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Comment by saddlerustle | Hacker News Reader

It's impossible they earned more than $1B from europeans, since Amazon's entire international retail business still hasn't turned a profit overall.

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I’m pretty tired of this line - the way Amazon is choosing to use their revenues for tax purposes means they aren’t turning profits but they are certainly profitable

It isn't a tax dodge, it's a simple matter of Amazon's international retail business still growing quickly and so needs a lot of capital. Happy to look at any evidence otherwise.

just because the profits are deferred to some time in the future does not mean these actions did not help the company expand, establish monopoly and devour other businesses in the meantime.

To me it doesn't make much sense for a fine to be based on money a company might make in the future.

No but it does make sense to fine them based on how big their operations are

They're not being fined for making too much money, but for the harm they've caused the market or consumers through anti-competitive practices.

This is entirely tangential, but I'm interested to hear how, exactly, you think consumers have been harmed?

You seem to be changing the subject. In your post here you seem to be arguing that the fines should somehow be related to profits:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28007958

Frankly that argument doesn’t really make sense. If I ran a car stealing gang and didn’t turn a profit (say due to costs related to my underlines), then my punishment wouldn’t just go away because I made no profits. The punishment would be related to the total value of the cars that were stolen.

A similar line of reasoning here would show that Amazons profits are irrelevant. It does’t matter if they have zero profits today due to magic accounting or due to future strategy or due to monopoly building or anything else because the profits don’t matter at all.

Of course you’re correct that if there’s not damage caused by Amazon (equivalently that Amazon did nothing illegal), then they wouldn’t have to pay any fines, but in that case you’re changing the subject and arguing something than than your original point. The EU however seems to believe the actions to have been illegal which makes profit irrelevant to the discussion.

I was stating what was probably the court's opinion, not necessarily my own.

But to answer your question, consumers can be harmed through loss of choice, as Amazon forces out other businesses.

I'd also caution against focusing exclusively on harm to consumers. The harm to businesses is just as real, and something governments are justified in trying to prevent. Their citizens, business-owner and consumer alike, will not thrive in an environment where a handful of companies dominate, crushing or absorbing any competitors through underhanded means. Businesses and consumers do not live in separate worlds.

Privacy is a fundamental right in the EU. Data protection law is not consumer protection law, and thf. "consumer harm" is the wrong lens.

I don't read French and so haven't read the complaint, but I am a data lawyer, so I can make a fair guess. The harm alleged to have been suffered is likely to be that persons have been tracked and profiled without their consent, in breach of their legal right not to be, and so have suffered an unwarranted intrusion into their private life.

To those from countries whose legal systems treat privacy as a consumer or constitutional right, this may seem anti-intuitive. Even within the EU, there is plenty of controversy around some of the legal points at issue in these types of cases/complaints. Regulators are not always immune from doctrinal thinking.

It will be interesting to read the full findings of this specific regulator when available.

So because Amazon is taking their immense revenue and expanding they should be immune from fines/consequences for their actions? Clearly they are receiving tons of revenue from their European operations.

It actually isn't.

The fine is based on last annual turnover, not profit and certainly not future profit. Even if Amazon were taking a loss, they still would be fined this amount.

Aren’t these sorts of fines usually based on revenue and not profit? The revenue is the money taken from Europeans and not the profit. Basing the fines directly on profit doesn’t really make much sense.

It’s based on their global revenue.

Thanks for the clarification. This makes a lot of sense.

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