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raychistoday at 12:04 PM6 repliesview on HN

$1.5B is significant, but the bigger question is whether this actually changes how dominant platforms rank their own services.

Is this real accountability for anti-competitive behaviour, or just another cost of doing business for Big Tech?

My cynicism is tell me that unfortunately it is the latter.


Replies

brainwadtoday at 12:37 PM

IMO the fines do have an effect - Google now withholds a lot of launches from the EU, sometimes temporarily until they have time to have lawyers check them against DMA requirements, but mostly permanently. Ironically the part of Google most likely to persist in launching for the EU is Ads, since money is at stake. All the free, consumer-benefiting services are most likely to be curtailed in the face of aggressive regulation.

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thisislife2today at 1:53 PM

They do treat it as a "cost of doing business" as they do hedge between making a bigger profit through such violations vis the possible fine. But enforced fines like these serve as a warning that the government / regulator / judiciary are serious about enforcing laws and upholding rights. That precedent does discourages such actions because they know future violations will invite similar actions (the punitive fines may be worse for repeat violations) thus making the risks higher. The counter to that is political lobbying, if it is cheaper than the fines, and is also treated as another "cost of doing business".

(Even India has fined them 100s of millions of dollars - https://ssrana.in/articles/google-fined-anti-competitive-pra... ).

jeltztoday at 3:29 PM

It is not like you typically can just ignore a court order so Google will need to convince Klarna that they have changed something or Klarna can just go back to the court.

bevekspldnwtoday at 12:32 PM

Absolute numbers with BigTech are never significant. Only viable paths for remedy anre outright divestment or revoking financial license in Sweden.

The former is nigh impossible, the latter is fairly trivial with sufficient will.

yieldcrvtoday at 2:08 PM

It was about behavior 9 years ago

Internet wont be human steered by the time this is over

Just agents running x402 payments over mcp servers

DANmodetoday at 12:26 PM

Vouched, I feel similarly.

(I can’t possibly understand this being downvoted.

The downvote button isn’t an “I disagree” button.)

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