EU fines Google €890M for competition breaches over search and apps

hunglee2

EU regulatory apparatus is maybe only part of the EU which is operates without obsequiousness to the US; on the one hand, this is necessary assertion of sovereignty, on the other you fear for the wider collateral damage which will inevitably ensue. Trump gonna respond to this with an escalation for sure

cmiles8

For Google this is just like parking tickets to UPS. A cost of doing business in town.

sylware

google: 1 - restore interop with noscript/basic HTML browsers, stop favoring your 'whatwg cartel' web engine. 2 - gmail: restore interop with self-hosted SMTP servers without DNS (filtering on the IPv[46] literal from email address, this is stronger than SPF). And there is probably more to add.

dlahoda

Article has no reference how exactly fine was reasoned to be specific amount. Nor specific examples of violations.

lnsru

EU just killed all hardware startups with Cyber Resilience Act. It killed all the SMEs <50 employees in hardware area too. The lost income from European companies will be replaced with fines for US companies. That’s a strategy! Visionaries at work. There is Wikipedia article about this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Resilience_Act

input_sh

PDFs of decisions in case somebody wants to learn more: Google Search decision: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2... Android decision: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...

firesteelrain

Interesting to see how Google solves this in their UI because this isn’t a new problem: In 2017, they were fined for a similar problem with Shopping and the auction house concept to compete for placement was heavily scrutinized. It’s all sort of intertwined now.

jdw64

I looked it up, and it seems that one issue is that Google, as a DMA gatekeeper, is supposed to provide anonymous data to other search services, but in practice, important parts of the actual data have been removed. The other issue is that competing AI services (not just Gemini) should also be allowed to run integrated app search. Reading about it, both points seem valid to me.

amazingamazing

Speaking of competition how is the EU doing these days？feels like they missed the boat on pc, mobile, cloud and now AI.

timpera

The lengthy legal battle against these fines is going to be extremely interesting, especially on the Shopping/Hotels/Flights side since it is an extremely competitive market. I wonder if the lower EU court will keep its overly proactive approach despite the CJEU's reversals.

warrenmiller

where does the money from these fines go to? to the people affected or just gov coffers?

maelito

I hope these fines will fund NLNet.

zoobab

Pocket money.

ChrisArchitect

EU source release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...

saltysalt

Ultimately AI will kill Google's search monopoly, not fines.

shevy-java

Fines are not enough. Mandatory jailtime - otherwise they just shrug it off.

baridbelmedar

The EU as a whole is walking a tightrope. Its largest economies still depend heavily on the US market. If the current US regime perceives that US companies are being targeted by EU "taxes", regardless of whether those laws are legitimate, there is a real danger of US retaliation. Key sectors could take the hit, including automotive manufacturing, industrial equipment, chemicals, electronics, fashion, textiles, and luxury food and wine. Given that these nations are already managing high debt loads while funding generous social welfare programs and expanding their defense budgets, trade sanctions could cause serious damage... So yeah...EU is performing a delicate balancing act here.

granzymes

At this point I assume Google is just budgeting for a $1B annual tax for operating in the EU.

cadamsdotcom

It'd be great if they put the headline in terms of how many minutes of revenue this is.