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Comment by jlebrech | Hacker News Reader

what's stopping google from shutting up shop in the EU. would they have to block EU access?

how much revenue do they make from EU clients?

Business is what is stopping Google from not servicing Europe. Google makes huge part of its profit on search in Europe and pays almost no tax in Europe.

If Google stopped servicing Europe, one or more European competitors would emerge in days or weeks and Google's dominance would be threatened worldwide within months. It would be a completely suicidal move.

Yeah, it seems "search" isn't as untouchable as it used to be. Qwant, for instance, may not be a 100% there but it is quite good.

https://www.qwant.com/

What are you taking about? Any Google Search competitor needs to be seriously better than google in order to stand a chance, ‘not 100% there’ is equivalent to not there at all.

Moreover Qwant is just bing search results repackaged.

> Moreover Qwant is just bing search results repackaged.

Not in France and Germany

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant#Criticism

> how much revenue do they make from EU clients?

The EU economy is bigger than that of the US and Google's position in EU is more dominant. Bing doesn't work well for Europeans, there are no real competitors. Maybe the US market has more marketing spending, compared to Europe.

My guess would be that Google makes about the same in the EU as it does in the US.

It'll get factored as a cost of business. If the cost of business exceeds the benefit, then they'll close down their EU operations. Otherwise, it sucks they're not making as much money as they want/should, but they're making enough to continue for now. The fine is both large enough and small enough that it probably won't act as much of a deterrent but rather an incentive to more closely study EU rules to see what more they can/can't get away with, and whether they can use any of their knowledge against potential competitors to stomp them out.

1/3 of global revenue in 2016 for EMEA

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/04/google-pays...

Considering how big the EU market is I'm sure the profit Google derives from it is many times this judgement.

so EU can keep knocking on their door because google has no choice but to pay up?

Why shouldn't the EU keep knocking on Google's door if it keeps violating the law? Especially a law that protects the livelihoods of EU citizens.

Well, they could consider not engaging in uncompetitive practices.

The thing is, if they want to do business in the EU they have to abide by the rules of the EU. It's not that complex!

  It's not that complex!

Corporate law is extremely complex.

That's a glib answer. Google is free to continue doing business in the EU and is does not 'have no choice but to pay up'. That's simple.

I think the more "complex" the EU tries to make it in order to extract money from big corps the harder it can also be for smaller firms if those rules apply to those also.

I see no evidence that the EU is legislating in order to extract money from corporations, so the very basis of your idea is flawed.

But this ruling is specifically about companies with market dominance, so it does very much not apply to smaller firms.

It seemed pretty clear-cut to me, from the well-written article :)

You're acting like the outcome of this decision was in any way predictable based on the "rules of the EU". If I owned a website that had a search engine and comparison shopping and email, I would not expect that it's somehow wrong if my search engine shows results from my service's comparison shopping and email. I would not expect that it's somehow my obligation to seek out comparison shopping services operated by my competitors and show them on the search engine in the same way as my company's product. There isn't even a general way to do that - am I obligated to design a custom protocol? This is borderline ridiculous, but is apparently the ruling.

What precedent is there for imposing rules this this on other businesses? "You have to design new technology and build custom services that show business information for your competitors on your advertising/websites/properties"?

> You're acting like the outcome of this decision was in any way predictable based on the "rules of the EU"

Yes it was [0].

> If I owned a website that had a search engine and comparison shopping and email, I would not expect that it's somehow wrong if my search engine shows results from my service's comparison shopping and email

If your search engine had a dominant position in the EU market and if you used that dominance to put your shopping product above other competitors', then yes, it would not only be wrong, but also illegal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law

You're acting like the outcome of this decision was in any way predictable based on the "rules of the EU"

It was. There are specific requirements in Article 102 about abusing dominant market positions to "apply…dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage".

If I owned a website that had a search engine and comparison shopping and email, I would not expect that it's somehow wrong if my search engine shows results from my service's comparison shopping and email.

If you owned a massive market-dominating service, then your team of corporate lawyers should expect that.

"You have to design new technology and build custom services that show business information for your competitors on your advertising/websites/properties"?

That's not what happened though – the specific instruction is:

the Decision orders Google to comply with the simple principle of giving equal treatment to rival comparison shopping services and its own service

That's all, and it is not unreasonable to impose these terms of a market dominating force that has used that dominance to crowd out competition.

What precedent is there for imposing rules this this on other businesses?

SO MUCH. http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm

Or they could comply with EU laws to stop the knocking.

Yeah, surprising, isn't it? If you keep breaking the law, law enforcement will keep knocking on your door, who would have thought?

It is not just the revenue they make from EU. Closing the shop in Europe would leave the market for somebody else. With such a large market left for others, some competitor could gain significant momentum and threaten Google's position in US and other places as well.

What about the thousands of people they hire across their multiple offices in the EU?

> how much revenue do they make from EU clients?

Nearly as much as in the US, with the potential to be even higher.

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