[riffraff]

this comment always comes up and it's _wrong_.

The goal of the regulation is to get the operators to comply, which they usually do after fines (EDIT: and litigations and whining, of course), because the costs of infractions are increased if they don't comply.

[20k]

The issue is they usually comply with the specific law being broken, and then immediately stop complying with a different law

The goal should be to incentivise them to comply with the law as a whole, not to keep deliberately breaking different sections of the law to make profit above the level of fines

That's why people want the level of the fines to go up, to disincentivise the more broad lawbreaking

[p-e-w]

Imagine regular laws worked that way, where a prior conviction is only relevant if it was for the exact same crime, and you can go around committing dozens of crimes and be treated like a first offender every time because this time you chose robbery and last time it was theft.

[shevy-java]

Well, usually for small crimes, repeated offenders get subsequently higher and higher fines. Now if only this were to work for corporations too ...

[riffraff]

This is literally how it works for most fines.

You don't get a higher fine every time you go very the speed limit or park in the wrong place.

You don't get a higher fine if you don't have a bus ticket.

This is not a felony. Perhaps it should be, but it's not.

[sajithdilshan]

Not really, next time they just make a calculated risk decision, if the revenue from non-compliance is quite significant than the fine they have to pay later (if they have to, because I can imagine so many other cases which went unnoticed or didn't result in a fine) there is no reason for them to comply next time. It's not like they will be prohibited from doing a business after n number of compliance violations or fines

[dinfinity]

Except they did comply for all the cases where they were fined. They're not fined for one-off behaviors, but for how their services are structured. That's GPs point.

[OsrsNeedsf2P]

I work in this space (not for Google). These fines are 100% a tax, and would be levied for any reason whatsoever

[Teever]

If the cost of penalties doesn't exceed the cost of the offence then it's a winning move to offend.

The correct solution to this is to have fines scaled to the value of a company and an exponential doubling of fines for every re-offence that falls under the same category of crime with a cooling off period after a few years.

[benoau]

The fines do scale with noncompliance, if Google were to continue to offend they would get a daily fine that is retroactively applied to the full duration.

[maccard]

Because the goal isn’t to punish, it’s to get them to do what the law wants them to do. The fine is supposed to be a slap on the wrist - the actual desired behaviour is compliance

[Teever]

That is the incorrect way to apply fines.

The first fine should sting and the second should be damaging to a company and the third should be crippling.

The EU has been fining Google for years to no avail.

[HatchedLake721]

> The EU has been fining Google for years to no avail.

Me after a quick research:

2017: €2.42 billion fine for favoring its own comparison shopping service.

Results: huge changes to Google's shopping service.

2018: €4 billion fine over Android-related practices.

Results: Google Play separately from Google Search and Chrome, and manufacturers gained more flexibility over preinstalled apps.

[Teever]

I think that's a great start and I see a something close to a doubling from 2.42B to 4B but it stops there and this most recent fine is under a billion.

What we need to see is that exponential function. Everyone here should have at least the intuition from Moore's Law and COVID that exponential growth is either your best friend or your worst enemy depending on if it's working for you.

The next fine should've been 8B, and the one after that 16... The regression back down to 1B is counter productive to the goal of inducing compliance and reducing the offender's ability to continue to offend by taking away their resources to do so.

[bornfreddy]

2026: Google again found breaking the law.

[inigyou]

yeah, 8 years later? If someone was born on the last one they're now in 4th grade and halfway to being able to drive. Are these really correlated events?

[shevy-java]

No, the comment is not wrong. It is correct.

The big corporations don't really fix their evil behaviour. That's why fines keep on re-emerging.

> because the costs of infractions are increased if they don't comply.

See above. If the fines were to work, it would not become a repeating issue.

I think mandatory jailtimes are the only solution. When the CEOs are suddenly for 10 years in a small room, slowly they will begin to stop their mafia-strategy.

[hirako2000]

The cost increases, but given the revenue Google generates how is that not just a tax?

I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim. If the fines are moderate and big co keeps paying that's steady revenue for the EU institutions.

[ben_w]

You appear to be arguing with the assumption that "get the operators to comply" is false.

These companies do, in fact, change behaviour in response to such actions; they may hire lawyers to find and exploit as many loopholes as they can, but they do ultimately comply. Even X ultimately complied in response to Brazil, and the EU is a much more important market for Google than Brazil ever was for X.

(Why would you expect to get dollars from an EU settlement?)

[oblio]

> I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim.

There's this standard assumption that HN users are well educated.

Budgets don't work like that. It's not like the US federal government collects taxes and then deposits bags of gold coins on people's doorsteps.

Taxes, fines, etc are all collected and then they mostly go to a general, undifferentiated budget which is then divided by the various ministries (departments, whatever).

So yes, if you're a EU citizen you did get the money back. As roads, hospitals, research funding, etc.

[ivan_gammel]

It‘s nice to have such revenue to fund EU programs on digital sovereignty. European institutions give plenty of money to startups. You need an entry to the program, but when you are in, it can account for 50-70% or more in your early stage funding. And that‘s nice, because you keep more equity.

[mosura]

> You need an entry to the program, but when you are in, it can account for 50-70% or more in your early stage funding.

It is almost entirely unsurprising that the EU tech industry is such a disaster area when people say things like this as if they are a good thing.

[brazukadev]

I find it more interesting that US Americans think letting their companies do whatever they want everywhere (as they currently do) is the better "strategy".

[mosura]

“Everyone opposed to EU policy is a US American” fallacy in play.

As is the “letting their companies do whatever they want everywhere (as they currently do) is the better "strategy"” when this wasn’t said or even implied anywhere.

It is amazing how HN has descended into arguing against people making points by saying they are someone else and saying something completely different.

[sam_lowry_]

Looking at the ivan_gammel's startups now and chuckling.

[mosura]

Looking at the state of the EU tech industry and chuckling.

The point of the EU subsidies is, surely, not to enrich a few people with the right connections but to stimulate a productive ecosystem that supports well paid skilled employment, right? Right?

[ivan_gammel]

You don‘t need the right connections. You can be an outsider and spend 10% of the grant to hire a guy who will help you with paperwork and refining the idea to fit in support initiative. Basically, you look around what grants are there, find the ones you like and can align to, find a consultancy and get your 200k-1M€. Just make sure you can show something in the end, as promised.

Honestly, I don’t know what are you talking about. Tech industry in Europe is far from being dead. Not least because for many American companies Europe as market is dead.

[sajithdilshan]

I don't think that's a sustainable model. Also most of those fines goes into filling the gaps in budgets related to recurring costs of maintaining the bureaucratic behemoth rather than funding research or innovation.

[close04]

The US was lucky to have Musk and DOGE fix that bureaucratic behemoth, if only the EU had the same luck.

How long have you been working inside the behemoth? Can you tell us more about the inner workings, where the money goes, how much, etc?

[stavros]

It's a tariff on noncompliance, designed to make it cheaper to comply than to not comply.

[cromka]

> I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim.

This isn't a class action.