European Commission fines Google €2.95B over abusive ad tech practices

Going to pre-empt the comments that always pop up in these topics saying "Google/Meta/Apple will just leave the EU at this rate": Google still has around $20 billion yearly reasons to remain active in the EU. Talking Europe yearly net profit here, post-fine. No, they're not going to say "screw this fine, you can take your $20 billion per year, we're leaving!". The second that happens, shareholders will have Sundar's access revoked within the hour.

There is a number of countries where Google has to deal with large levels of protectionist barriers (not the EU, these fines aren't that) and they still operate there. Korea is just one example. Because there's still a lot of money to be made. China isn't a counterexample: Google stopped operating search in China because at that point there was not a lot of money to be made for them in search there.

I love that you got one response calling it extortion, and another worrying that it might not have recovered all the money from the abusive practices.

The EU is threading the needle deftly here, I guess.

Im not necessarily saying its extortion. Im saying his observation is why the EU could extort Google for a lot more than $3B. My wording was unclear so I tried editing my original comment but apparently it was removed.

Why forfeit $20B in revenue in exchange for NOT having to pay $3B? I think that's an astute observation by the original commenter.

Sorry for the incorrect read I guess. Hopefully it will be restored and I’ll get a chance to re-read it (fwiw I wish it hadn’t been flagged).