• JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      Sadly it doesn’t, Google is currently the most profitable company on the planet, with them making 120 billion in pure profit 2024 and estimated to make even more this year, so this fine, for anticompetitive stuff going back to 2014, is less than 2.5% of their one year profit.
      And there’s absolutely zero chance that they gained less than 3 billion from that, so this fine is just part of the cost of doing business.

      That’s like the median income family in the US ($84k) getting hit with a ~$1k fine (remember, profit comes after expenses are paid) because they didn’t pay their taxes for over a decade, with no requirement of actually paying any of those taxes.

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Its worth remembering that EU fines are not one and done, if you don’t fix the problem they fine you repeatedly.

        • aaravchen@lemmy.zip
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          6 months ago

          Except so far the only time they’ve actually gotten any fines paid by anyone significant, the initial multi-billion euro fine on Meta was settles for only a few hundred million euro after half a decade of litigation and ended up including all subsequent fines in what was forgiven despite them continuing the activity. In theory it should dissuade them, but the companies being fined that really deserve it have annual profits greater than most countries’ GDPs. They can litigate indefinitely against the entire EuroBlock and keep making a profit from the activities while doing it.

    • themurphy@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, just as they promised. For every fee they up the numbers. This time they are also ready to do more than hurting their wallets directly, which is much more interesting.

      Otherwise Google will just treat is as a cost of doing business.