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Comment by menegattig | Hacker News Reader

IMHO, antitrust fines/penalties should change from amount of money to some other type of penalty, like temporary market exclusion/block or something, otherwise companies like Google and others can simply use its cash (that's was also made due to the unfair advantage), pay the fine and move on to the next market dominance.

They will always have cash to pay, even if the fines are higher and higher. They kind of expect for this in their long term strategic planning.

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This is the initial fine. Now they have 90 days to comply, otherwise they will get penalties (up to 5% worldwide turnover of Alphabet) until they do. From the link:

> Google must now bring the conduct effectively to an end within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company.

Is it me, or 5% isn't that much?

5% of your worldwide revenue (not benefits) for lack on compliance on one issue? With others pending? I do think this is not something you can ignore very long.

I think that would be 5% of gross revenue, not profits. I think it's an appropriately large number.

It's 5% of turnover, not profit. It is a lot of money for the shareholders.

I reckon companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, $bigCorp, probably calculate the ROI of the venture before executing it. So for example in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if Google calculated a high chance of pocketing $5b and expected (lobbied) to be fined much, much less, leaving them with a big profit anywhere. And if they don't get caught or fined: win.

Totally agree.

This makes even more sense with context from Google's deal with Apple to make Google Search the default on iPhones for which it pays $3B.

Considering that, $5B doesn't seem to be much of a fine to be literally on the head of most smartphones in the world.

That's hefty. But this does affect all major iPhone markets, not the EU alone. So they probably (maybe. I guess.) only put a fraction of that on the bill.

It's also worth noting that it's $3B per year that Google pays Apple though.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...

Good point. But I think if Google/Alphabet does not comply, the commission could fine them again. But that's difficult to judge now... All we consumers can do is wait for Google's next move and where it leads from there.

But generally, this is a step in the right direction. As much as I am a fan of early Google and the great services they offer, a big part of me doesn't like the privacy-nightmare conglomerate they became.

Yeah I agree. This is a particularly interesting situation because I love part of google while simultaneously am afraid of parts of it as well.

I would be sad if google was beaten out of existence (seems unlikely I know) even though my permissions are probably being abused by google and their effect on me all in all may not be great. However, it makes me happy to see that the EU is working on making google better.

Last I heard, Google didn't actually require Google Search to be the default on Android phones. For a while Microsoft was paying some manufacturers to make Bing the default, and in some cases even requiring them to stop users from changing it.

I think 4½ billion euro is enough for Google sit up. This isn't a "pay and forget fine".

If they don't change in 90 days, they are fined 5% of their revenue every day. That's a lot.

Surely you just believe that the fine is not high enough, not that it is ineffective in principle? There exists a number X which is the amount that google could be fined where they are ambivalent between that fine and a ban from the market for some period of time which is what you had in mind. Thus, a fine would be equally effective at X. So I don't see why you think fines are fundamentally ineffective?

Sure, there exists some amount X, but you can hardly remedy a complete temporay ban with money.

Because it means that users have to look at alternatives. They might find that they prefer them in the long run, and it might even just incentivize competition to keep going. And this is especially damaging in monopoly-like situations, as many users don't even know of competing products.

I agree with you.

But from the governments perspective that defeats the whole purpose, which is to raise funds.

But how would you do something like that with companies like Google? So many organisations probably rely on GCP, GMail etc that you couldn't stop them from operating without stutting huge numbers of businesses too.

Turning off Google in Europe even for 1 day would result in complete chaos.

A week would definitely put a noticeable dent in the economy.

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