France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

150M is ridiculously low for a company with a 3.34T market cap.

It's the equivalent of fining a millionaire 150 EUR, or a regular person fifteen cents.

That's not a fine, it's a show put on for people who can't do division.

Agree it's a slap on the wrist for Apple. But the punishment fits the "crime" in this case, in my opinion. Enough to pay for the legal costs of enforcement, and get Apple's attention. But nothing terribly punitive, which I don't think is warranted in this case.

I believe Apple's goal with the popups is to protect consumers' privacy from 3rd party apps, which is admirable. But where they went wrong is that they didn't apply the same process to themselves.

Do you actually agree with the fine?

Don't give users a choice in tracking: complaints Give users a choice in tracking: now it's too many pop ups

It is not the right question. The goal is not to destroy Apple, it is to force them into compliance. In order to force them into compliance, you only need the fine to be higher than what it costs to comply.

And €150M is a lot of money, you can have on the order of a thousand people working on the problem for a year to get even. I am sure they can figure out a way.

Same idea with, say, a parking ticket for nonpayment. It may be nothing to a millionaire, but the important part is that in the long run, it is more cost effective to simply pay for parking.

Comparing a fine with market cap doesn't make a lot of sense.

More logical is to compare it to their yearly profit. Net income was $74B last year.

So the fine is ~0.2% of that, which is pretty significant for something as tiny as having two pop-up messages rather than a single combined one.

And for a regular person making $50K/yr, it would equate to a $100 fine. Not fifteen cents.

No, you'd need to first take the expenses out of the person's salary. Assuming the person needs 35k to live it's a 30$ one.

The issue here is that Apple only needs one click to sell your data (and yes they do it, they made 11B $ on ads last year) and others need two.

In fact Apple is making more and more money on ads because they limit data access to third parties, but still sell yours in search and store.

No, the issue in the article is that 3rd parties feel they need additional consent. That's on them if they choose to do it.

> Same idea with, say, a parking ticket for nonpayment. It may be nothing to a millionaire

It's telling that the former CEO of Apple was famous for driving a car without plates, and parking in handicapped parking spaces, just because he could.

Yes, to comply with regulations. Because apple's forced solution isn't enough. So it's apple's fault.

This is just more an extension of the DMA lolly gagging they are doing where there's a clear solution that Apple takes its sweet time strolling towards.

Good point! I've never seen it compared that way before but I like it.

The ATT features predated DMA.