$1.5B is significant, but the bigger question is whether this actually changes how dominant platforms rank their own services.

Is this real accountability for anti-competitive behaviour, or just another cost of doing business for Big Tech?

My cynicism is tell me that unfortunately it is the latter.

▲

brainwad 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

IMO the fines do have an effect - Google now withholds a lot of launches from the EU, sometimes temporarily until they have time to have lawyers check them against DMA requirements, but mostly permanently. Ironically the part of Google most likely to persist in launching for the EU is Ads, since money is at stake. All the free, consumer-benefiting services are most likely to be curtailed in the face of aggressive regulation.

▲

cryptonym 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> All the free, consumer-benefiting services

If they stop providing value to users, they are putting their ad business at risk. It's never free, providing value to share holders is a top priority.

	▲	brainwad 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There are also all the free services that just build goodwill. Those are the most at risk. Of course the "ad carriers" are treated better, since again money is on the line. But any non-essential. feature thereof is also potentially killable.

▲

teddyh 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

▲

vrganj 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All of the free services are just part of the ad sales funnel. Never forget, the consumer never benefits, they are only the cattle to be fattened up.

Them not launching in Europe gives the local market a chance to build up its own players. China was very successful in this thanks to the Great Firewall.

▲

WarmWash 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The consumer, who have never paid google a cent despite using their services daily for the last 20 years, likley spending a solid portion of their waking life on one of google's platforms, has never benefited?

And you think local players are going to look at users with this comically detached worldview and be like "Yeah, we want to build services for that group of people to use"?

▲

ang_cire 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You have paid a lot, if not in money. You paid with your data, that Google read from your emails and searches, and sold for money.

▲

WarmWash 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You load google's ads and trackers?

▲

ang_cire 4 hours ago | parent [-]

If you use Google search or Gmail, they read everything you write, and aggregate that into data packages not just for ads to show you, but even aggregated demographic data to sell for ad targeting.

Regardless of whether the ads reach you or not, you as a data point add to the count that make the package enticing to advertisers, so you're helping them sell the package anyways.

	▲	WarmWash 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If google gives you full access to all their services for the $0.001 annually they get from you being part of an aggregate dataset of trillions of points, that's...a cause for outrage? Ain't nobody buying user data on users who block all ads and trackers, it's worth almost nothing (what are you going to do, show them ads?). Fun aside, the reason why people get so many awful scam and malware ads when they turn off their ad-blocker is exactly because no other advertiser will bid on them, because they have no ad-profile/ad-value.

▲

vrganj 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Has the cattle benefitted from the free food the rancher gave it? I suppose it's a question of perspective.

And yes, there's local players building that are targeting precisely those users. No data harvesting is a major selling point of many European startups. Think of Proton, Mullvad, Nextcloud as a few examples.

	▲	WarmWash 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		How many of those cattle have been slaughtered in the past 20 years? Unless seeing a Coca-Cola ad counts as slaughter. I suppose some could feel that way It's also great that European startups have privacy services, I pay for proton myself, but none of these guys make any money compared to the ad model giants. The cattle are free to leave the farm and pay full price for their feed elsewhere and get guarantees. But again, so far virtually zero cattle have been slaughtered at the "free" farm in the last two decades, and the pay-for-feed farms are comparatively vacant.

▲

gowld 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Google doesn't make money from you "paying a cent". They make money from you paying advertisers who pay Google. So the relevant metric is how much you spent on Google advertisers.

	▲	WarmWash 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Raise your hand if you have ever intentionally clicked on a Google ad. Raise your hand if you use an ad blocker. I rest my case.

▲

drstewart 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Them not launching in Europe gives the local market a chance to build up its own players

Exactly! This is what is genius about Trumps tariff strategy, as you correctly point out. Blocking Chinese EVs gives a chance to bully up local players.

	▲	Danox 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		local players in Europe or the United States have had 50, 60 years to build up to compete, Ford and GM in the United States, and Chrysler when they were around, didn’t learn anything after the oil embargo in 1972, 73. They just continued on making bad cars, making no improvements, not adjusting to the new environment, other than begging the government to save them., US steel was the same way. Note the executives at the top of all these companies had no hesitation in blaming their workers on the production line for all their troubles. The game plan is still not to compete. I sometimes wonder, I should say I believe that no one at Ford or GM at the top even cares about cars. There doesn’t seem to be any love whatsoever. It’s just another MBA at the top making a commodity. One thing Europe has going for them is that there are a few car companies in Germany and Italy that seem to still care about the joy of driving, of making a good car, although that seems to be disappearing too.
	▲	toxik 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Well, this is plain old protectionism and typically you down the line realize you're falling behind the rest of the market as your domestic products are not subject to the same competition. This is how China fell behind last time, with its reckoning in the beginning of the 20th century. It's hysterical that they have decided on doing the same thing again. It's hysterical that the US has decided to do so as well.

▲

5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲

KptMarchewa 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If something like Facebook never launched here, we'd be so, so, so much better off as a society.

▲

surgical_fire 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> All the free, consumer-benefiting services

Those are just more avenues for Google to collect data to shove ads down everyone's throats.

Good that regulations keeps Google from releasing more pf their shit here. Governments should really tighten the screws there.

	▲	gowld 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The ads are getting shoved regardless. The content of the ads are based on personalization data.

▲

soco 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yay for European sovereign services! A bit through the backdoor, or as a side-effect if you want, but the result is the same. Or could be the same, if it continues like that.

▲

thisislife2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They do treat it as a "cost of doing business" as they do hedge between making a bigger profit through such violations vis the possible fine. But enforced fines like these serve as a warning that the government / regulator / judiciary are serious about enforcing laws and upholding rights. That precedent does discourages such actions because they know future violations will invite similar actions (the punitive fines may be worse for repeat violations) thus making the risks higher. The counter to that is political lobbying, if it is cheaper than the fines, and is also treated as another "cost of doing business".

(Even India has fined them 100s of millions of dollars - https://ssrana.in/articles/google-fined-anti-competitive-pra... ).

▲

bevekspldnw 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolute numbers with BigTech are never significant. Only viable paths for remedy anre outright divestment or revoking financial license in Sweden.

The former is nigh impossible, the latter is fairly trivial with sufficient will.

▲

jeltz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is not like you typically can just ignore a court order so Google will need to convince Klarna that they have changed something or Klarna can just go back to the court.

▲

yieldcrv 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It was about behavior 9 years ago

Internet wont be human steered by the time this is over

Just agents running x402 payments over mcp servers

▲

DANmode 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Vouched, I feel similarly.

(I can’t possibly understand this being downvoted.

The downvote button isn’t an “I disagree” button.)

▲

orphea 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Perhaps because the comment didn't add to the discussion? like all those +1 comments in GitHub issues.

	▲	DANmode 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The comment was the discussion; it was the only comment, and killed.

▲

dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

From HN guidelines:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

and yes, downvoting is a perfectly fine disagree button, what else do you think it is

	▲	DANmode 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It makes boring reading because the discussion, for those who have cared about it in the past, remains the same. Anyway, downvote = “This doesn’t belong here.” or “This doesn’t attempt to contribute to the discussion.” If everyone here downvoted each time they disagreed, there would be few comments alive…and little discussion. The reply button is the disagree button. Otherwise, for comments of any length, it isn’t even clear what’s being disagreed with!