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.
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…
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
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.
I’m glad that corporations are actually receiving fines that are commensurate with their earnings and scale. Hopefully it’s enough to get them to not do this shit.
This is still a footnote on their quarterly reports. These are multi trillion companies.
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
Ok…but now what forces these companies to actually pay? What happens if they just DON’T pay?
BAN HAMMER
Ban from what exactly?
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.
So. Niece and nephew are going for the ol’ aunt. She can take them easily… For now