If the cost of penalties doesn't exceed the cost of the offence then it's a winning move to offend.

The correct solution to this is to have fines scaled to the value of a company and an exponential doubling of fines for every re-offence that falls under the same category of crime with a cooling off period after a few years.

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benoau a day ago | parent | next [-]

The fines do scale with noncompliance, if Google were to continue to offend they would get a daily fine that is retroactively applied to the full duration.

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maccard a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Because the goal isn’t to punish, it’s to get them to do what the law wants them to do. The fine is supposed to be a slap on the wrist - the actual desired behaviour is compliance

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Teever a day ago | parent [-]

That is the incorrect way to apply fines.

The first fine should sting and the second should be damaging to a company and the third should be crippling.

The EU has been fining Google for years to no avail.

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HatchedLake721 a day ago | parent [-]

> The EU has been fining Google for years to no avail.

Me after a quick research:

2017: €2.42 billion fine for favoring its own comparison shopping service.

Results: huge changes to Google's shopping service.

2018: €4 billion fine over Android-related practices.

Results: Google Play separately from Google Search and Chrome, and manufacturers gained more flexibility over preinstalled apps.

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bornfreddy a day ago | parent | next [-]

2026: Google again found breaking the law.

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inigyou a day ago | parent [-]

yeah, 8 years later? If someone was born on the last one they're now in 4th grade and halfway to being able to drive. Are these really correlated events?

	▲	Teever 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Given that Larry Page and Sergey Brin still control Alphabet, still act with impunity, and show no signs of slowing down yes, they are absolutes correlated events.

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Teever 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think that's a great start and I see a something close to a doubling from 2.42B to 4B but it stops there and this most recent fine is under a billion.

What we need to see is that exponential function. Everyone here should have at least the intuition from Moore's Law and COVID that exponential growth is either your best friend or your worst enemy depending on if it's working for you.

The next fine should've been 8B, and the one after that 16... The regression back down to 1B is counter productive to the goal of inducing compliance and reducing the offender's ability to continue to offend by taking away their resources to do so.