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.

Wish you could know what they (media) tell us about the US over here…

Yes the voices echo all around the globe of what's happening in the US. Surprisingly the only place it isn't heard is in some places of US.

But I still feel like some points raised by the gp might be right. And I was laughing a little thinking that someone critizing the EU already makes you consider them as an american.

Like its just funny.

Also, I feel like every country has problems but countries should honestly first and foremost try to stay away from corruption and the billionaires/rich people's influence in general and try to be impartial. I do think that EU might be good in that but still, I sometimes wonder if this all might be a facade in the sense that EU wants to work and they want to show something for it and so that's why they are fining google only almost 3 billion$. Like maybe my trust in political systems is a little too faded seeing US instititutions erode in days (speaking as non american but I really admired american politics, not anymore)

> And I was laughing a little thinking that someone critizing the EU already makes you consider them as an american.

Look at the comments in this post. The always pro-privacy, anti-ads HN suddenly moaning about this fine. Now that’s super funny and worth of a good laugh. Of course it’s an America vs EU thing, patriotism trumps (no pun intended) all else.

The pun is strong with this one!

On a more serious note as much as you can be when you realize that discussions aren't happening in good faith and that biases like nations come...

I think that why nationalism/patriotism works is that the state has a monopoly over (legal) violence / laws in general. But the only way that might work is if we believe into them & thus nations have massive wheels of (propaganda?) or whatever it might take to convince the masses to be patriotic.

I feel like everyone all around the world is kinda the same man. We are homo sapiens. Nations shouldn't define us or the way we interact in an ideal world but I feel like a hypocrite when I myself defend my nation sometimes. I generally prefer decentralization to the point that we might take pride in our nations but we don't get influenced by it because the bigger the nation, the larger its influence/propaganda.

I feel like switzerland might be a good example in the sense that I have heard that there are people who don't even remember the (president/prime minister's?) name while working fine. I wonder if the whole world could essentially agree on international laws while being decentralized.

I just feel like that most of us are puppets and very few puppeteers in this world essentially controlling us / manipulating us into doing things that we generally wouldn't do.

A lot of the things you listed are already partially true of the EU. I wouldn't exactly call it fully decentralized, but I doubt many Europeans know by heart the name of the current EU president (I don't even know the proper title of the office) and they would fervently reject the notion of Europe as a single “nation”. Despite, I see more and more people (esp. in threads like this one) describing themselves as “European” rather than their nationalities and crediting EU laws and institutions ahead of their national governments.

I find this trend encouraging and I hope that one day we can see ourselves as humans ahead of any artificial groupings we sort ourselves into.