Google has lost its final legal challenge against a European Union penalty for giving its own shopping recommendations an illegal advantage over rivals in search results, ending a long-running antitrust case that came with a whopping fine
  • Lasherz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • Wooki@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        6 months ago

        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.

      • crystenn@lemmy.mlEnglish
        11·
        6 months ago

        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

        • Sprokes@jlai.luEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          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.

  • rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com
    0·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • Railcar8095@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      This is still a footnote on their quarterly reports. These are multi trillion companies.