alt Hacker NewsNo, these are anti-trust fines. If you want to participate in the EU zone, you can't have monopolistic behaviors. It might sound strange for the US, but you can't simply corner a market and then claim it's innovation and 'good for the customer'. The EU has a LONG history of these regulations, it's nothing new but the more rich a company becomes the more these fines are just the price of doing business.
Instead, here's a wild take. Why don't they just follow the regulations and continue to make profits.
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Google made Android open source for free and you can even see this on this on HN as everyone glazes GrapheneOS. Without Android there would not be an entire ecosystem of software. Google even complied with a previous rulings about search engine choice and browser choice. In fact Android has always allowed you to set those things.
As usual Europe can't innovate so just taxes people out of their market entirely. Why would anyone want to locate their business in Europe after reading a headline like this? Have you guys ever considered making your own operating system? Your own tech companies?
> Instead, here's a wild take. Why don't they just follow the regulations and continue to make profits.
Far more likely that Google is just going to follow Apple's lead and stop releasing new features in the EU that the rest of the world gets to enjoy.
From The Washington Post:
> Behind all this lies the dream that Europe could be a “regulatory superpower.” It wanted to create a market too big to skip that would, by virtue of its heft, end up exporting its rules to the rest of the world. That hasn’t worked out.
> When adapting a product for Europe costs more than European market access is worth, companies no longer comply. They simply leave out the feature.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/06/14/apple-wit...