As I see it, a company unlawfully gained billions by breaking the law while doing business in our jurisdiction.
There's nothing "vaguely defined" about european privacy laws. Google just chose to ignore them best they could, and thought they'd get away with it because they're so big.
The fact that it took years to build a solid case against their myriad of corporate lawyer weasels isn't the gotcha you think it is.
feel free to pull out of the market, if you dislike the rules. Google pulled out of China for instance.
Is this not chiefly a complaint about the rules? Saying "if Google doesn't like the rule it can leave" is a non argument.
Perhaps believable, had it not survived eight years of litigation ending at the ECJ, or had there been some informal "pay up or else" demand attached, neither of which is true.
You're of course making the assumption the ECJ isn't biased towards ruling in favor of the EU in these disputes...
> or had there been some informal "pay up or else" demand attached, neither of which is true.
Isn't there a formal "pay up or else" demand attached? If Google doesn't pay, then what? I would take this a lot more seriously if the EU said "look, these violations are so egregious we simply can't trust you to operate in the EU anymore." No, they're OK with Google apparently not changing much of anything and being allowed to continue operating so long as they pay the fine first.
This is false. They were asked to:
- Stop tying Google Search and Chrome to the Play Store.
- Permit competing Android versions.
- Stop exclusivity incentives for Google Search.
- Provide genuine room for rival search engines and browsers.
This is separate from the fine and they were given 90 days in 2018 to comply with the above.
But google did change how they do things thanks to this case thus making everything you wrote some anti-government fiction.