I’ve said it before, I’ll say it every time it’s proven again: US consumers get more protection from tech company overreach from EU courts than our own. Our agencies need to have big gnarly angelfish teeth, not this wrist slapping “as long as you share the profits it’s basically legal” nonsense.
That would require political system changes like making party anonymous donations illegal, putting them all on registers and setting max legal amount to $1000 per entity or something realistic. Then change preference system. The list goes on. It’s a system setup to bias corporate and “special” (rich) interest.
There is an opinion that this is what allows corporate and other power to exist legally. Otherwise it’d just all go Al Capone again, not vanish nor diminish.
Honestly starting with the re-overturning of “money is people” also known as Citizens United would be a good start. This act more or less made it so money is considered free speech which allowed any type of Corporation to spend as much as they want on political groups, it was spearheaded as a thing that the country needed to avoid blocking things such as smear campaigning your opponent. But what it actually did was more or less remove the $5,000 limit that packs and super packs had on financing campaigns and and political donations, because all the Super PAC has to do now is say they aren’t politically aligned with a party and they can just funnel as much money into that party as they like, which obviously puts any party that remotely goes against profit(in most cases the democratic party because they generally want more social styled programs) at a significant disadvantage
Not to mention the federal committees that were intentionally implemented to stop corruption that happened within the government because we knew that we couldn’t be trusted to deal with important things such as communication and Airline Administration are being gutted by the same system that was supposed to protect them. While everyone’s using the excuse of well they’re not doing anything so why have them. They’re not doing anything because they can’t, hell the FCC has tried and the court system is saying they don’t have the right to rule over the department that they’re a committee over. It’s ridiculous
So. Niece and nephew are going for the ol’ aunt. She can take them easily… For now
Google: $2.7 billion
Apple: $14.34 billion
Google 2024 Revenue: $328.28B
Apple 2024 Revenue: $385.60B
I’m sure they’ll behave in the future thanks to these Big fines…
I’m sure fines are under “other expenses” in their financials…
Revenue doesn’t equal profit. Apple’s 2023 net profit was 96b, so a 14b fine is a substantial portion of their overall profits (~15%).
Of course, they’re not hurting by any stretch of the imagination, 82b is still a STUPID amount of money, but we should be getting the facts and numbers correct
Still less than the lowest tax bracket in the US
Yeah but also this is only for their EU profit, so it’s really an even higher percentage.
It doesn’t really make sense to talk about money they made in other countries when talking about these fines, as if they make 5 billion in profit in country X and get fined 6 billion, they would still have lost money for operating in the country regardless of how much money they made other places. Since they lost money in the country, that fine would be high enough for them to want to fix their law breaking or totally pull out of the country, and so the fine accomplishes its purpose.
Revenue doesn’t equal profit but many companies are using multiple schemes to show that they are not profitable. So we also need to check the revenue. A company can just increase the CEO salary to eat up all the profit.
And in Apple’s case they’re just being forced to pay back taxes, not even any fines. They’re basically undoing an illegal tax break from Ireland, which has spent $10 million in legal fees to fight against receiving it. Technically the Irish government is the one that fucked up here. Apple will have to pay and move forward paying a normal tax rate.
The sad part of this is it is just a fine, a cost of doing the business. I’m sure they have already collected more money by their monopoly than these fines.
What we need to give them is punishment. Not financial ones.
For everything else, there’s Mastercard
Ok…but now what forces these companies to actually pay? What happens if they just DON’T pay?
BAN HAMMER
Ban from what exactly?
Almost 500 million users market.
Operating in the EU?
But what if they keep doing it anyways?
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They could force ISPs to block, not allow physical hardware sales in stores, take over any assets (offices), confiscate their server farms. There’s lots that can be done.
Oh, we are being enthusiastic about the state boot again.
I mean, since corps are already using it to their ends, then it’d be probably a good thing to stomp them right back with that boot.
But I’d like a clean humanist solution more.
That’d involve, for example, commissioning a FOSS P2P post-Web system which would replace Google’s and Facebook’s and others’ services. A few dozens of nation states, not poorest on Earth, could do that.
That system would be simpler and cheaper than their missiles and jet planes and drones, while so tremendously useful to kill once and for all this particular threat.
Like those Locutus and ghost keys things, which are not a working thing yet, but very promising.
Police?
They have offices and datacenters in the EU. So forced physical entry and interruption to their operations would be the next escalation step.
But what if they hire mercenaries to force access to their physical locations?
At that point it’s an act of rebellion against that nations authority over its territory, and the police/armed forces may step in.
I see what you’re doing but that chain of thought doesn’t lead anywhere.
Those who continue to do business with them will be punished
Additional fines and, if necessary, sanctions. If you refuse to pay a fine imposed by the EU then guess what? You can’t do business in the EU any more.
The removal of all of their products in the EU, and the blockage of their services, including all those datacenters being closed down and sold.
I love that the EU is cracking down on tech, but I also wish the US government could get in on that awesome rake.
why would they want to anger their global surveillance channels?
Not to mention their donors
You misspelled ‘owners’
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This is still a footnote on their quarterly reports. These are multi trillion companies.
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google is fighting the eu and the ftc at the same time lol
What should also be the next fine Google receives should be for taking down apps without informing the customer due to GDPR purging and forced API updates and software updates making apps that have been purchased as a one-time purchase into a then rented product without first having let the customer agree to it via the necissary rental agreement form. It’s fraud plain and simply fraud and what proves so is they even secretly took down the app purchase history once apps had been pulled from the store.
This was so that you couldn’t put a claim through and they still continue on with the barrage of attacks on one-time purchases wiping them out of your purchase history and existance in favour of pumping up the use case scenario for their abismal Google Play Pass subscription platform because if their are no one-time purchase apps and games you have to go Play Pass instead and get all those IAP’s included instead what Candy Crush and that not high end games we did have then? This is one of the biggest if not the biggest online digital marketplace scam of all time, yet not a peep by any governing bodies and or ombudsman here?
They should be forcing Google to reimburse every missing app and game from Play Store accounts worldwide. It can actually be proven by back statements from a bank if you circle on a every purchase made to google compare that with your apps list if it’s not in any history in my purchases on Play Store but it’s on the bank statement then that’s theft either and or or fraud one or the other or both really because you deliberately wiped off the purchased items history so you hid the fact for any later claiming it back to be made impossible via the store, they actually refuse to refund these apps and games when confronted in live chat and cut the conversation every time stating this is unproductive…? No guys it’s theft either and or fraud actually it’s quite productive making claims via your lawyers isn’t it either and or reporting it which every person should. Without a picture from your purchase history for each missing item their answer is on your no refund blaintantly disregarding that they are breaking actual the law from a criminal standpoint not just a civil one.
It proves Google intentionally enacted a crime (fraud) and enacted a cover up on top.
I will state this is my personal view the law may see it differently although unlikely. Just incase Google dislike this post and try to extort me as a person and not a account holder this time lol.
