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Comment by kodablah | Hacker News Reader

At the end of the day, Google probably doesn't differentiate the two very much as they're both costs of doing business. I would expect Google to work in its interest to reduce these impositions (taxes, laws+fines, etc) where they can, but we shouldn't pretend the punitive value of fines is more than a cost calculation to them.

We also shouldn't pretend that the EU justification for fines is purely about citizen protection, they see this as a "tax" as well (though that is of course not their primary motivation). Otherwise, they would work harder on non-punitive approaches towards combating the ills of Google and the like. One would hope education and encouragement of alternatives and other positive-leaning approaches might be prioritized over a gavel.

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> We also shouldn't pretend that the EU justification for fines is purely about citizen protection, they see this as a "tax" as well (though that is of course not their primary motivation). Otherwise, they would work harder on non-punitive approaches towards combating the ills of Google and the like. One would hope education and encouragement of alternatives and other positive-leaning approaches might be prioritized over a gavel.

The fine exists to remove the profit gained from the illegal behavior, otherwise performing the illegal actions would have a positive expected value. The company is also required to provide a list of remedies to ensure that the behavior is not repeated.

As for "non-punitive" approaches, the encouragement of alternatives would have to be non-financial since state aid is barred under EU rules [0]. I suppose they could recommend alternatives, but if it were really that simple to avoid a consolidation of power in the tech industry we wouldn't have such monopoly/duopoly issues.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_aid_(European_Union)

> [...] illegal [...] barred under EU rules

My comment is more of a general comment about lifting society up rather than what has been made illegal or what is barred. Regulations have their place sometimes as do more open competition environments coupled with an educated populace, and it's often a case-by-case situation which to favor more and work towards harder. In this case (big-tech bogeyman), I think the latter should be favored but both can be employed of course.

Works for me. If Google is happy to avoid taxes however they can, we should be extracting as much out of them as we can in other ways, such as fines. Not sure why we should be content with them not giving a shit about anything but themselves. Companies like Google only act out of pure greed. They don't respond to "positive reinforcement" and "education". They know perfectly well how to pay more in taxes, it's the default - they go out of their way to avoid it. They pay millions, tens of millions to lawyers to make sure they do exploit whatever loopholes there are. They aren't passive, innocent actors here.

What we need is to have this things move faster, if Google, FB or other company does some illegal stuff or abuses the users, reach a decision fast(in a few weeks) not in years.

As much as I hate the painful wait to see action on these fronts, I understand the desire to be careful and cautious before potentially irreparably destroying a business. But the penalties need to affect the decisionmakers personally. If Sundar Pichai was risking jail time to abuse Google's power, you'd better believe it wouldn't happen.

It is complicated, imagine EU putting some american CEO in prison.

This isn't too far away from how it works for "proper" criminals like Roman Seleznev [0], so one can dream.

Presumably, this would involve the CEO travelling to Europe accidentally while a European arrest warrant was out on them (which would be negligent on someone's part). Since we have yet to see huge fines under the GDPR, let alone arrest warrants for not complying, this seems to be far off though.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/russian-cyber-criminal-senten...

I would be fine with the American government actually putting American CEOs in prison too. ;)

But even without the international extradition type problems, there are still a lot of problems, as we consider most of the wrongdoings these corporations are committing to be civil violations, and no matter how many people they harm, as long as they aren't treated as criminal, we can't put someone in jail for them.

I do feel this is a major problem though, as CEOs aren't realistically punished for corporate misdeeds that can cause massive, wide-ranging harm. Even if the CEO screws up badly enough to lose his job, he'll get a job being a CEO somewhere else.

Are they going to put the former Volkswagen CEO in prison for the emissions scandal? Because the US would like to.

Actually, if Winterkorn is found guilty, he could be thrown into jail for up to 25 years, and he would be personally financially liable to the tune of his entire fortune. So, yeah, he's not getting off easy like most executives do in the US. Let's see the US even try to do the same thing to bank executives. Oh wait, democrats declined to pursue any of them and were happy with a single low-level scapegoat.

No. Fines exist to dissuade illegal behavior. The loopholes that Google (and Apple, and many other multinationals) should be abolished, and any tax evasion should be prosecuted. Antitrust fines do not exist to punish tax avoidance. They exist to penalize companies who use their size to prevent competition and distort markets.

I have many issues with Google's business practices, but punishing them is not worth throwing out the rule of law.

> Fines exist to dissuade illegal behavior

This is just your preferred interpretation. Fines also exist to reduce or disincentivize unwanted behavior.

How is that different? The behaviour is made illegal, precisely because it's unwanted... that's pretty much the definition. I don't think there is another source of law in healthy cases/systems.

Not all unwanted behaviors are illegal. Some countries tax soda in order to reduce soda consumption. A behavior is not unwanted iff it's illegal. A behavior is illegal iff it's unwanted. It's not necessary for a behavior to be illegal in order to be unwanted. Illegal behavior is just a subset of the other.

But aside from that, and in this case, I feel the barriers to making it illegal are far higher than fining companies in other ways.

The EU doesn’t see fines as taxes no more than the US does.

The fiscal value of fines is not great. The commission can’t budget how may fines it plans on collecting and from whom. It’s completely different agencies that issue fines and do the budgets.

[The EU] see this as a "tax" as well

Fines imposed by the EU go straight to the EU commission itself. Tax doesn't.

EU fines go into the EU budget, and the member countries accordingly pay less than planned into it so that the overall pot stays the same, meaning the member countries have more money.

Taxes mean the member countries the taxes are paid in have more money.

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