Google fined ~1 billion USD for breaches of the Digital Markets Act

It sounds to me like Google was succeeding precisely because their products were better...

This wouldn't be the first time European regulators have tried to kneecap American companies in order to help their domestic "competitors" (and I use the term loosely)

...and typically predicated on the flimsy rationale of "because your site is accessible by people in our country, that means you're technically operating in our country, therefore we get to tell you what to do" (which displays a staggering lack of knowledge of how the internet works and where responsibility lies in a practical sense)

There have been other recent examples of this.

Like when France opted to raid & fine Grok due to people using it to generate CSAM material...meanwhile, their "home grown" company, Mistral, was teaching people how to make bombs, generating hacking code for them, and teaching them child grooming tips, and French President Macron was taking their CEO out to swanky dinners and inviting them to government discussion panels.


Tuta Mail, Posteo, and Mailfence aren't lagging behind Gmail because because of Google's self promotion lol.

And the somewhat humorous part is, even their search engines (which they claim "follow the rules" and use "honest algorithms") still end up prioritizing Google products organically.




The bit in the BBC article:
The European Commission imposed a €460m penalty after finding Google favoured its own services for helping people book flights and hotels over competitors in search results.


What exactly are these alternatives they were suppressing?



And the user has the option to click the flights tab, which uses their home grown tool.

Vs. Quant



"We don't offer that feature...so if you figured out a way to do it, then that's not fair"

Apparently they like competition, so long as it's the type of competition where nobody wins and everyone agrees not to get too much better than the most mediocre player in the market.

ThatRobGuy said:

It sounds to me like Google was succeeding precisely because their products were better...

This wouldn't be the first time European regulators have tried to kneecap American companies in order to help their domestic "competitors" (and I use the term loosely)

...and typically predicated on the flimsy rationale of "because your site is accessible by people in our country, that means you're technically operating in our country, therefore we get to tell you what to do" (which displays a staggering lack of knowledge of how the internet works and where responsibility lies in a practical sense)

There have been other recent examples of this.

Like when France opted to raid & fine Grok due to people using it to generate CSAM material...meanwhile, their "home grown" company, Mistral, was teaching people how to make bombs, generating hacking code for them, and teaching them child grooming tips, and French President Macron was taking their CEO out to swanky dinners and inviting them to government discussion panels.


Tuta Mail, Posteo, and Mailfence aren't lagging behind Gmail because because of Google's self promotion lol.

And the somewhat humorous part is, even their search engines (which they claim "follow the rules" and use "honest algorithms") still end up prioritizing Google products organically.

View attachment 381892


The bit in the BBC article:
The European Commission imposed a €460m penalty after finding Google favoured its own services for helping people book flights and hotels over competitors in search results.


What exactly are these alternatives they were suppressing?

View attachment 381893

And the user has the option to click the flights tab, which uses their home grown tool.

Vs. Quant

View attachment 381894

"We don't offer that feature...so if you figured out a way to do it, then that's not fair"

Apparently they like competition, so long as it's the type of competition where nobody wins and everyone agrees not to get too much better than the most mediocre player in the market.

Click to expand...

I have less than zero expertise on this topic but the full-throated (seemingly) knee-jerk defense of Google seems odd.

Pommer said:

I have less than zero expertise on this topic but the full-throated (seemingly) knee-jerk defense of Google seems odd.

Click to expand...

I've been in the tech field for over 20 years...

It's not a knee-jerk defense, it's reality with regards to how the European Tech sector stacks up against the American tech sector.

For anyone else who's been in the tech world, and had clients/vendors/etc... from European countries, you know what I'm talking about.

I won't doxx a company by name (as it would violate an NDA I signed), but we were working with an SMS provider based in Europe a few years back (not because we needed their expertise, but because needed their, shall we say, "relaxed" rules for 18 months or so in the face of impending TCPA regulations regarding sending out SMS notifications, and Twilio and AWS were starting to preemptively crack down early)

Countless hours of being on screen share sessions with their "Senior" devs (and they weren't a small org by any means, they had thousands of clients globally and were a $300M/year company), while we told them where their code errors were, in exchange for a 30% license cost reduction of course (negotiated by our CTO at the time -- sort of a "you can borrow my guys for a few weeks, but we want a better price")



Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta... All American companies.

The European Union has many strong points on various things, but the tech sector isn't one of them.

"The proof is in the pudding" as they say... evidenced by fines imposed for reasons that can reasonably construed as "you're beating us by too much"

The EU has tried to fine US tech companies to the tune of tens of billions over the past decade...

You don't see that as much from the Asian countries (who have robust tech sectors of their own, and can compete).

ThatRobGuy said:

I've been in the tech field for over 20 years...

It's not a knee-jerk defense, it's reality with regards to how the European Tech sector stacks up against the American tech sector.

For anyone else who's been in the tech world, and had clients/vendors/etc... from European countries, you know what I'm talking about.

I won't doxx a company by name (as it would violate an NDA I signed), but we were working with an SMS provider based in Europe a few years back (not because we needed their expertise, but because needed their, shall we say, "relaxed" rules for 18 months or so in the face of impending TCPA regulations regarding sending out SMS notifications, and Twilio and AWS were starting to preemptively crack down early)

Countless hours of being on screen share sessions with their "Senior" devs (and they weren't a small org by any means, they had thousands of clients globally and were a $300M/year company), while we told them where their code errors were, in exchange for a 30% license cost reduction of course (negotiated by our CTO at the time -- sort of a "you can borrow my guys for a few weeks, but we want a better price")



Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta... All American companies.

The European Union has many strong points on various things, but the tech sector isn't one of them.

"The proof is in the pudding" as they say... evidenced by fines imposed for reasons that can reasonably construed as "you're beating us by too much"

The EU has tried to fine US tech companies to the tune of tens of billions over the past decade...

You don't see that as much from the Asian countries (who have robust tech sectors of their own, and can compete).

Click to expand...

Uh-huh

ThatRobGuy said:

"The proof is in the pudding" as they say...

Click to expand...

They actually say "the proof of the pudding is in the eating".

7thKeeper said:

That is not a flimsy rationale, it is reality. You want to operate somewhere, you abide by the rules and regulations of that area or you don't operate there. And with some luck, the benefits of that regulation might trickle your way too, like with the USB-C thing.

Click to expand...

A website being accessible in another country doesn't mean "operating there"

By that low of a bar, if I stand up a website reviewing gaming PCs and making recommendations, and a person in Estonia can reach it, I'd be "operating in Estonia, and have to follow their laws" by that loose of a definition.


We saw it going in the other direction when certain US jurisdictions passed ID laws for accessing Adult websites and tried to impose upon every other country, a requirement to allow a person to upload a copy of their ID. A lot of the countries in Europe, rightfully, said "No, we're not going to invest in that or open ourselves up to that liability just because Louisiana passed that rule, if they don't want their citizens to access it, then it's on them to find a way to block people from getting to our website"

7thKeeper said:

You seem to have not understood the legislation here. It applies to what are termed gatekeeper companies, that own or control a large enough part of a business that they can affect unfairly the competition regarding other products. Google is one such company. This includes, having such a control that it's hard to near impossible for a competitor to emerge before it's stamped out. Kinda like what Walmart did when competing against other retailers (at least back in the day) when they sold things at a loss to be cheaper than the competition in an area to push them out and then raised prices afterwards. This also happens to be illegal in the EU, one part of the reason Walmart failed when it tried to enter the market.

Click to expand...

Right, that's competing and winning.

There's nothing stopping the European tech companies from building out the feature set that Google has (obviously it's buildable, because Google was able to build it)

And in this case, Google is far from a monopoly. Anything Google has, there are companies that offer alternatives.

"Google has a preference to leverage its own products, when you're voluntarily using one of their products" isn't particularly compelling.

If someone already went to Google's search engine and it brings up Google's tool for flight booking, that'd be like someone buying an iPhone (when there are other options), and then complaining that the iPhone tends to have a preference toward Apple products and offerings.

ThatRobGuy said:

A website being accessible in another country doesn't mean "operating there"

Click to expand...

Perhaps not (I'm not a lawyer), but if they offer a service there, it very likely means they are operating there by any meaningful definition.

ThatRobGuy said:

By that low of a bar, if I stand up a website reviewing gaming PCs and making recommendations, and a person in Estonia can reach it, I'd be "operating in Estonia, and have to follow their laws" by that loose of a definition.


We saw it going in the other direction when certain US jurisdictions passed ID laws for accessing Adult websites and tried to impose upon every other country, a requirement to allow a person to upload a copy of their ID.

Click to expand...

Was those other countries adult services wanting to operate in those jurisdictions not bound by to those laws (a certain big canadian one was and has blocked access to most states that require age verification)? Those jurisdictions also see it as operating there if the websites are offering a service there.

ThatRobGuy said:

A lot of the countries in Europe, rightfully, said "No, we're not going to invest in that or open ourselves up to that liability just because Louisiana passed that rule, if they don't want their citizens to access it, then it's on them to find a way to block people from getting to our website"

Click to expand...

ThatRobGuy said:

Right, that's competing and winning.

Click to expand...

The US also has laws against unfair methods of competition, as have many other countries.

ThatRobGuy said:

There's nothing stopping the European tech companies from building out the feature set that Google has (obviously it's buildable, because Google was able to build it)

And in this case, Google is far from a monopoly. Anything Google has, there are companies that offer alternatives.

"Google has a preference to leverage its own products, when you're voluntarily using one of their products" isn't particularly compelling.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure Google will need to pay or leave the market regardless (they won't leave the market).

ETA: They can also appeal it, which In think is going to be their primary alternative.

ThatRobGuy said:

If someone already went to Google's search engine and it brings up Google's tool for flight booking, that'd be like someone buying an iPhone (when there are other options), and then complaining that the iPhone tends to have a preference toward Apple products and offerings.

Click to expand...

Stopped_lurking said:

Was those other countries adult services wanting to operate in those jurisdictions not bound by to those laws (a certain big canadian one was and has blocked access to most states that require age verification)? Those jurisdictions also see it as operating there if the websites are offering a service there.

Click to expand...

With the ubiquitous nature of the internet, nobody is making a conscience choice to operate anywhere merely by having a website.

If I stand up a webpage, any person living in any country with access to the public internet, can get to it.

It's not the same as going to another country, leasing property, and putting up a brick and mortar storefront.


Just as a simple example:

This is a UK grocery store chain, and their website is intended for a UK audience... I can obviously still get to their website even though they weren't looking to "operate" in Ohio.

If the state of Ohio passed a new rule suggesting that retail stores aren't allowed to store geolocation data (even if the user says 'yes'), Tesco's website wouldn't be compliant with that law.

Would the state of Ohio have any legal authority to go to Tesco and tell them "Hey, Rob was able to get to your website, so that means you're operating in Ohio, so as long as our people can get to your site, you need to need to task your Legal and IT teams with implementing Ohio-specific compliance rules on your website, if not, then you'll be getting issued a fine imposed by an Ohio judge"?

Stopped_lurking said:

The US also has laws against unfair methods of competition, as have many other countries.

Click to expand...

Sure, but it takes a little more than "When you search for GPS or Maps on Google, it recommends Google Maps, that's not fair" to trip those alarm bells.

Stopped_lurking said:

I'm pretty sure Google will need to pay or leave the market regardless (they won't leave the market).

Click to expand...

I wonder to what degree these laws are made just to piggyback off of Google's money to supplement their own general fund.

From what I'm reading, when the EU imposes these types of fines, it goes into their general fund, effectively reducing how much money member states need to contribute from their own national budgets to fund the EU.

And knowing that Google has a bunch of money and will likely just pay it because it's not worth their time to fight it all that hard, could that create a bit of a perverse incentive structure? (where "regulation = cash")

If you consider the one year where Google paid nearly $6 billion across 3 fines. That year, they contributed more to the EU general fund than most of the member states did.

I wonder what would happen if Google just shut off services to the EU, how they'd react.

Canada was trying something like that with Meta. They passed a rule up there that stated that if a news article showed up on a Facebook feed, Facebook had to pay a commission to the whichever news agency published the article.

It's not hard to see how that would've gone, every rag tag outlet would've just flooded the zone with trivial "news" articles and posting them on FB in order to supplement revenue. "And in local news, a tree fell over in Saskatoon. The end...where's my $10?"

So Facebook made the decision to just effectively block the News feature in Canada... to which they then complained "that's not fair, you can't just deprive people of news!", and then tried to claim Meta was complicit in preventing people from being able to share news and safety information about the 2023 wildfires up there.

As where, Google caved to Canada, cut a deal, and pays roughly $100M year to prop up local news outlets that can't survive on their own.


It exposed what the intent was...which was foreign entities trying to find a way to use American Big Tech companies as a piggy bank.

ThatRobGuy said:

A website being accessible in another country doesn't mean "operating there"

By that low of a bar, if I stand up a website reviewing gaming PCs and making recommendations, and a person in Estonia can reach it, I'd be "operating in Estonia, and have to follow their laws" by that loose of a definition.

Click to expand...

Many sites, including many american news sites, are not accessible in germany because they don't meet the standards of the german data protection law DSGVO and their owners opted to block access from germany instead of taking steps to follow the law.

ThatRobGuy said:

With the ubiquitous nature of the internet, nobody is making a conscience choice to operate anywhere merely by having a website.

Click to expand...

No, foreign operators of services are bound by state law in the US. Your example about adult websites showed that when I was digging around. Some local news outlets in the US limit my access to their website, since they can't be bothered making themselves compliant with swedish and EU laws.

ThatRobGuy said:

If I stand up a webpage, any person living in any country with access to the public internet, can get to it.

It's not the same as going to another country, leasing property, and putting up a brick and mortar storefront.


Just as a simple example:

https://www.tesco.com/

This is a UK grocery store chain, and their website is intended for a UK audience... I can obviously still get to their website even though they weren't looking to "operate" in Ohio.

If the state of Ohio passed a new rule suggesting that retail stores aren't allowed to store geolocation data (even if the user says 'yes'), Tesco's website wouldn't be compliant with that law.

Would the state of Ohio have any legal authority to go to Tesco and tell them "Hey, Rob was able to get to your website, so that means you're operating in Ohio, so as long as our people can get to your site, you need to need to task your Legal and IT teams with implementing Ohio-specific compliance rules on your website, if not, then you'll be getting issued a fine imposed by an Ohio judge"?

Click to expand...

That is exactly what happens with the adult website operators. If they don't cut access or implement some age verification scheme they are judged to pay fines in US state courts.

ThatRobGuy said:

Sure, but it takes a little more than "When you search for GPS or Maps on Google, it recommends Google Maps, that's not fair" to trip those alarm bells.

I wonder to what degree these laws are made just to piggyback off of Google's money to supplement their own general fund.

From what I'm reading, when the EU imposes these types of fines, it goes into their general fund, effectively reducing how much money member states need to contribute from their own national budgets to fund the EU.

Click to expand...

No one can budget that. They don't know when the money are going to be paid or even if at all. The fines can be appealed.

ThatRobGuy said:

And knowing that Google has a bunch of money and will likely just pay it because it's not worth their time to fight it all that hard, could that create a bit of a perverse incentive structure? (where "regulation = cash")

If you consider the one year where Google paid nearly $6 billion across 3 fines.

Click to expand...

Perhaps they paid them the same year, but they were never fined that in a single year, where they? If so it shows that it is not really a reliable revenue stream.

ETA: I couldn't find any year when they paid nearly $6 billion. The largest paid fine was €4.1 billion (after a fine given in 2018?), that was paid this year and would be approximately $5 billion.

ThatRobGuy said:

That year, they contributed more to the EU general fund than most of the member states did.

EU budget contributions by country 2023 | Statista

In 2023, Germany was the largest contributor to the European Union's budget, providing a total of 29 billion euros.

www.statista.com

I wonder what would happen if Google just shut off services to the EU, how they'd react.

Click to expand...

Probably badly, but Google makes more money offering their services to the EU in total is my guess.

ThatRobGuy said:

Canada was trying something like that with Meta. They passed a rule up there that stated that if a news article showed up on a Facebook feed, Facebook had to pay a commission to the whichever news agency published the article.

It's not hard to see how that would've gone, every rag tag outlet would've just flooded the zone with trivial "news" articles and posting them on FB in order to supplement revenue. "And in local news, a tree fell over in Saskatoon. The end...where's my $10?"

So Facebook made the decision to just effectively block the News feature in Canada... to which they then complained "that's not fair, you can't just deprive people of news!", and then tried to claim Meta was complicit in preventing people from being able to share news and safety information about the 2023 wildfires up there.

As where, Google caved to Canada, cut a deal, and pays roughly $100M year to prop up local news outlets that can't survive on their own.


It exposed what the intent was...which was foreign entities trying to find a way to use American Big Tech companies as a piggy bank.

Click to expand...

Just so we are clear, you have not showed this to be true in this case. Writing innuendo is not evidence.

ThatRobGuy said:

A website being accessible in another country doesn't mean "operating there"

Click to expand...

In the case of Google they certainly are:


Google derives much of their revenue from ad sales. Ad sales are no good if you can't sell ads in a particular country because you don't do business there.

Stopped_lurking said:

That is exactly what happens with the adult website operators. If they don't cut access or implement some age verification scheme they are judged to pay fines in US state courts.

Click to expand...

And how many of those fines have Adult websites in EU actually paid fines to the state of Louisiana, vs, which ones got put in their "special filing cabinet"

Stopped_lurking said:

Just so we are clear, you have not showed this to be true in this case. Writing innuendo is not evidence.

Click to expand...

What, what I mentioned about Canada? I added a link to the story.

The Online News Act sought to demand royalties be paid to any outlet whose article showed up on Facebook (whether they linked it directly, or some random user copied and pasted the link to share it)

Google caved to it, and this article which I linked before even gives the breakdown of 27 pages worth of media outlets in Canada that are getting a "google subsidy".


Which is ironic, considering that without Google's search engine driving traffic to their page's, nobody would have ever even heard of half of those companies.

Facebook said "Fine, we'll just block Canadian news outlet content altogether up there", and in response, Canadian Officials bashed them and made it sound like it was hampering their disaster response to the wildfires.

Stopped_lurking said:

Perhaps they paid them the same year, but they were never fined that in a single year, where they? If so it shows that it is not really a reliable revenue stream.

ETA: I couldn't find any year when they paid nearly $6 billion. The largest paid fine was €4.1 billion (after a fine given in 2018?), that was paid this year and would be approximately $5 billion.

Click to expand...

Actually, it's becoming an ever more reliable stream of revenue.

And they aren't really hiding the ball all that much.





It would seem as if there's definitely incentives to think up new rules to hit US Tech giants with in order to cover some budget gaps.

Nithavela said:

Many sites, including many american news sites, are not accessible in germany because they don't meet the standards of the german data protection law DSGVO and their owners opted to block access from germany instead of taking steps to follow the law.

Click to expand...

Ultimately, the responsibility is on each nation to block access from the inside for sites that they feel go against their standards and rules.

They try to pass the buck on the responsibility precisely because they know the expenses and manpower it takes to enforce such restrictions.

A website selling bikinis would violate the standards of Iran, if Iran doesn't want their people to see it, it's on them to figure out a way to block it, not on everyone else in the world to hire a team of Iranian legal experts to keep up with their laws and clutter up their software with a bunch of Iran-specific code just because their website is "on the internet" (thereby, technically accessible to anyone in the world with internet access)

Perhaps the best real-world example.
Most companies have a web-filtering policy for employees correct?

For example, if someone works for a firm, and they have a "no playing video games from your work computer" policy. That would be their internal Networking and Data Comm team that would be in charge of enforcing that. They wouldn't send a legal notice to Steam saying "Hey, you have to block access to your server's for our company's IP range from the hours of 9am-5pm"

ThatRobGuy said:

Ultimately, the responsibility is on each nation to block access from the inside for sites that they feel go against their standards and rules.

Click to expand...

I think that's not how laws work in general. You set restrictions on behaviour, and when those restrictions are overstepped, there is a penalty.

Nithavela said:

I think that's not how laws work in general. You set restrictions on behaviour, and when those restrictions are overstepped, there is a penalty.

Click to expand...

There's a penalty if you violate the rules of the jurisdiction you're physically in.

For example, Islamic nations would have no legal ability to lock me up for making a Prophet cartoon and putting it online (unless I physically stepped foot in their country)

ThatRobGuy said:

I won't doxx a company by name (as it would violate an NDA I signed), but we were working with an SMS provider based in Europe a few years back (not because we needed their expertise, but because needed their, shall we say, "relaxed" rules for 18 months or so in the face of impending TCPA regulations regarding sending out SMS notifications, and Twilio and AWS were starting to preemptively crack down early)

Click to expand...

I didn't catch this before, but you are talking about doing evil. Helping those who send phone spam is a bad place to claim the high ground.

ThatRobGuy said:

There's a penalty if you violate the rules of the jurisdiction you're physically in.

For example, Islamic nations would have no legal ability to lock me up for making a Prophet cartoon and putting it online (unless I physically stepped foot in their country)

Click to expand...

They could certainly try to impose that penalty on you. They just don't have the ability to enforce it.

It appears that the EU has the ability to enforce this penalty.

Hans Blaster said:

I didn't catch this before, but you are talking about doing evil. Helping those who send phone spam is a bad place to claim the high ground.

Click to expand...

It was not spam...that comes from outsourcer countries...the kind of people who want to send bulk spam can't afford to contract a company like ours in order to do it. (why would they pay us $0.40-$0.50 per Sms interaction when a company in India would do it, no questions asked, for $0.02-$0.03?)

If you're talking about political spam messages, then some of that comes domestically, but our company doesn't dabble in that, and that's mainly political campaigns (which are temporary) registering under a "burner" LLC/entity, and if they get caught and blacklisted they can just abandon it with a, "oh well, it was temporary" Ex: someone registering a "Help Joe Smith Win 2024 LLC" doesn't care if their federal EIN ends up on the blacklist, it wasn't going to be a long term business venture anyway, it ends when the campaign ends.

There was a period where TCPA proposed regulations went way overboard (they've since rolled it back, and we're back to partnering with US-based providers like Twilio again)

There was a spell where they proposed impending rules that were so strict, that even if a person was specifically signing up to receive text notifications about their order, there were a series of extra steps that would've been required that were cumbersome, clunky, and non-intuitive, but thankfully sanity prevailed and they ended up cancelling those proposals before they went into effect.

The proposal in question involved a confirmation call and identity verification to sign up for sms notifications.

Meaning, Imagine you've placed an order with Home Depot for a new fridge, you want to say "Yes, please notify me by SMS when it's out for delivery", simply opting in on a web form was no longer going to be sufficient anymore. You would have had to check that box, then wait for a rep to call you, then answer identity verification questions to prove it was you, then the org could save your consent record and whitelist your number in order to send you text notifications about your one specific order (and that consent wouldn't carry over to future orders, so if you decided you wanted to get a new dishwasher to match that new fridge, you'd have to go through that same process again)

That almost became federal law.



That aside, even if my company did engage in that sort of thing (which, I wouldn't work their if they did, I want something impressive on my resume, not something sketchy...that aside), labelling it as "evil" is bit over-the-top, don't you think? lol

While spam texts are annoying, I don't that I'd categorize something that requires me to click two buttons on my smart phone from the comfort of my recliner, with the same descriptor I'd use to describe Pol Pot or Mussolini. At worst, spam political texts are an inconvenience.