Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

“Android provides more choice for everyone and supports thousands of businesses. This judgment fails to recognize our significant investment to ensure Android remains open, interoperable and free,” a Google spokesperson told CNBC.

Sure. Which is why alternative stores like F-Droid are under threat now.

https://keepandroidopen.org/

> U.S. ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told CNBC that Europe “can’t over regulate” and hit companies with “huge fines” if it is going to participate in the AI economy.

Imagine what these companies are doing in the US to their citizens, if ambassador is ready to defend them for violating rules/laws

> Europe’s top court has upheld Google’s fine of around 4.1 billion euros ($4.67 billion) over alleged anti-competitive practices.

If they lost the case, and the appeal was dismissed, what is ‘alleged’ about it?

> alleged anti-competitive practices

I'd say that with court ruling these are no longer alleged. Right?

The most interesting bit here is not really the fine but how long it took. By the time a platform case reaches the final court decision, the market has usually already moved on to the next platform bottleneck

"Europe's top court on Thursday upheld Google 's fine of around 4.1 billion euros ($4.67 billion) over alleged anti-competitive practices."

Are they 'alledged', it seems the court doesn't think so!

This was from 2018, and google has gotten worse.

Do the fines get reapplied for the 8 years that passed while they did nothing?

Google has what, 100B+ revenue in EU? This is a once-only, 4% fine from 8 years ago.

Still too little.

> the U.S. ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told CNBC that Europe “can’t over regulate” and hit companies with “huge fines” if it is going to participate in the AI economy

I love how the US will just let companies walk all over their citizens and then criticize others for not letting it happen. "Please think of the poor multi billion dollar companies".

Good. Now, if only they also fought against developer integrity..

https://keepandroidopen.org

Just more "disguised taxation" on US based digital services, by the EU. Tariff the heck out of EU goods !

Good start. Nowhere nearly enough but a good start nonetheless.

Why did US antitrust and antimonopoly which has pioneered these concepts has been doing little to nothing for decades?

Google is too big and enjoys a monopoly in too many connected sectors (browsers, mobile os, search, advertising, data). Should've been broken up long ago.

> U.S. ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told CNBC that Europe “can’t over regulate” and hit companies with “huge fines” if it is going to participate in the AI economy.

Thanks for reminding us not to rely on U.S. models as access to them might one day depend on letting U.S. companies break the law..

And may it be used to prosecute them for the current bullshit they're doing with Android.

Can the EU force Google to divest Chrome and Android? They should.

"Trillion dollar company will definitely make tens of trillions of dollars in AI revenue but no, sorry, it can't pay a few thousand dollars to authors of content they trained on."

So they managed to delay paying a fine by 8 years...?

And this is this cause for celebration and justification for more such legislation?

These fines are no longer sufficient.

We all see that Google does not care about fines.

It is time to:

a) split up Google b) but the responsible CEOs and higher ups to court c) allow competition to happen again by having basic laws that can not be bypassed by mega-corporations in general

Apologies for the meta:

I feel that our understanding of trust and antitrust, along with the legal and regulatory premises... Just isn't very useful in the 21st century.

I understand the motivation, and justification for employing antitrust. Google's business model, and much of modern tech economy is really all about Monopoly-like market power.

In fact, one of the main concerns for AI investors is price competition, insufficient lock-in, weak network effects and consumer choice. They call this commodification... a telling choice of word. It's a worry that $trn valuations are impossible without something resembling monopoly to ensure longevity and high margins.

Peter Thiel gave a talk in favour of monopoly. It's worth reading. Even if you completely disagree, there are some subtle points that are relevant either way. A company facing market dynamism, price competition... Is unlikely to be investing billions in speculative r&d, for example.

Our core ideas about Monopoly, and antitrust... Tend to be highly derived of the industrial revolution, which is in turn all about manufacturing. Capital, labor, technology, marginal costs, marginal utility, price theory, etc. you can count the number which it's coming off the assembling line to understand the productivity of the firm. The product is concrete, and therefore productivity can be reasoned about.

There's no real way of applying this to Google. Google's users generally don't pay anything. Google doesn't have marginal costs.There is no price. The AdWords auction, is very clearly designed assuming monopolistic dynamics.. the seller is price maker and the buyer is a price taker. Prices are set as close as possible to buyer marginal value. Competition has no effect on pricing.

Otoh, where is the EU or any other antitrust regulator going with any of this. In the 90s, the Microsoft Monopoly was the biggest antitrust case. They used their os Monopoly to crush Netscape.

Now that it's history, we can look back and learn that the antitrust case just didn't matter one way or another. Nothing was really gained by victory, and nothing would have been lost by defeat.

The theory appears to be (a) regulated capitalism is good (b) tech monopolies clearly have market power and abuse it. There is no theory of desired outcome or the benefits of such an outcome. Are they regulating monopolies, preventing monopolies, pursuing an abstract notion of Justice?

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YES! The EU rocks!

These are basically meant as tarriffs, right?

What’s next? ChatGPT needs to support Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google models in EU?