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Comment by spacebanana7 | Hacker News Reader

There are real questions about how much authority the EU has over an American entity. Can the EU only regulate activities in the EU or does it have global jurisdiction?

On one hand, if Google simply restructured, spun off or sold its EU ad business the competitive landscape wouldn't change that much. I'm not sure whether a new European competitor could ever become a peer to Google if it could only compete in the EU market because of the network effects in the ad business.

Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses? Also how would the EU enforce rules outside of its geography? How complaint would the US court system be in enforcing European decisions?

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> Alternatively, the EU having global jurisdiction would have even bigger issue. With that precedent, could Japan or Australia regulate European businesses?

That's already what the USA does to global companies operating inside the US. That's exactly how Cuba has been under a blockade from the US, for example...

Sanctions are different from antitrust.

With sanctions the US can declare that third parties must choose between doing business with the US and Cuba / ZTE. Because of it's large economy the US would be confident that most of those parties would choose to choose the US over the company / small country.

Antitrust enforcement is many ways more difficult than sanctions enforcement because third parties must be compelled in 'how' rather than 'whether' they do business with a company.

Even the US would've struggled to break up ZTE / Huawei etc into smaller companies across every jurisdiction for antitrust. Doing so in China would've obviously been impossible but even enforcing this in the Gulf States & South Korea would've stretched the limits of US power.

When it comes down to it - it's the same thing with the EU - they can decree that Google be broken apart or stop doing business in the union. Or pay a massive fine based on global profit or exit the union.

The goal of antitrust is to make markets more competitive.

If Google left the EU entirely there’d be even fewer competitors in the digital ads space. Depending on the segment Google’s market share would likely go to Bing, Facebook or TikTok.

The EU wants to increase the market competition, but frustratingly antitrust enforcement may not be effective and might even go in the opposite direction.

>If Google left the EU entirely there’d be even fewer competitors in the digital ads space.

This may be true in the very short term, but leaving a big hole in the market like that creates an opportunity for new players that would have otherwise avoided the space because it was controlled by a monopoly.

If Google left the ads market in the EU there'd be a massive gap to be filled by multiple companies, competition would have a field day filling it.

I don't follow your argument.

holy shit are you 12 or just slow?

What makes you think the EU would have the slightest jurisdiction at all over any entity outside of its member states?

The only reason they speak about Google is because Google does business in the EU.

GDPR aside, the EU doesn't generally assert global jurisdiction. If Google does what they want for EU only, that should be fine with EU anti-trust. Microsoft typically only markets anti-trust compliant products in the relevant jurisdictions; no browser ballot or missing media player in the US.

Of course, if Google only makes the change in the EU, it doesn't much change the landscape outside of the EU. Although there's a chance for better competition in the EU to give another player a foothold, which then helps them gain usage elsewhere (perhaps from global customers who like the results in Europe and try it globally)

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