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 think Google leaving EU will result in more good than harm by shaping a better landscape for innovation and competition.

As an European, I wish you were right, but I’m afraid you aren’t.

The EU would use public funding to build some sort of Google alternative and it would take ages, would be mediocre and most money would go to waste. Instead of incentivising entrepreneurship, which is what they probably should do.

We live very well in the EU. We don’t have to have millions in savings in order to retire. Strong worker protection. Plenty of time off. Low crime rates. Most people fantasise with becoming rich, but as in, “I had a rich aunt that I didn’t even meet in my life and I was the sole heir” or “I won the lottery”, not as in “I grinded for the best 10 years of my life working 100 hours per week before I sold my company” that seems more prevalent in the US. Ordinary people here are super happy if they can buy a small place to live (not a humongous house) even if it takes 25 years to pay it in full, then finish work at 5 and take their kids to the park and have dinner at some restaurant on Saturday.

OTOH: I think the current US administration is the best think that could happen to the EU, a big wake up call. Suddenly there’s money to invest in Defense and that kind of thing.

Also, hopefully LLMs will diminish Google’s importance, and as long as there’s competitive models not from the US (Mistral, DeepSeek) we might be fine. But Google holds all the cards (data). With stuff like the Harvard animosity they might even stop attracting all the foreign talent.

Apple? There’s Samsung for phones at least. Amazon? They’ve become a Temu/Aliexpress. Facebook… huge win if they stopped doing business in Europe. MS? This is the year of Linux in desktop?

The Cloud is one of those things where the EU could build something competitive/alternative just with public funding. All running on Linux, of course.