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by timmattison 1525 days ago
“Trivago earned approximately $92 million in revenue from those non-cheapest top position click-outs”

$92M - $45M = $47M

Average pay out to customers who were ripped off = $0

Incentive to not do this again = 0

2 comments

Well that's revenue and not profit, so they might not have come out on top.

From the article:

> The court found that Trivago would have made between $53 million and $58 million less if customers had always clicked out onto the cheapest offer.

> The court also estimated that consumers ended up paying about $30 million more for their hotel rooms than if they had always clicked on the cheapest offer, rather than the top-position offers featured by Trivago.

It looks like overall this is pretty proportional to the damage actually.

Edit: Though I do agree overall it's important for Trivago to come out net negative if companies are to have a financial incentive not to do this sort of thing. I would agree that the fine should be high enough to ensure that.

Punitive damages are usually 3x damages to make up for all the times the perpetrators don't get caught and sued.
The article says they made less than $7 million profit in their entire Australian operation, so $45 million is a pretty large penalty.