[heracles]

In most (all?) other fields of law you are expected to abide by the rules as they are stated, or risk being punished by the legislative powers. That's not a vendetta, that's law as it is most commonly practiced.

I don't see why EU should "work with google" to make them follow regulations (EDIT: beyond the threat of punishment).

[naturalgradient]

The problem is that antitrust laws like these are very selectively enforced. Selection and prosecution of these cases is hence inherently political as these are non-standardized arguments or verdicts.

[fauigerzigerk]

Not nearly as selective as the cases that end up on Hacker News, i.e only cases involving large US corporations.

The commission and national (European) regulators are investigating ~150 cases every year, most of which none of us will ever have heard of.

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/statistics.html#2

The ones I know about have all been the result of a complaint made by competitors. I would be surprised if the regulator could selectively reject such complaints without good reason.

[oblio]

Why selectively? It's basically the same principle as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission

Who else do you think they should pursue instead?

[heracles]

That is a fair point, but isn't it built into this particular field?

We can prosecute equally for jaywalking, but anti-competitive behavior gets worse the bigger the offender is and/or the worse offense they commit. So in that way it makes sense to prosecute "top-down", that is go after the biggest ones first.

That's at least what I prefer as an EU member state citizen and consumer.

[azernik]

Not only does it get worse the bigger the offender is; in law, generally there are specific actions that you're not allowed to take iff you're dominant in the market.

[Fnoord]

> The problem is that antitrust laws like these are very selectively enforced. Selection and prosecution of these cases is hence inherently political as these are non-standardized arguments or verdicts.

Following that logic, the same applies to law in general. Should we therefore abolish law?

[bbeonx]

This is, of course, the only logical conclusion

[furyg3]

That only means that Google did (or should have done) a risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis on getting fined by the EU on this topic.

[ycombinete]

I'm guessing that they did, and probably came to the conclusion that they'll make more money than the fine that gets imposed. I wonder if they were right?