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398 points ChrisArchitect | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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jjani ◴[] No.45141781[source]
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.

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1. rs186 ◴[] No.45143496[source]
> 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.

Source?

Back in 2010 when Google left, their search market share was close to 30%. It's hard to think there was no money to be made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

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2. jjani ◴[] No.45146722[source]
China is a special case. As the government has effectively total control, even having 30% market share as Google doesn't mean it's a profitable venture, or that the government hasn't said that it will let it remain one - and there's really no way that it would've given that it's relatively easily replaceable critical infrastructure. Search engines aren't as hard as Googlers like to believe, it was substituted by Baidu succesfully. Think about it - which B2C non-Chinese software (not HW) services are still big in China? Anything besides OSes?
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3. rs186 ◴[] No.45148199[source]
So you don't have any evidence. Unless you link to something I'll assume you are just making all of this up.