[aspenmayer]

Their lawyers are going to have to earn the wins, as the rulings against them don’t find their IP licensing to Google LLC (Ireland) to be particularly clever or cute. That this makes their tax avoidance strategy super obvious and fruitless in the EU is just the icing on the cake. No point for mama Google to license tech to their foreign subsidiary if they can’t phone home with the results. I’m laughing.

They will have to store EU data in Europe, and European authorities will forward relevant data to the relevant US authorities. At least that’s the way the EU courts seem to be leaning. Google will likely appeal and waste everyone’s time, and maybe win. But they will only make calls for antitrust action louder if they were to do so.