Yes the EU authorities would love for the entire world to collect VAT from its citizens.
No because the EU has absolutely no way to enforce this worldwide.
However, the big fun is coming on Thursday, when the EU is due to rule over Google and politely requesting that Google splits off search from the rest of its business.
I believe this decision will be indicative of how crazy the EU lawmakers might be prepared to go.
For example, if they try and enforce splitting up Google, maybe they'd have the sheer bloody-mindedness to try and enforce blocking sales from EU cards to e.g. non-registered US sellers?
> However, the big fun is coming on Thursday, when the EU is due to rule over Google and politely requesting that Google splits off search from the rest of its business.
That's not accurate. What the European Parliament is due to vote on is a non-binding resolution that would recommend that the European Commission consider proposals that would include unbundling Google's search from other commercial features.
> I believe this decision will be indicative of how crazy the EU lawmakers might be prepared to go.
Or it might be an indicator of what people in general are willing to do when their actions have no direct effect (non-binding resolution) and therefore don't actually have to address the details of substantive concerns.
> However, the big fun is coming on Thursday, when the EU is due to rule over Google and politely requesting that Google splits off search from the rest of its business.
This doesn't seem to me the same as "splitting up Google", more like unbundling or splitting up products. For example, I can see them mandating that Android support other search engines in the launcher/Google Now.
There are "Google companies" inside the EU. Of course, they often officially state that there's no connection to the "American Google" to evade certain legislation.
> I don't recall the US DOJ using anti-trust laws to attempt to force a European or Asian company to be split.
The European Parliament passing a non-binding resolution recommending that the European Commission take seek a certain goal as part of a remedy if its concerns aren't otherwise resolved in an ongoing proceeding is not analogous to the US DOJ actually seeking a particular remedy in a proceeding.
If the European Commission is seeking as an end goal to force Google to split its business, on anti-competitive concerns, then that is similar to what the DOJ does with anti-trust enforcement. The intent is the same: to see business X split. The DOJ's domestic powers are far greater than the EU Commission's ability to impact Google, but that's not for lack of wanting to.
My point stands regardless. Show me where the United States Government attempts to force major European or Asian companies to split into pieces. I'd love to see numerous examples of the US Government doing what the EU Commission is doing.
> If the European Commission is seeking as an end goal to force Google to split its business, on anti-competitive concerns, then that is similar to what the DOJ does with anti-trust enforcement.
Yes, but the issue isn't the EC seeking to do that as part of any enforcement action, the issue is the European Parliament passing a non-binding resolution recommending that the EC should do that (and, as I understand it, that it should do that if its issues with Google aren't satisfactorily resolved otherwise.)
So, the US DOJ actually attempting to do that in a concrete enforcement action wouldn't be a parallel comparison, it would be a much more significant action than what is actually happening in Europe right now.
> The DOJ's domestic powers are far greater than the EU Commission's ability to impact Google, but that's not for lack of wanting to.
More relevantly, either the DOJ or the EU Commission, within their respective jurisdiction, actually do substantive antitrust enforcement actions, and actual enforcement actions by those entities are categorically quite different than non-binding resolutions recommending elements that should be sought in such action by the respective legislative bodies.
> My point stands regardless. Show me where the United States Government attempts to force major European or Asian companies to split into pieces.
A non-binding resolution by a legislative body isn't really much of an effort to force anything. Its more of an effort to be seen as engaged without actually doing anything substantive.
> I'd love to see numerous examples of the US Government doing what the EU Commission is doing.
The European Commission isn't actually doing anything here. There are lots of examples of the US Government not breaking up foreign companies.
Conflating the European Commission with the European Parliament is kind of like confusing the US White House -- or the whole of the Executive Branch -- with the US Congress -- and what you are doing here goes another step further, and proposes an equivalence between non-binding action by the legislature and concrete enforcement action by the executive.
What would that achieve? Most of the Google engineering is done in the US, and its main offices in Europe are Zurich and Dublin (I think). Worst case, Google will also move their datacenters out of EU countries.
Yes and no.
Yes the EU authorities would love for the entire world to collect VAT from its citizens.
No because the EU has absolutely no way to enforce this worldwide.
However, the big fun is coming on Thursday, when the EU is due to rule over Google and politely requesting that Google splits off search from the rest of its business.
I believe this decision will be indicative of how crazy the EU lawmakers might be prepared to go.
For example, if they try and enforce splitting up Google, maybe they'd have the sheer bloody-mindedness to try and enforce blocking sales from EU cards to e.g. non-registered US sellers?