Major problem today is information asymmetry. Google giving you free YouTube videos is front and center. Google paying for it by linking your location and this and that fingerprint from here and there is hidden in whitewashed language 3 settings menus deep. Many things are hidden in bottom right of a billboard in fine print, t&c fine prints, etc,.
What I propose is the law making sure that all information about the product that you intend to or are forced to by regulation to make public, public in the same measure. That is, if you're going to advertise "coca cola, open happiness" you also need to have in the same fontsize "39g of sugar" right next to it. Similarly google search bar needs to say what info of yours helped serve the ads you see, right next to the content paid for by those ads.
If you're going to hide less palatable stuff in your t&c, then marketing logos slogans all become illegal for you. And all information even positive ones must also be in fontsize8 t&c fine print.
Real estate ads can't put *artists impression at the bottom right of their ad in fine print, it has to be as big as the main tagline.
You get the idea. What I gave are just examples, slight variations of the idea that still focus on information symmetry as the main goal, will also work.
If you didn't take money from sources overtly connected to the brand or otherwise shady you won't be banned.
I think advertising has a huge, positive, 2nd order effect on the world.
Since we're already dreaming, I'd modify this to say companies can publish information about their products and services only on their own website, and the database just links to it.
We can discuss about what are the best means or even limits in the contents of advertising but making it illegal is non sense.
in my garden, if I see one rat it means there is at least a dozen more.
A more likely scenario is that some other big techs like MSFT or Meta would acquire Chrome and replace the monopolist position. This is the sad truth that many people try to underplay; Nature won't heal by itself. The market is already structured to incentivize monopolist behaviors, thanks to the scaling nature of big techs. You need correction to the market itself, which can only be done by an extremely competent legislative body but we won't have that anytime soon. But at least the EU has done something with DMA so there are still some hopes.
There is a number of countries where Google has to deal with large levels of protectionist barriers (not the EU, these fines aren't that) and they still operate there. Korea is just one example. Because there's still a lot of money to be made. China isn't a counterexample: Google stopped operating search in China because at that point there was not a lot of money to be made for them in search there.
The EU is threading the needle deftly here, I guess.
Why forfeit $20B in revenue in exchange for NOT having to pay $3B? I think that's an astute observation by the original commenter.
EDIT: FWIW I think your observation that the EU is threading a needle stands. It's a controversial topic that people are very passionate about.
I am not sure why but otherwise seemingly intelligent people seem to be incapable of internalizing that any cost, expense, or fine levied against any corporate entity will always, with 100% (not any other percentage) be rolled into prices. The minor headache of it lowering returns will also be offset and will not really make a difference to any meaningful degree. Most likely Google, just like other corporations that are exposed to this kind of risk, will have set aside a "war chest" they have been building up over prior years, which further would defray any real impact.
Then of course there is the fact that these fines are rarely ever the actual amount that will be paid in the end, and most of the time it can be distributed over time.
What people should really take away from this is that in the end it really is kind of an extortion racket by the EU, but not of Google, but rather of the advertising companies the end consumers who end up paying from he higher priced ads through product prices, and possibly the general Google customer base.
This would really only be an issue that materially impacted Google if there were some kind of real competition in the space, which there is not really. What the EU could possibly do that would have a notable impact is setting industry standards to, e.g., a universal ad format that is ad broker agnostic, e.g., your app, site, service, etc could just serve up ads from all kinds of places, a kind of free market of ads not dominated by Google.
But even with that, with Google's advancement in AI generated content, they will likely also dominate the ad generation market soon.
The oddest thing is that the EU and Europe in general has all but floundered in many ways regarding the generation of a competitive technology industry. But that's a whole different topic.
Google applying tariffs to itself in Europe might be something the EC may a) investigate and fine Google for ripping off Europeans, and/or b) approve of; they previously considered a big-tech tax to improve competition in Europe. Google would be doing them a favor, and Trump won't send them a nastygram this time around.
>build the fines into operation costs and bill that to EU customers or maybe all Google customers looking to serve ads in the EU.
However, the consumer effects of a "tax" or surcharge on a foreign service applied to a specific jurisdiction are indistinguishable from a tariff. The only difference is the money doesn't go to the government treasury - in any case, that's not the reason most governments introduce tariffs. If Google were to introduce a Europe surcharge, they'd be ironically in alignment with Brussels.
They cost different things based off the country you are in. I guess you could try to distinguish between why they cost different prices in different countries and in some cases it's largely purchasing power parity, but others it absolutely is operational cost differences, such as cloud services. Uber is a bit more mixed - there are definitely purchasing power differences but there are also different regulatory requirements.
All that is to say you could never really tease it all out perfectly in practice.
Sure, if the folk at Google that coordinate this hypothetical Euro-fine surcharge entirely in person with no paper trail and are confident there will be no whistleblowers.
No oversight body with subpoena powers needs to "tease out" any information, they'll directly request the pricing formulas, related emails and underlying data for 2015-2025 and cross-check with consumer payments.
My guess is that exactly this similarity coupled with a pinch of humour, was what caused op to classify it as such.
He's suggesting that the money Google does not make because of this regulation may be rolled into prices. The fact that eating the fees is not sustainable doesn't mean they have to take the margin hit for all associated costs.
Whether or not Google is "losing value" (aka money) or losing "illegal income", which aren't mutually exclusive by the way, has nothing to do with that dynamic. They could, in theory, roll that difference into prices either way.
Dude, 2.95 Billion $ is already steep, and I am sure that google used to get small fines when it was small in EU too, but its just that the rate at which google grows is more than the rate at which fines grow but I think that EU can't really make a really large number like suing google for 100 billion dollars. and I think that google already weighs in everything like the fines, the costs associated with exiting (stock price drops etc.) and they would actually just do whatever is more profitable to them of the following three options
A) stay in EU & pay the fines B) leave EU C) Follow EU requests
What is the fine amount which might change things into C) and not A) or B)
Because I think EU wants change not money, I am sure that they have plenty of money and they know that google isn't paying them out of their kindness. EU's people or even google itself isn't following EU laws and its affecting people living in EU. I wonder if someone thinks how much powerless EU might feel in that sense. They already have money, they want change.
That will make Google less competitive and allow more players on the market, breaking their monopoly. Not a bad outcome and probably exactly the point of these fines.
I doubt that google is a monopoly because they are the most competitive at what they do & thus have the market share. I have been using duckduckgo for honestly 3-4 years ago and I think that I have ublock so I don't see their ads but they are really nothing compared to google's ads and they rarely show even without adblocker (I think).
Duckduckgo is already really really competitive, You might argue that ddg uses bing and isn't independent but brave search is independent and comes really close to google to the point that you wouldn't know the difference.
I don't know the last time I used google but I love ddg's bangs etc.
I am sure that someone else can articulate what I am saying into something more logical as to why a monopoly can still exist even while being less competitive than competition.
And also I am saying that it is as easy as two clicks to change the default browser but it maybe speaks mountains that most people still don't switch from google to duckduckgo.
I sometimes want to recommend librewolf just because it has duckduckgo, ublock and sane defaults (except your web browsing deleted everytime/starting from clean slate (I think) and webgl stuff)
But Google has a monopoly there because it operated at a loss to push others out. Like most American tech companies.
At the same time, Google absolutely has a significant stranglehold on the adtech market, which is what this is about, not search engines
There is no doubt it puts pressure on the prices and in many cases it may entirely be reflected in the prices but the incentive structure doesn't actually necessitate it.
This is a very strongly stated opinion that directly contradicts basic theories like “supply and demand.” Of course, simple Econ 101 models often need to be expanded by more complex ones, to capture actual behavior. I guess given the level of smugness in your comment (“otherwise seemingly intelligent,” ok, lol) you have some pretty solid evidence that you just… decided not to share?
Of course, in a market with this degree of concentrated market power, those fines would have to be very very high indeed...
There are two types of businesses: those allergic to change, and those unable to stay the same.
If you are at a corporation where you constantly have to be Doing Things which Demonstrate Impact, this sort of judgement or regulatory change is a godsend for hundreds or thousands of middle-managers and engineers.
You have a project with clear goals ("comply with court order/new regulations"), relatively low bars for success (minimal impact on the bottom line), and it's all very clear to upper management that the work you're doing is Important. Heck, you might be able to lean on it for a couple of years to justify your existence, instead of trying to convince people that changing the rating system from a five point scale to a percentage then back to a five point scale was a worthwhile use of a dozen employees worth of headcount.
There may be some industries where change is anathema or the owners' oppositional defiance disorder makes they unwilling to change things just because they're illegal, but there's also plenty of others where people will be gleefully fighting for the opportunity to comply with a court order.
The EU has 450M (+80M for UK & similar non-eu countries that are likely to follow the EU on such regulations) population to the US' 350M.
The moment the likes of Google, or Meta, or Microsoft, or whomever else leave the EU, they immediately create a market gap. A market gap that will then in short order be filled with a European company that, because of the population sizes, has a notable comparative advantage to the US tech company.
+ As much as HN's readership loathes to admit it, regulations like this are "Good, Actually". Google's monopolist practices are bad for both advertisers and services showing ads. Any would-be competitor that arises from Google leaving the market would, by virtue of being forced by law to not be so shitty, be the better option. (And yes, this does also apply to pretty much all of the other big tech regulations as well.)
Like, c'mon. "Monopolies bad" is capitalism 101. Even the US' regulators thought Google was going too far.
A lot of it is a because the US brands are more recognizable and cheaper (due to dumping) and grow faster (due to the USA's VC glut).
IIRC a company like AirBNB was started in Europe, and was slowly growing, and couldn't get investment because "who would want this?" and then AirBNB was created, and then arrived in Europe, and they still couldn't get investment because "who wants a ripoff clone of AirBNB?"
The standard model for tech firms has been to run at enormous losses to push competition into bankruptcy or steal their users through subsidized service.
No European social media company could compete with e.g. Twitter, running at a loss for TWELVE years.
In more recent years, it's things like Uber. Subsidizing ride costs to crush existing taxi services & European taxi startups.
This is all, ostensibly, illegal under international law. You can't do it for cars or commodity goods. It's just not been enforced on the tech industry.
Some resources would definitely help me out here!
Also I think that I doubt how enforceable this is in tech industry as for the most part, they are selling a service and each service is different and thus have different price points and therefore the company should have the ability to decide prices technically.. so if they want to sell at a loss, theoretically nothing stops them from selling the service at a loss.
But I feel like the same logic applies to commodity goods. If two parties want to decide that they want to buy/sell at lower prices, why does the govt. interfere b/w them? Does this not impact their rights/freedom?
The actual legal mechanics are complicated; "Illegal under international law" here specifically entails "WTO agreements allow retaliation in response to dumping".
> and why I couldn't do it for cars or commodity goods.
Specifically, it's more enforced. Governments care about their conventional industry. The way this'd look is say, China providing state subsidy to certain industries in order to artificially lower the price of those goods, making them cheaper than US-based industry could produce, with the specific intent of driving US industry out of business.
Just googling "predatory pricing" and "dumping" will get you examples.
> Also I think that I doubt how enforceable this is in tech industry as for the most part, they are selling a service and each service is different and thus have different price points and therefore the company should have the ability to decide prices technically.
The problem for tech is this difficulty in assessing "real value" and the assumption that running at a loss for extended periods is "normal" for tech companies.
For a clear-cut example, consider Uber, who paid drivers more than they charged the passenger(s). This is obviously predatory. Uber has tricks like moving insurance/maintenance to the driver's wallet, but a taxi can't be cheaper than what they pay the driver.
> why does the govt. interfere b/w them? Does this not impact their rights/freedom?
It does impact their freedom, but the reason why the government intervenes is long-term health of the market.
Things like a 'firesale' because you're going out of business, or moving to a new warehouse, etc, are fine. A single store (even a big-box one) going out of business won't crush the entire market and it's only of short duration.
The problem is that dumping/predatory pricing is a strategy to maintain a monopoly. (Or in the cases of extensive investment funding, build one)
Again, consider something like Uber (but the same applies to any "rental"/gig-economy company). They sell rides below cost paid for by their huge pile of investment money, no other taxi company can compete. All the competing taxis go out of business. Uber can now raise the prices to obscene levels and cash in.
Whenever someone tries to start a new taxi company, it'll be small and local, so Uber just lowers their ride prices in that region again until they go out of business. And because they're small they don't have as much money as Uber so they'll go bankrupt first. Uber keeps the monopoly.
Such monopolies are long-term bad for the entire economy.
On an international level, it's China and steel again. China subsidizes their industry, industry in other countries can't compete and goes bankrupt, China can now raise their prices.
It's laughable that tarriffs and import taxes only apply to physical goods. If the EU had even an ounce of self-respect, the second the US came out with the tarriffs, they would've come out and said:
"We think this is a fantastic idea by Mr. Trump. Aligned with his views, we are instituting accompanying digital tarriffs to fix the digital trade defecit. We're sure he'll agree that the trade balance should be corrected in both the physical as well as digital worlds".
And that's why the US is so mad at the likes of Brazil - finally, after decades of getting rinsed, countries are starting to take (wholly insufficient) measures here and rightly instituting the equivalent of digital tarriffs.
(It's probably more about keeping up politicians' stock market investments though)
VC funding (I think) drives on monopoly creation. Maybe that's why we were seeing a huge amount of VC funding in AI because they think that they want to monopolize "intelligence" this time so its the end goal as they are trying to monopolize the means towards creation...
I really want to learn how US got VC trapped. The whole economy's system issue arises from VC. Like, AI hype started from VC spending billions which then justified the absurd AI growth in things like magnificent 7 on stock market.
We really have these billionaires pulling quite deals which secretly shape the world to a much larger extent and they don't do it because of some evil reason but a plain old reason: money.
But the fact that all they care about money makes the companies inside VC justify doing evil things because morality isn't the end goal, helping isn't the end goal. Its money and more money and even more money. Guess what? Exploitation pays the most short term and these VC's prefer short term too.
VC and corruption seems to be the worst issues that I think really influence way way more of the world secretly and thus making "democracy" as one HN user pointed out on a different thread, a "copium for the masses"
Regulation may be good, but understand, actually, recognize, that it is also suffocating. People bragging that they have no weeds in their fields, when they have no fresh crops either....
This is plainly untrue if you're talking about tech beyond the mag-7 sized supergiants.
> Regulation may be good, but understand, actually, recognize, that it is also suffocating. People bragging that they have no weeds in their fields, when they have no fresh crops either....
And yet it is the tech giants in the US, oh so praised for their size, that are the "weeds" in many regards.
What good is Google when it's reliant on an advertising monopoly itself built entirely on monopolistic and fraudulent exploitation of the rest of the economy.
What good is Amazon when it's reliant on crushing all other retail and local manufacturing?
I give them money, and in return I get stuff that "all other retail" failed to provide.
That's good.
Amazon crushed all other retail in the first place and therefore, now all other retail can't provide some stuff and you buy them from amazon
That isn't good.
Man I am thinking of this as an ouroboros. Amazon got big because they crushed all other retail and they crush all other retail because they are big.
I think that the ouroboros that I am talking about should be known as the monoboros (get it? I am trying to have some fun by mixing monopoly and ouroboros, I hope you don't mind it)
Or just call this ouroboros a monpoly, man. it hurts me sometimes that you can't bring change in this world because of the way the world is right now and that bad things can happen in this world and its far far from perfect. I don't get how you guys or even anyone stays optimistic, I really wish to be a optimist logically but I can't come to that conclusion other than the fact that hey I run on emotions and bad emotions lead to bad things happening for me personally so I need to shut down bad emotions just so that they happen better for me. But that seems a little like running away from the truth. Should I feel okay running away from truth?
Amazon didn’t win because they were huge. They got huge by winning.
Now, they can afford to be shitty (unfortunately), which is actually helping local retail near as I can tell.
I dunno, I think it's easy to forget just how bad it used to be. I'll take "cheap junk" I can get off Amazon for a few bucks even today.
Europeans are much poorer on average though, so actual revenue figures are rather the inverse of these population figures (they actually skew much more to the US than that, but anyhow).
Many pennies together add up.
Some people are so poor that all they have is money.
My hot take is that if they want to leave, then they can fuck right off. If you think your desires, profits, or business practices extend beyond democracy, then I don't need your business. Private enterprise should support and assist democracy, not the other way around (there's obviously some leeway there, but by and large).
No matter what anyone does, he just moves the goal posts. Let him keep his ball.
If Trump makes Google not pay the fine you think that will have no negative side-effects? His actions have been incredibly positive for European tech companies, 5 years ago the only ones that even considered not going for the US options were a few companies in Germany. Demand has skyrocketed and making Google not pay this would give it a huge boost.
How about a little tariff reduction to get rid of this fine for Google.
That’s how Trump makes his deals.
BTW where is the US pushed around? Reversed victim and offender?
And he’s, uh… very motivated by what others have to offer him… so FAANG clearly has some leverage there, but I don’t think it is necessarily a sure thing they’ll work something out.
Which is kind of his thing so I guess he may try something
I'm aware of a single record case that cost the perp 350K. You really don't want to get zapped with the maximum fines based on wilful transgressions on large numbers of people.
edit: I misremembered, it was 100K higher.
Somehow that doesn't stop the proliferation of tracking across the web's largest properties and companies.
https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/mastercard-zahlt-kunden-...
The EU would use public funding to build some sort of Google alternative and it would take ages, would be mediocre and most money would go to waste. Instead of incentivising entrepreneurship, which is what they probably should do.
We live very well in the EU. We don’t have to have millions in savings in order to retire. Strong worker protection. Plenty of time off. Low crime rates. Most people fantasise with becoming rich, but as in, “I had a rich aunt that I didn’t even meet in my life and I was the sole heir” or “I won the lottery”, not as in “I grinded for the best 10 years of my life working 100 hours per week before I sold my company” that seems more prevalent in the US. Ordinary people here are super happy if they can buy a small place to live (not a humongous house) even if it takes 25 years to pay it in full, then finish work at 5 and take their kids to the park and have dinner at some restaurant on Saturday.
OTOH: I think the current US administration is the best think that could happen to the EU, a big wake up call. Suddenly there’s money to invest in Defense and that kind of thing.
Also, hopefully LLMs will diminish Google’s importance, and as long as there’s competitive models not from the US (Mistral, DeepSeek) we might be fine. But Google holds all the cards (data). With stuff like the Harvard animosity they might even stop attracting all the foreign talent.
Apple? There’s Samsung for phones at least. Amazon? They’ve become a Temu/Aliexpress. Facebook… huge win if they stopped doing business in Europe. MS? This is the year of Linux in desktop?
The Cloud is one of those things where the EU could build something competitive/alternative just with public funding. All running on Linux, of course.
We'll see how that pans out when the baby boomers finish retiring. Europe ate it's children to feed the retirees.
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-francois-bayrou-wakin...
Not to derail the conversation, but IMO the current US administration isn’t a wake up call. It’s a temper tantrum by people who understand that the US isn’t as relatively wealthy to the rest of the world as it was after WW2 but don’t understand why. If some of the thrash accidentally improves the West’s defensive posture or spending that’s good but there is no coherent plan of why things need to be changed.
I promise you that within the US, each of those first two fantasies is more popular than the third one.
Something like web search is basicallly part of a modern digital infrastructure. We don't want entrepreneurship in water or energy supply, I don't think we should rely on it in web search, because it will inevitably end up chasing profits over everything else.
I think your scenario is a real possibility, but ironically one that would cost the US a lot more than it gains. It's really playing with fire, running the risk of even just 1% of EU businesses and consumers opting for EU services over US ones. And just that 1% represents far more than all of the yearly fines to Google/Meta/Apple combined.
Source?
Back in 2010 when Google left, their search market share was close to 30%. It's hard to think there was no money to be made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China
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