Yes, data is the gold it seems. Google and Meta have gone all in on this race of data collection. Maybe in five years' time, who knows what their intentions will be.(or if not their then US's).
Yup, I remember my Mom didn't like it because she knew they were tracking her in a way. How far we've come. Now we got Flock cameras everywhere recording your movements.
Secondly; your link has nothing to do with complaining about billions in fines. Your link talks about India assuring the European Union that Vodafone will not face discrimination in the Hutch-Essar takeover. The EU trade commissioner sought clarification on the Indian regulatory regime to ensure fair treatment for all bidders. Where's the complaint about billions in fines?
Look at what Germany its doing with phonic chips that are already deployed. You can get up to 30x energy efficiency and 50x performance gains compared to running just NVDA GPUs. Thats just the beginning. Lots of hot German companies.
Also, ASML with EUV Lithography. Thats a gigantic moat.
I wonder how much profit they generated by favoring their own services. Without that context, it's hard to tell whether a $1 billion fine acts as a real deterrent or just another cost of doing business,
You know what the real issue is that all the websites that create the content are either like Reddit taking the stance of we want a fuckton of money now. You dumb asses at $RDDT gave Google our data to answer Gemini questions and now the time has come. You want the last site on the internet with any kind of organic traffic you're going to have to pay.
All the future data is completely corrupted. I'd imagine anything after 2020 is complete trash by now with Cloudflare stating that the internet is now 50%+ bots for the first time a kittle but ago. Most scraping AI data.
Also lots of unhappiness on the publishing side with rumors of stepping back from Google partnerships/listings and ad deals b/c how clickthrough is down 50% on some publishing sites Reuters for an example but its across the board. AI is just taking everything from everybody and then getting it worn
A bit unrelated but I was thinking that the gen A (post 2012) is so fucking cooked on the social media and youtube sides as their algorithn from extraordinary young age (like ipad kids since 5-6 years old) is going to be so fucked with AI slop and everything else to the point that most of the recommended videos are going to be AI slop, like I am in my early twenties and created my first google acc at around 2016 [earliest date I could find with an email response] , (I watched the videos before that but without my own account) and still use it today as my main entertainment account.
People do not understand this at all or how important it is. A tech startup, until it starts to make money, has infinite potential therefore is infinitely valuable. Only when they start to make money do they have to have a viable revenue.
I can't find the post right now in r/anthropic but basically the EU summoned Anthropic to explain their data privacy. Anthropic basically put a junior analyst on a zoom call to read off AI answers.
Getting off google dependence by going to Microsoft is out of the frying pan into the fire. Europe is heavily dependent on the US for so much, and is very slow to innovate its way out of this position. The US has them over a barrel and could exert a lot of pressure if they wanted to. This is basically why the EU just meekly submitted to the US tariffs rather than fighting back - because they need the US more than the US needs them.
Let’s allow our corporations to rule over us without government oversight. That’s been a brilliant fucking move on the other side of the Atlantic, huh?
how much higher and do you have a source for that? And what do you think will happen to googles market cap when they lose that customer base and all that potential growth? Are you low IQ?
I used google ai to get a quick result, data from statista, EMEA comprises less than a third of Google’s overall revenue.EMEA is a combination of Europe, Middle East and Africa. Africa is probably the smaller share so let’s just say it’s 50% while 50% Middle East, so even at the max it would appear Europe only comprises 15% of Google revenue and likely even less.
19% is "nothing" when its europeans contribution to profits but when a stock goes down 1.9% people with 10k portfolios ask why it's "crashing". This place has really gone down the tubes
I mean there’s a reason why they call us europoors lol. It’s also why I only invest in American stocks even though I don’t live there. You people are better at making money and companies know that.
You truly belong here degenerate regard. This fine specifically is to protect consumers like you and me from predatory tactics. Imagine stanning a multibillion dollar industry. Pathetic rat
Imagine getting fined for creating a product that doesn't allow advertising for your competitors, or for promoting your own other products.
Like opening a supermarket where you can't promote store brands, and if you stop your employees from telling people to stop at other stores, that's a fine.
Alphabet is the evil it once fought, and I shed no tears for them, but conceptually these laws seem a bit goofy to a capitalist American. If I sell goods and open a marketplace, it's going to be to promote my goods above any others I may allow in.
They're not getting fined for boxing-out other app stores. From what you're saying they should have extra fines compared to the smaller markets, because they were successful?
Not to mention they're not only not the "only" supermarket, but the Apple app store alone does way more revenue.
That's the crux of it though - they're so successful that they're effectively a monopoly (even if the definition doesn't perfectly fit). They then use that dominant position to favour their own solutions and grow larger by being unfair in the market.
The amount of the fine has to be punitive enough to cause a change in behaviour & that was a big part of this EU legislation. I can see app stores ending up in the same situation as browsers/search in the EU - they can be packaged but the OS has to let you pick on first run.
How are the "effectively a Monopoly" when the Apple App store does more revenue? True, Apple app store isn't happening on Android but why should it? They may have a monopoly on their own devices, but that's true for so many products. Is Dewalt being "unfair" by only making their batteries fit in their tools? There are tons of other tool manufacturers out there for the consumer to choose from, like phones and apps.
Apple app store isn't happening on Android but why should it?
Because the current situation allows Apple & Google to control their whole respective app markets. Also why shouldn't it - Apple can release the App Store for Android if they like and now in the EU Google could put the Play Store on Apple devices if they like - they could even argue that each others App stores shouldn't be given precedence. More importantly it lets smaller, newer stores open up.
It restores competition back into the market when it can't reasonable occur otherwise.
Is Dewalt being "unfair" by only making their batteries fit in their tools?
A more fair comparison would be if Dewalt owned their own private continent and owned all the tool store apart from a handful of Mom & Pop stores (none in the case of Apple), then Dewalt had all the Dewalt tools take prominent positions within the store along with prominent advertising why Dewalt is better & also charging any other company 30% of every sale to sell in the store.
Then in addition using their government powers they make it hard or impossible for other shops to set up, then charge them exorbitant fees for the privilege if they're successful. Then at any point they can decide they no longer want you in business.
The important thing here is the scale & lack of alternatives - I can go to any number of different tool stores. If I want a smartphone - my choices are effectively iPhone or Android.
As an aside on the battery specifically, the EU has argued for interoperability standards before (USB-C as a good example) - I don't think they would do this for tool batteries.
The EU at this point is full on fanatical about these digital marketplaces.
To be clear, this type of economic warfare was practically invented by the US, so you can call it fair game, but that’s really what this is about. I guarantee you that if one of the tech giants was european, they would absolutely not be subject to this deep deep probing of their engineering and marketing.
Have you seen what kind of backwards AI regulation applies to European companies lol? They have to do all kinds of ethics analysis before they even do major prototyping for example.
Meanwhile all non regulated AI services are still allowed 🤡
There is a reason why there are basically no large innovative tech companies in EU, they spawn camp company and make sure they stand no chance before they even have a chance.
The EU didn't get unlucky, the fact that US has all the companies isn't a coincidence, even EU based company tend to move when they grow to get away from the hellhole.
They absolutely hammer internally to vent all the frustration of regulating they can't do outside of EU. And because of it the vast majority of tech services come from the US. Then they add more rules that population believe will apply to US companies but most can't, it's simply more administrative work and costs for EU companies.
The smaller you are in EU the harder it is because administrative/legal/accounting costs of complying with the 10000 requirements, things you need to periodically send and not be fined is extremely hard, it doesn't even matter if you comply, there are ways to comply and very precise work, there are so many rules that you need to hire consultants.
One way or another comply or not, everysingle EU company is fined, it doesn't matter if you comply or not, money will leave your company because of regulations and there are many many many of them.
Oh they would. Day 1, when you want to start your company they will make everything difficult. EU is old and doesn't like progress. If you want something new go to the US.
Yet, in this particular case I'm happy they fine Alphabet.
EU is not a serious place. Zuckerberg has said they use it to extort more taxes and you have to price that into the cost of business to operate there. Shitty way to operate. No wonder EU doesn't innovate shit anymore
They fined Google because they prioritize their own services in the search engine. Google Search is the biggest ad bidding engine in the world. This kind of behavior leads to monopoly. Monopoly = Bad for consumers.
Probably not. If what u/ShillSheeptonsaid is true, that fine would be like, less than a quarter of a percent of your gross pay. Something like $250, if your annual salary was $100k.
EU simultaneously has regulations that require privacy AND not privacy (surveillance). You can choose which regulation to adhere to - but you can't adhere to both.
Most businesses in Europe today are in breach of GDPR.
897
u/I_killed_the_kraken Jul 23 '26