[antonymy]

The fallout from this should be interesting. This fine is a substantial part (roughly 25%!) of Google's overall revenue from the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa), of which the EU is probably like 90%, at least, of the total, so it's probably toing the line of actually making the EU unprofitable to Google considering the costs of future compliance to avoid being fined again. Worse: this was not as steep as the fine could have been, they could've fined them about double this amount under current regulations, but chose not to. Probably because that would have pushed Google's EU operations into the red for sure and made the decision easy for them.

To be sure the company won't be in trouble financially, their global revenue can cover the fine, but that doesn't stop the EU from potentially being a net loss for the company going forward. Abandoning the EU would be a drastic step, though. It's going to be interesting to see how they adapt to this. Another fine on this scale and I think they will pull out.

[babelfish]

To be clear, while the fines might make operating in the EU unprofitable, they could just...follow EU regulations...and remain profitable, albeit at a likely lower margin

[crazygringo]

To be fair, it's often very unclear how regulations relating to markets apply. Which is why lawsuits around them often get reversed on appeal, re-reversed on another appeal, and so on.

It's often very open to interpretation what constitutes a market, what constitutes bundling, what constitutes dominance, what constitutes monopoly, what even constitutes a product. There's neither such a thing as clear-cut definitions, nor even common sense (since different people's common sense can be diametrically opposed).

It's things as basic as: is a Sony Walkman with headphones one product or two? What's the difference between Sony requiring you to buy headphones together with the tape player, or Android requiring Google to be the default search? Is "portable cassette player with headphones" a single market, or are "portable cassette players" and "headphones" separate markets?

There's no such thing as "just follow EU regulations". Google and other observers can genuinely believe it's following them, while a specific EU court and yet other observers can genuinely believe it's breaking them.

[makomk]

Also, prior to Google throwing vast sums of money at phone companies, Bing was paying off many EU mobile phone providers to install Bing as the default search engine on all their Android-based devices and lock users out from changing it to anything else. Since those companies were government-enforced oligipolies, this meant ordinary users effectively couldn't get devices that sent their searches to Google or anyone other than Bing in many countries unless they went off-piste and bought their own device online from someone other than their mobile provider (which doesn't work a lot of the time these days with 4G calling). This could well end up substantially reducing consumer choice in a way that directly hurts Google. In fact, an astounding chunk of the Google anti-trust actions from the EU seem aimed at giving Bing unearned advantages...

[ephbit]

> What's the difference between Sony requiring you to buy headphones together with the tape player, or Android requiring Google to be the default search?

Sony and headphones together with tape player ... there's a synergy there, when they can sell them together, it's a small one though. (Selling two pieces of hardware together generates more turnover with one transaction.)

With Android requiring Google to be the default search ... in comparison to the headphones there's a huge synergy here, I'd say. Collecting data (via non search software on the Android phone) and adding to it more data from search, makes all data more valuable in a very non-linear way. With the tape player I'd say it's more linear.

So for me, the search data is a quite obvious non-neutrality issue.

[crazygringo]

I just meant it as a rhetorical question... just to point out that what is obvious for one person, the opposite is obvious for another. And so just "following regulations" doesn't always necessarily have any kind of objective way to do it -- as evidenced by courts often disagreeing with each other in specific situations.

[ephbit]

I think I understood what you were after, giving an example, that is.

When I read the example though, I immediately thought it didn't quite ring true. So I tried to explain to myself why and came up with what I wrote.

Even though there are obviously many examples one could give, where it'd indeed be difficult to see a difference, I didn't want to let this specific example go unchallenged. Why? Because it is so close to the actual topic (Google).

[rodgerd]

> What's the difference between Sony requiring you to buy headphones together with the tape player, or Android requiring Google to be the default search?

Because of the tying of third-parties, I don't think that this is an equivalent comparison. This is more like going into the record store (since we're going back to the 80s with our Walkman) and finding that you think the Walkman comes with garbage headphones. So you pick up a Panasonic player and the headphones you want. Then you pick up a couple of tapes that you wanted to listen to, get to the counter, and the store owner explains that those albums are on the BMG label, so he can't sell them to you. In fact, he can't sell any Sony Music group cassettes unless you own those shitty Sony headphones, because if he does, Sony Music won't let him sell any more Sony Music albums in his store.

[antonymy]

That's probably the goal, but Google is probably going to have anxiety about getting fined again if their compliance is not enough. Except in this case, the fines are so steep that it'd be very hard to over-spend on compliance. But it's just a race to the bottom in any case, Google only stands to make less and less money in the EU from now on.

[dangjc]

It’s not walking on egg shells. It’s very clear directions to avoid anti competitive behavior. Maybe it’s harder without a moral compass telling them to not be evil.

[ranman]

EU regulations + individual country restrictions are written in a way that's allergic to running a profitable business (with a few notable exceptions).

[DandyDev]

That seems like hyperbole to me. Did you do concrete research/calculations to prove that for example Google in this case would not be able to turn a profit in the EU when they'd comply to regulations?

[uni_rule]

I hate that fines proportional to the revenue giant companies make from doing shady shit are the exception and not the rule

[ocdtrekkie]

Bear in mind a global company like Google would much rather operate in the EU in the red than pull out. Simply because Google only survives on being a monopoly, and leaving one of the biggest global markets makes too much room for a competitor to develop that can eventually challenge them across the world.

[weatherlite]

The EU seems fine with the idea actually - it wants more independence on technology and said so several times. There will be many many pissed off European users for sure but that never stopped the EU elite from making a decision. Still - seems like a reach to me.

[antonymy]

I just remember when the EU passed that legislation that made it legal for member states to require Google to pay a fee to newspapers for linking to their content in Google News. Only a few countries bothered to try enforcing it, notably Spain did, and the result was Google called their bluff and de-listed every newspaper in Spain from Google News. It did not take long until Spain relented and permitted newspapers to waive the requirement with exemptions (i.e. allow status quo ante), which is exactly what happened for the bulk of them.

Google definitely wants to stay in this market, but I don't think the EU has as much leverage as they think.

[osculum]

It took about 8 years? And my understanding is that it changed because Spain now allows the newspapers to negotiate directly with Google, not because Google doesn’t have to pay those fees

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-news-re-opens-spai...

Disclaimer: I work for Google in an unrelated product. Opinions are my own.

[nephanth]

This is weird though: if Google news delisted every newspaper from Spain, wouldn't that lead to Spanish users ditching Google news (and finding an alternative)? It's not like they're interested in non-spanish news

[locallost]

They do 200 billion in ad sales a year. Without checking the data, I am pretty sure the EU is at least their third largest market, if not the second. This is definitely a lot less than a 1/4 of their revenue and they're not going anywhere.

[cush]

Imagine Google had to find a different revenue model than harvesting and selling personal information? What would they even do? Could Cloud or Workspace even prop up the company?