A list of features that would allow third-party AI systems background access to your microphone, camera, screen contents, location, notifications, contacts, SMS, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Maps, and Phone.
If this were granted, the expectation is that we would act surprised when it is fast-followed by requirements to use EU-controlled systems that can monitor this content.
The other option is nobody has this access, since it is only required because Google have built this access for themselves and the DMA simply requires they do not have privileged access because it is not competitive. This is a problem that only exists because Google wants that access for their own benefits.
It is required to facilitate the AI features Google wants for its product. What you're advocating is not having those features. That's fine, but it is also not going to happen. If this is what the EU wanted they'd be asking for these features to be disabled, not to have access.
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.
Yes. But what this discussion so often misses is.. So is the US.
The US needs military bases, it needs general market access, it wants to sell military equipment and so on and so on.
The US is already being reckless with the relationship and diversification is underway, but how deep the split will be is in large part determined by how the US wants to behave going forward.
It's like a divorce, there aren't really any winners here (in terms of wealth, assets, ...). So it's a tightrope both need to walk, balancing each other's interests.
US tariffs on EU automotive manufacturing, industrial equipment, chemicals, electronics, fashion, textiles, and luxury food and wine, would be only slap on wrist.
The real danger of US retaliation for EU are: export tariffs on US LNG, loosing arms exports for Ukraine. This the real EU delicate balancing act.
I think that's the point; much like how Canada isn't blinkimg every time the US jacks up whatever nonsense tariffs.
They know it's going to hurt and they can't just order their own country -- or in the case of the EU; countries -- to fully decouple and so they're using the pain to encourage the creation and growth of alternatives.
Nobody says it isn't painful or that it isn't going to suck but it's viewed as inevitable rather than something to be avoided.
This would make some sense under normal circumstances. However the Trump administration isn't "retaliating" except in the same sense you saw ICE "retaliating" by murdering unarmed protesters.
Violent bullies respect strength to the extent they respect anything at all.
That's an interesting comment. I noticed already years before
AI emerged that Google ruined its search engine. I am not sure
AI per se kills search engines, but interestingly the other
search engines also suck immensely. Even from the User Interface,
which is strange to me. Qwant just copy/pasted Google's horrible
UI. DuckDuckGo is praised for reasons I don't understand - it
also produces really low quality results. It seems nobody is able
to come up with really good search engines anymore - they always
end up being absolute horrid jokes in this or that area.
Yes you are correct, most are horrible. I built my own as a hobby because I wanted to go back to the "ten blue links" model of the early Internet, but freely admit that model is now dead with the majority of end-users asking their AI assistants instead. Gemini is vital to Google as a result.
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.
These fines go toward the EU's general budget as "other income" which reduces the amount that member states must contribute annually for the budget to balance. So the EU partially funds itself by leveraging fines like this on AliExpress, Google, Meta, Apple, etc. and the trickle-down savings to member states is then (presumably) used to fund public works and social services locally.
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.
The goal of the regulation is to get the operators to comply, which they usually do after fines (EDIT: and litigations and whining, of course), because the costs of infractions are increased if they don't comply.
The big corporations don't really fix their evil behaviour. That's why fines keep on re-emerging.
> because the costs of infractions are increased if they don't comply.
See above. If the fines were to work, it would not become a repeating issue.
I think mandatory jailtimes are the only solution. When the CEOs are suddenly for 10 years in a small room, slowly they will begin to stop their mafia-strategy.
If the cost of penalties doesn't exceed the cost of the offence then it's a winning move to offend.
The correct solution to this is to have fines scaled to the value of a company and an exponential doubling of fines for every re-offence that falls under the same category of crime with a cooling off period after a few years.
The fines do scale with noncompliance, if Google were to continue to offend they would get a daily fine that is retroactively applied to the full duration.
Because the goal isn’t to punish, it’s to get them to do what the law wants them to do. The fine is supposed to be a slap on the wrist - the actual desired behaviour is compliance
yeah, 8 years later? If someone was born on the last one they're now in 4th grade and halfway to being able to drive. Are these really correlated events?
Given that Larry Page and Sergey Brin still control Alphabet, still act with impunity, and show no signs of slowing down yes, they are absolutes correlated events.
The issue is they usually comply with the specific law being broken, and then immediately stop complying with a different law
The goal should be to incentivise them to comply with the law as a whole, not to keep deliberately breaking different sections of the law to make profit above the level of fines
That's why people want the level of the fines to go up, to disincentivise the more broad lawbreaking
Imagine regular laws worked that way, where a prior conviction is only relevant if it was for the exact same crime, and you can go around committing dozens of crimes and be treated like a first offender every time because this time you chose robbery and last time it was theft.
Not really, next time they just make a calculated risk decision, if the revenue from non-compliance is quite significant than the fine they have to pay later (if they have to, because I can imagine so many other cases which went unnoticed or didn't result in a fine) there is no reason for them to comply next time. It's not like they will be prohibited from doing a business after n number of compliance violations or fines
Except they did comply for all the cases where they were fined. They're not fined for one-off behaviors, but for how their services are structured. That's GPs point.
You appear to be arguing with the assumption that "get the operators to comply" is false.
These companies do, in fact, change behaviour in response to such actions; they may hire lawyers to find and exploit as many loopholes as they can, but they do ultimately comply. Even X ultimately complied in response to Brazil, and the EU is a much more important market for Google than Brazil ever was for X.
(Why would you expect to get dollars from an EU settlement?)
It‘s nice to have such revenue to fund EU programs on digital sovereignty. European institutions give plenty of money to startups. You need an entry to the program, but when you are in, it can account for 50-70% or more in your early stage funding. And that‘s nice, because you keep more equity.
Looking at the state of the EU tech industry and chuckling.
The point of the EU subsidies is, surely, not to enrich a few people with the right connections but to stimulate a productive ecosystem that supports well paid skilled employment, right? Right?
I find it more interesting that US Americans think letting their companies do whatever they want everywhere (as they currently do) is the better "strategy".
“Everyone opposed to EU policy is a US American” fallacy in play.
As is the “letting their companies do whatever they want everywhere (as they currently do) is the better "strategy"” when this wasn’t said or even implied anywhere.
It is amazing how HN has descended into arguing against people making points by saying they are someone else and saying something completely different.
I don't think that's a sustainable model. Also most of those fines goes into filling the gaps in budgets related to recurring costs of maintaining the bureaucratic behemoth rather than funding research or innovation.
you can be sarcastic and arrogant all you want. But your own arrogance, stubbornness and sheer ignorance to admit what's not working and keep on defending it is going to be your own demise.
You don't have to out do US in-regards of waste of public money. It's not a competition either party wants to win.
You look really angry friend. And looking at your other comments in the thread, really wrong.
I only asked you because you seemed to know a lot about how this works and I wanted to learn too. I sense from your anger that you are upset that I put you in the impossible position to reason your arguments. I’d be angry too if someone called my bluff.
> I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim.
There's this standard assumption that HN users are well educated.
Budgets don't work like that. It's not like the US federal government collects taxes and then deposits bags of gold coins on people's doorsteps.
Taxes, fines, etc are all collected and then they mostly go to a general, undifferentiated budget which is then divided by the various ministries (departments, whatever).
So yes, if you're a EU citizen you did get the money back. As roads, hospitals, research funding, etc.
The maximum fine the EU can impose with the DMA is "10 % of its total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year". I think this would hurt even Google. And I think a billion dollars is not nothing.
The same principle evoked in the rest of this thread, if the penalties match exactly or are under the profits you can generate by injuring (in the legal sense) EU citizens it's not really a penalty but rather a cost of business. Plus markets are very interconnected, especially the digital ones.
EU competition law is not framed around valuing Europeans more than others, it is framed around protecting competition and market functioning inside the EU.
No need to moralize it and pretend anyone is using this "value" European humans more than other humans.
Why a year, when they've often been breaking the rules for much longer than that?
Why not 20% (30%), given that's the share of world GDP (PPP) due to the EU?
Why revenue rather than profit?
The answer is: big round number that's roughly justifiable as a big stick for, and I want to emphasise this, a punishment to make sure they don't break the rules.
Because they decided that way. Any other country in the world can decide the same thing but they don't have the same leverage as the EU. Google makes a lot of money in the EU.
'a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money'
...but this is a private(ish) business, it doesn't have a printer in the back yard, a billion is a lot no matter how you look at it, especially if they're now facing a tough choice between cannibalizing their results with AI summaries or having AI competitors eating their lunch.
This fine is more of a warning shot. The DMA allows for fines of up to 10% of global revenue or 20% in the case of repeat offenders.
These 890M are a first warning. Now Google has some time to react, but if they don't implement what is required of them, another, higher, fine will be issued.
20% of global revenue is not just cost of doing business, to any business.
Yep. If a train ticket costs 100 euro and the fine for freeloading is 5 euro, you'd be a fool to buy a ticket.
Don't blame Google for pushing boundaries. That's what people (and corpos) do in any competitive activity. Do blame our politicians for being incompetent and ill-meaning.
I lived in a city where police can fine you for biking in the night without the lights on, but police catches people so rarely that, per ride, the mathematical expectation of a fine was lower than the cost of batteries.
Today? Wow. You must have very weirdly expensive batteries and/or electricity. Around here, a complete replacement of non-rechargeable bike light batteries would cost €1.25, and they'd still last more than one ride each. Rechargeable batteries may cost more, but last thousands.
That was quite a while ago. I can't recall exactly anymore, but the yearly battery cost was probably indeed quite low, ~20 euro maybe? They just didn't fine people often enough.
You really shouldn't apply statistics this way. Expected value is useful if you're an insurance company because you can price insurance products slightly above the expected value, but if the fine is $100, batteries are $90, and you get fined after going on 10 bike rides the fine doesn't magically become $10 it's still $100 and you still could've saved $10 by spending $90 before getting on your bike. That is, unless you put $10 in a piggy bank every time you get on your bicycle, and then at that point why not put $90 down and then pay yourself back $9 per ride with $1 of interest?
I mean that if fine / E[N_f] < battery_cost / E[N_b], where E[N_] is an expected number of rides before a fine / battery expire, then I save money per ride. In your example, you just pick the values such that the relation becomes '>'.
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.
And supposedly, "steering must be free". Or at least that's what they told Apple when fining €500M, I think today they both charge up to about 20% commission if apps use third party payments.
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
This is the fine after it got influenced by the political branch. It is a sign towards the companies that the law still bites and has to be adhered but reduced in this case to a level where it can be accepted by Google without major escalation in trade politics.
to be fair to Trump, he does respond to corporate lobby - Pichai just got to make a phone call and an EO will be rolling out in short order. This is not because Gogole controls Trump, it is simply that Trump is a nationalist and will defend US companies, he just needs to be reminded to do so
The current government has defied the supreme court many times. It can do this because the police force is controlled by the government, not by the supreme court, so it won't arrest the government.
The private sector often complies in advance. Large logistics companies collected obviously illegal taxes long before they were challenged in court. It's not easy and the cost of doing business is already high, and not only in the US.
This. There is one thing to have a lawful evil like Putin, who acts rationally. You know if you give him Crimea or whatever, he will stop bombing Kiev, or if you buy his gas, he will not suicide your politicians. With Trump, it's just like throwing a dice each time. It doesn't matter what you do, might as well do what's good for you.
You think all those deranged nuclear threats from Dmytry Medvedev and all those "Russki Mir from Lisbon to Vladivostok" imperial phantasies are some "good tsar, bad boyars" bullshit? Russia won't stop unless they are stopped or at least incapacitated for the next few decades.
Actually you know that giving Putin Crimea won't stop him bombing Kiev, seeing as they gave him Crimea, and then he bombed Kiev to get Donetsk. He also suicided politicians while we were buying his gas.
"Once you pay the Danegeld, you'll never get rid of the Dane."
That's one read. For me it feels like practically (ASML, ARM, SAP not withstanding) their only "contribution" to tech is fines and exporting regulation. Sometimes this works out well (usb-c on iPhone), but most of the time it feels like if they want software, hardware, or the web to operate the way they want, perhaps they should try to actually produce some of it instead of being wholly reliant on others while also trying to dictate the terms. I also don't really feel like Trump will do anything, mainly because neither he, nor anyone else before him has any track record of attempting to block or slow EU overreach into US tech interests. Or maybe I'm just cranky and pessimistic.
Google, Apple and co are free not to do business in the EU. There is no "overreach". It's a 450M pop market with a high median per-capita income. There are many reasons why the EU has a rather small tech industry of its own, high up among them that the EU does comparatively little to protect its market compared to China where most US tech companies don't even bother to enter anymore. In China, if a fine like this hits you, you are not allowed to do business anymore until it's either paid or revoked in court. So yeah, the EU is very lenient on all accounts.
Yes, it's only one company out of the whole market. If ASML makes EU count as a good tech market then everywhere is a good tech market because it has at least one important tech company.
We are getting used to the news about our decadence and decay coming from the West as regular as they did from the East before. Not sure what it means for anyone involved
Pretty well, to the point where the US administration complains that there's a trade imbalance. (which is true for manufactured goods, false when we count in services)
Mistral and ElevenLabs seem to be doing pretty well.
Also, here in the U.S., we’ve managed to screw up so badly on data privacy and basic rights that the EU has been systematically replacing their entire tech stack with sovereign components.
On a huge decline and the people are dissatisfied which leads to populist parties becoming more popular and the current governments trying to hold their power by passing draconian laws.
Is that supposed to be a snark? Do better. I prefer that we didn't miss the boat on caring for each other, not shooting each other constantly, and generally not feeling we're better than anybody else, and the need to point it out on HN.
Could a mega-project like Linux have originated in the US instead of a Finnish bedroom? I have my doubts tbh, it takes an absolute madman to start such an obviously doomed project without any business potential ;)
Doing just fine calling most of the american insanity for what it is. Beating apple and the likes into submission and making them produce actually somewhat good products.
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.
So basically you need 3 persons writing compliance documentation and taking care of cybersecurity. Basically another 200000€ personal cost year in low cost area. 250000€ or more in bigger cities. You have a microprocessor in your product and it’s done deal.
No big deal for corporations though. Buddy’s workplace hired new compliance department for this topic with 30 persons. That’s competition european way.
The thing is not that the product will be somehow secure. It will have properly filled compliance papers. That’s the same story with functional safety. For example car electronic components break all the time, but they have well done paperwork.
> The thing is not that the product will be somehow secure.
I don't believe that is true. Cars do break but they have to meet safety standards. That doesn't make them perfect but it's much better than not having them. You can't make perfect safety standards in an ever changing world but you can define minimum standards.
I understand that documentation is a pain in the butt, but it's necessary to have some oversight. It's part of the enforcement. Everyone has to do it so we know the documentation should exist. That means we can fine companies that don't do it. If you mad the documentation and lied on it and it comes out you will probably fined even more. It's a deterrent and a way to enforce the rules.
It forces Europeans wanting to build hardware startups to go overseas, so there's even fewer new European hardware companies and Europe becomes even more dependent on the US and China.
Just like everyone left when the GDPR went into place? Having safety standards in place (and yes that also means documenting them) can even be a selling point. To have demonstrably secure hardware according to a standard can be highly desirable.
I think losing the companies that don't have security as a main priority isn't too bad. I assume that the EU will create import restrictions if there is a meaningful shift to avoid EU rules.
You know that when a regulation mandates a role like this, it isn't the person's entire job, right? When GDPR says you need a data protection officer, it doesn't mean you need to hire someone to be your data protection officer. In a very small startup, it could mean the CEO is also the data protection officer.
You don't need a whole full timer for that either. When we had to deal with the usual iso stuff it was one guy hired through the agency working on Thursdays
From what I gather, the cyber resilience act applies to all products placed on the EU market, regardless of whether the manufacturer is based inside or outside of the EU. So European hardware vendors will be competing on the same terms as American and Chinese ones when it comes to the CRA.
A significant percentage of HN readership are those working in US Adtech, who's very salaries are dependent on abusing peoples privacy. Hardly surprising a hefty part of the HN demographic slants towards opposing privacy laws (for software and hardware).
Tariffs so far are on paper entirely, and in practice still overwhelmingly, paid for by the buyer.
So go ahead, make the stuff you buy from us 10x more expensive with you (not us) paying the difference to your government, then be surprised by how many of your factories can't run because they can't afford stuff they need that only we make.
Or, shock, substitute us with China.
But either way, you're hitting yourself and calling the pain a sign of victory.
Google knowingly and _intentionally_ breached the law.
A fundamental rule for capitalism to work well long term is that oligopoly and similar should not exist and must be rained in or outright split up if they exist. If that rule isn't followed capitalism turns from a tool which can support democracy to one which will sooner or later tear it apart. It's basically the economic version of the number one rule of democracy: "never concentrate too much power into two few people".
This also isn't just some theoretical thing, if you look through history having too much money/power in to few entities(1) always sooner or later lead to suffering of people, injustice and collapse.
Lastly it's worth noting that historically companies often do challenge such fines and managed to cut them down by quite a bit, that is iff they actually started being compliant by then. Sadly the end result is often still that, the economically benefit of huge companies systematic breaking the law, outweighs their penalties. I mean they often do calculate the most likely level of penalties into their cost-benefit analysis.
(1): Through it should be noted that this is about effective power, not theoretic power. It isn't rare through history to have people which theoretically are autocrats with absolute power, but practically the power is spread quite widely and in turn them having a brain fart, mental decline, megalomaniac, irrational hate against some groups of people etc. didn't lead directly to atrocities being committed.
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...
Skimmed (without AI).
Look like feature request lists.
A list of features that would allow third-party AI systems background access to your microphone, camera, screen contents, location, notifications, contacts, SMS, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Maps, and Phone.
If this were granted, the expectation is that we would act surprised when it is fast-followed by requirements to use EU-controlled systems that can monitor this content.
The other option is nobody has this access, since it is only required because Google have built this access for themselves and the DMA simply requires they do not have privileged access because it is not competitive. This is a problem that only exists because Google wants that access for their own benefits.
It is required to facilitate the AI features Google wants for its product. What you're advocating is not having those features. That's fine, but it is also not going to happen. If this is what the EU wanted they'd be asking for these features to be disabled, not to have access.
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.
Yes. But what this discussion so often misses is.. So is the US.
The US needs military bases, it needs general market access, it wants to sell military equipment and so on and so on. The US is already being reckless with the relationship and diversification is underway, but how deep the split will be is in large part determined by how the US wants to behave going forward.
It's like a divorce, there aren't really any winners here (in terms of wealth, assets, ...). So it's a tightrope both need to walk, balancing each other's interests.
US tariffs on EU automotive manufacturing, industrial equipment, chemicals, electronics, fashion, textiles, and luxury food and wine, would be only slap on wrist.
The real danger of US retaliation for EU are: export tariffs on US LNG, loosing arms exports for Ukraine. This the real EU delicate balancing act.
I think that's the point; much like how Canada isn't blinkimg every time the US jacks up whatever nonsense tariffs.
They know it's going to hurt and they can't just order their own country -- or in the case of the EU; countries -- to fully decouple and so they're using the pain to encourage the creation and growth of alternatives.
Nobody says it isn't painful or that it isn't going to suck but it's viewed as inevitable rather than something to be avoided.
> there is a real danger of US retaliation
This would make some sense under normal circumstances. However the Trump administration isn't "retaliating" except in the same sense you saw ICE "retaliating" by murdering unarmed protesters.
Violent bullies respect strength to the extent they respect anything at all.
Article has no reference how exactly fine was reasoned to be specific amount. Nor specific examples of violations.
Presumably that’s covered by article 30 of the law: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/1925/oj#art_30
I hope these fines will fund NLNet.
Have you applied? What's your project?
At this point I assume Google is just budgeting for a $1B annual tax for operating in the EU.
They figured out that part too
Ultimately AI will kill Google's search monopoly, not fines.
That's an interesting comment. I noticed already years before AI emerged that Google ruined its search engine. I am not sure AI per se kills search engines, but interestingly the other search engines also suck immensely. Even from the User Interface, which is strange to me. Qwant just copy/pasted Google's horrible UI. DuckDuckGo is praised for reasons I don't understand - it also produces really low quality results. It seems nobody is able to come up with really good search engines anymore - they always end up being absolute horrid jokes in this or that area.
Yes you are correct, most are horrible. I built my own as a hobby because I wanted to go back to the "ten blue links" model of the early Internet, but freely admit that model is now dead with the majority of end-users asking their AI assistants instead. Gemini is vital to Google as a result.
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.
where does the money from these fines go to? to the people affected or just gov coffers?
These fines go toward the EU's general budget as "other income" which reduces the amount that member states must contribute annually for the budget to balance. So the EU partially funds itself by leveraging fines like this on AliExpress, Google, Meta, Apple, etc. and the trickle-down savings to member states is then (presumably) used to fund public works and social services locally.
Goverment coffers fund public works.
Fines is for the government. Damages are for others (and sometimes govt).
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.
For Google this is just like parking tickets to UPS. A cost of doing business in town.
this comment always comes up and it's _wrong_.
The goal of the regulation is to get the operators to comply, which they usually do after fines (EDIT: and litigations and whining, of course), because the costs of infractions are increased if they don't comply.
No, the comment is not wrong. It is correct.
The big corporations don't really fix their evil behaviour. That's why fines keep on re-emerging.
> because the costs of infractions are increased if they don't comply.
See above. If the fines were to work, it would not become a repeating issue.
I think mandatory jailtimes are the only solution. When the CEOs are suddenly for 10 years in a small room, slowly they will begin to stop their mafia-strategy.
If the cost of penalties doesn't exceed the cost of the offence then it's a winning move to offend.
The correct solution to this is to have fines scaled to the value of a company and an exponential doubling of fines for every re-offence that falls under the same category of crime with a cooling off period after a few years.
The fines do scale with noncompliance, if Google were to continue to offend they would get a daily fine that is retroactively applied to the full duration.
Because the goal isn’t to punish, it’s to get them to do what the law wants them to do. The fine is supposed to be a slap on the wrist - the actual desired behaviour is compliance
That is the incorrect way to apply fines.
The first fine should sting and the second should be damaging to a company and the third should be crippling.
The EU has been fining Google for years to no avail.
> The EU has been fining Google for years to no avail.
Me after a quick research:
2017: €2.42 billion fine for favoring its own comparison shopping service.
Results: huge changes to Google's shopping service.
2018: €4 billion fine over Android-related practices.
Results: Google Play separately from Google Search and Chrome, and manufacturers gained more flexibility over preinstalled apps.
2026: Google again found breaking the law.
yeah, 8 years later? If someone was born on the last one they're now in 4th grade and halfway to being able to drive. Are these really correlated events?
Given that Larry Page and Sergey Brin still control Alphabet, still act with impunity, and show no signs of slowing down yes, they are absolutes correlated events.
The issue is they usually comply with the specific law being broken, and then immediately stop complying with a different law
The goal should be to incentivise them to comply with the law as a whole, not to keep deliberately breaking different sections of the law to make profit above the level of fines
That's why people want the level of the fines to go up, to disincentivise the more broad lawbreaking
Imagine regular laws worked that way, where a prior conviction is only relevant if it was for the exact same crime, and you can go around committing dozens of crimes and be treated like a first offender every time because this time you chose robbery and last time it was theft.
Not really, next time they just make a calculated risk decision, if the revenue from non-compliance is quite significant than the fine they have to pay later (if they have to, because I can imagine so many other cases which went unnoticed or didn't result in a fine) there is no reason for them to comply next time. It's not like they will be prohibited from doing a business after n number of compliance violations or fines
Except they did comply for all the cases where they were fined. They're not fined for one-off behaviors, but for how their services are structured. That's GPs point.
I work in this space (not for Google). These fines are 100% a tax, and would be levied for any reason whatsoever
The cost increases, but given the revenue Google generates how is that not just a tax?
I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim. If the fines are moderate and big co keeps paying that's steady revenue for the EU institutions.
You appear to be arguing with the assumption that "get the operators to comply" is false.
These companies do, in fact, change behaviour in response to such actions; they may hire lawyers to find and exploit as many loopholes as they can, but they do ultimately comply. Even X ultimately complied in response to Brazil, and the EU is a much more important market for Google than Brazil ever was for X.
(Why would you expect to get dollars from an EU settlement?)
It‘s nice to have such revenue to fund EU programs on digital sovereignty. European institutions give plenty of money to startups. You need an entry to the program, but when you are in, it can account for 50-70% or more in your early stage funding. And that‘s nice, because you keep more equity.
> You need an entry to the program, but when you are in, it can account for 50-70% or more in your early stage funding.
It is almost entirely unsurprising that the EU tech industry is such a disaster area when people say things like this as if they are a good thing.
Looking at the ivan_gammel's startups now and chuckling.
Looking at the state of the EU tech industry and chuckling.
The point of the EU subsidies is, surely, not to enrich a few people with the right connections but to stimulate a productive ecosystem that supports well paid skilled employment, right? Right?
I find it more interesting that US Americans think letting their companies do whatever they want everywhere (as they currently do) is the better "strategy".
“Everyone opposed to EU policy is a US American” fallacy in play.
As is the “letting their companies do whatever they want everywhere (as they currently do) is the better "strategy"” when this wasn’t said or even implied anywhere.
It is amazing how HN has descended into arguing against people making points by saying they are someone else and saying something completely different.
I don't think that's a sustainable model. Also most of those fines goes into filling the gaps in budgets related to recurring costs of maintaining the bureaucratic behemoth rather than funding research or innovation.
The US was lucky to have Musk and DOGE fix that bureaucratic behemoth, if only the EU had the same luck.
How long have you been working inside the behemoth? Can you tell us more about the inner workings, where the money goes, how much, etc?
you can be sarcastic and arrogant all you want. But your own arrogance, stubbornness and sheer ignorance to admit what's not working and keep on defending it is going to be your own demise.
You don't have to out do US in-regards of waste of public money. It's not a competition either party wants to win.
You look really angry friend. And looking at your other comments in the thread, really wrong.
I only asked you because you seemed to know a lot about how this works and I wanted to learn too. I sense from your anger that you are upset that I put you in the impossible position to reason your arguments. I’d be angry too if someone called my bluff.
It's a tariff on noncompliance, designed to make it cheaper to comply than to not comply.
> I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim.
There's this standard assumption that HN users are well educated.
Budgets don't work like that. It's not like the US federal government collects taxes and then deposits bags of gold coins on people's doorsteps.
Taxes, fines, etc are all collected and then they mostly go to a general, undifferentiated budget which is then divided by the various ministries (departments, whatever).
So yes, if you're a EU citizen you did get the money back. As roads, hospitals, research funding, etc.
> I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim.
This isn't a class action.
The maximum fine the EU can impose with the DMA is "10 % of its total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year". I think this would hurt even Google. And I think a billion dollars is not nothing.
Last year Google had $400 billion revenue so it's a massive amount of money, and they are allowed up to 20% for repeat offenders!
That would be something like 70% of their yearly global profit AFAIK.
EU is just 1/20 of world population, why 10%? Seems dishonest. EU human valued 2x more of other human?
The same principle evoked in the rest of this thread, if the penalties match exactly or are under the profits you can generate by injuring (in the legal sense) EU citizens it's not really a penalty but rather a cost of business. Plus markets are very interconnected, especially the digital ones.
EU competition law is not framed around valuing Europeans more than others, it is framed around protecting competition and market functioning inside the EU.
No need to moralize it and pretend anyone is using this "value" European humans more than other humans.
Why a year, when they've often been breaking the rules for much longer than that?
Why not 20% (30%), given that's the share of world GDP (PPP) due to the EU?
Why revenue rather than profit?
The answer is: big round number that's roughly justifiable as a big stick for, and I want to emphasise this, a punishment to make sure they don't break the rules.
Because they decided that way. Any other country in the world can decide the same thing but they don't have the same leverage as the EU. Google makes a lot of money in the EU.
The damages done that caused the fine are usually spread over multiple years.
India is doing 10% as well.
The reasoning is very simple just "carry a big stick", multinational companies need to fear the fines to want compliance.
I suggest that whenever Google get fined less than. $1B, they get an instructional booklet reminding them of how to count that low.
well, Meta[0] is getting sued for a 1.4 Trillion$ by many US states combined if that interests you.
[0]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/meta-says-it-s-staring-...
When fines became casual? Is it like taxes?
It is functionally just a form of tax that can't be offshored.
Corporations reliably break the law, the EU reliably enforces it.
I'm actually happy that this is the path the EU went, as there's a financial incentive to keep laws which benefit consumers.
No of course not. Ireland makes sure Google doesn't pay the minimum tax rate in the EU:
https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/companies/arid-417489...
€4.536bn on €86.6bn, or about 5% (which is one third of the amount Ireland promised in an international treaty they would charge ...)
'a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money'
...but this is a private(ish) business, it doesn't have a printer in the back yard, a billion is a lot no matter how you look at it, especially if they're now facing a tough choice between cannibalizing their results with AI summaries or having AI competitors eating their lunch.
Well it's 15% or their Q2 spending, to put things into perspective.
This fine is more of a warning shot. The DMA allows for fines of up to 10% of global revenue or 20% in the case of repeat offenders.
These 890M are a first warning. Now Google has some time to react, but if they don't implement what is required of them, another, higher, fine will be issued.
20% of global revenue is not just cost of doing business, to any business.
fine = previous_fine²
Yep. If a train ticket costs 100 euro and the fine for freeloading is 5 euro, you'd be a fool to buy a ticket.
Don't blame Google for pushing boundaries. That's what people (and corpos) do in any competitive activity. Do blame our politicians for being incompetent and ill-meaning.
Back when I lived in Cambridge, someone worked out this was actually true for one of the car parks.
(Not those exact numbers, but the same point).
I lived in a city where police can fine you for biking in the night without the lights on, but police catches people so rarely that, per ride, the mathematical expectation of a fine was lower than the cost of batteries.
Today? Wow. You must have very weirdly expensive batteries and/or electricity. Around here, a complete replacement of non-rechargeable bike light batteries would cost €1.25, and they'd still last more than one ride each. Rechargeable batteries may cost more, but last thousands.
That was quite a while ago. I can't recall exactly anymore, but the yearly battery cost was probably indeed quite low, ~20 euro maybe? They just didn't fine people often enough.
You really shouldn't apply statistics this way. Expected value is useful if you're an insurance company because you can price insurance products slightly above the expected value, but if the fine is $100, batteries are $90, and you get fined after going on 10 bike rides the fine doesn't magically become $10 it's still $100 and you still could've saved $10 by spending $90 before getting on your bike. That is, unless you put $10 in a piggy bank every time you get on your bicycle, and then at that point why not put $90 down and then pay yourself back $9 per ride with $1 of interest?
I mean that if fine / E[N_f] < battery_cost / E[N_b], where E[N_] is an expected number of rides before a fine / battery expire, then I save money per ride. In your example, you just pick the values such that the relation becomes '>'.
Even if a train ticket costs 9 Euros and a fine is 60 Euros but you are almost never checked it quickly becomes cheaper to eat the fines.
Until the tragedy of the commons kicks in.
When the fare dodging rate increases they send out more fare controllers too.
That's a problem for future Homer. Man, I don't envy that guy!
pours vodka into a mayo jar
Nor. It more like train costs 15 and fine 5 if caught, and payed later.
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.
Also apps need to be allowed to conduct their transactions outside the appstore and the appstore must allow them to advertise that.
And supposedly, "steering must be free". Or at least that's what they told Apple when fining €500M, I think today they both charge up to about 20% commission if apps use third party payments.
EU source release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
Fines are not enough.
Mandatory jailtime - otherwise they just shrug it off.
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.
sylware:
3 - stop writing comments only in english, stop favoring your 'anglosphere' linguistic bubble
What exactly monopoly is here?
Pocket money.
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
This is the fine after it got influenced by the political branch. It is a sign towards the companies that the law still bites and has to be adhered but reduced in this case to a level where it can be accepted by Google without major escalation in trade politics.
> Trump gonna respond to this with an escalation for sure
This is basically the equivalent of the weekly nuclear annihilation threat from the Moscow direction ;)
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_final_warning
to be fair to Trump, he does respond to corporate lobby - Pichai just got to make a phone call and an EO will be rolling out in short order. This is not because Gogole controls Trump, it is simply that Trump is a nationalist and will defend US companies, he just needs to be reminded to do so
Trump has tariffed Canada 50% allegedly because of wildfires. He acts randomly, your actions don't matter either way.
The Supreme Court has already said that blanket tariffs aren't allowed, so it's all bluster, as per usual.
The current government has defied the supreme court many times. It can do this because the police force is controlled by the government, not by the supreme court, so it won't arrest the government.
The private sector often complies in advance. Large logistics companies collected obviously illegal taxes long before they were challenged in court. It's not easy and the cost of doing business is already high, and not only in the US.
He’s using a different tariff authority this time than the one the Supreme Court took away.
This. There is one thing to have a lawful evil like Putin, who acts rationally. You know if you give him Crimea or whatever, he will stop bombing Kiev, or if you buy his gas, he will not suicide your politicians. With Trump, it's just like throwing a dice each time. It doesn't matter what you do, might as well do what's good for you.
You think all those deranged nuclear threats from Dmytry Medvedev and all those "Russki Mir from Lisbon to Vladivostok" imperial phantasies are some "good tsar, bad boyars" bullshit? Russia won't stop unless they are stopped or at least incapacitated for the next few decades.
Actually you know that giving Putin Crimea won't stop him bombing Kiev, seeing as they gave him Crimea, and then he bombed Kiev to get Donetsk. He also suicided politicians while we were buying his gas.
"Once you pay the Danegeld, you'll never get rid of the Dane."
That's one read. For me it feels like practically (ASML, ARM, SAP not withstanding) their only "contribution" to tech is fines and exporting regulation. Sometimes this works out well (usb-c on iPhone), but most of the time it feels like if they want software, hardware, or the web to operate the way they want, perhaps they should try to actually produce some of it instead of being wholly reliant on others while also trying to dictate the terms. I also don't really feel like Trump will do anything, mainly because neither he, nor anyone else before him has any track record of attempting to block or slow EU overreach into US tech interests. Or maybe I'm just cranky and pessimistic.
Google, Apple and co are free not to do business in the EU. There is no "overreach". It's a 450M pop market with a high median per-capita income. There are many reasons why the EU has a rather small tech industry of its own, high up among them that the EU does comparatively little to protect its market compared to China where most US tech companies don't even bother to enter anymore. In China, if a fine like this hits you, you are not allowed to do business anymore until it's either paid or revoked in court. So yeah, the EU is very lenient on all accounts.
Is ASML really that insignificant?
Yes, it's only one company out of the whole market. If ASML makes EU count as a good tech market then everywhere is a good tech market because it has at least one important tech company.
Speaking of competition how is the EU doing these days？feels like they missed the boat on pc, mobile, cloud and now AI.
We are getting used to the news about our decadence and decay coming from the West as regular as they did from the East before. Not sure what it means for anyone involved
Pretty well, to the point where the US administration complains that there's a trade imbalance. (which is true for manufactured goods, false when we count in services)
Mistral and ElevenLabs seem to be doing pretty well.
Also, here in the U.S., we’ve managed to screw up so badly on data privacy and basic rights that the EU has been systematically replacing their entire tech stack with sovereign components.
By what metric is Mistral competitive? And ElevenLabs is incorporated in the USA
Mistral doing "pretty well"?
On a huge decline and the people are dissatisfied which leads to populist parties becoming more popular and the current governments trying to hold their power by passing draconian laws.
Like the US.
Is that supposed to be a snark? Do better. I prefer that we didn't miss the boat on caring for each other, not shooting each other constantly, and generally not feeling we're better than anybody else, and the need to point it out on HN.
Could a mega-project like Linux have originated in the US instead of a Finnish bedroom? I have my doubts tbh, it takes an absolute madman to start such an obviously doomed project without any business potential ;)
Someone accusing the US of having no madmen was not on my Bingo card for 2026.
Not of the Finnish kind ;)
I used to come here for the intelligent discussion, but it's turning into X.
How is the US doing with their Tariffs?
I didn’t see anything mentioned on tariffs in article. In any case tariffs are a dumb policy.
Doing just fine calling most of the american insanity for what it is. Beating apple and the likes into submission and making them produce actually somewhat good products.
It’s July, you won’t get a response from any European for at least another month
How is the US doing? Seems like the missed boat is the Titanic.
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
I'm not familiar with the Act. Can you explain how it would kill theses startups?
So basically you need 3 persons writing compliance documentation and taking care of cybersecurity. Basically another 200000€ personal cost year in low cost area. 250000€ or more in bigger cities. You have a microprocessor in your product and it’s done deal.
No big deal for corporations though. Buddy’s workplace hired new compliance department for this topic with 30 persons. That’s competition european way.
I'd rather have that than insecure hardware. It seems like it forces security to be a first class priority instead of an afterthought.
The thing is not that the product will be somehow secure. It will have properly filled compliance papers. That’s the same story with functional safety. For example car electronic components break all the time, but they have well done paperwork.
> It will have properly filled compliance papers
Sounds like a perfect job for AI tbh ;)
> The thing is not that the product will be somehow secure.
I don't believe that is true. Cars do break but they have to meet safety standards. That doesn't make them perfect but it's much better than not having them. You can't make perfect safety standards in an ever changing world but you can define minimum standards.
I understand that documentation is a pain in the butt, but it's necessary to have some oversight. It's part of the enforcement. Everyone has to do it so we know the documentation should exist. That means we can fine companies that don't do it. If you mad the documentation and lied on it and it comes out you will probably fined even more. It's a deterrent and a way to enforce the rules.
What you are also saying in the same sentence is
"I would rather only buy from megacorporations than small players"
It forces Europeans wanting to build hardware startups to go overseas, so there's even fewer new European hardware companies and Europe becomes even more dependent on the US and China.
Just like everyone left when the GDPR went into place? Having safety standards in place (and yes that also means documenting them) can even be a selling point. To have demonstrably secure hardware according to a standard can be highly desirable.
I think losing the companies that don't have security as a main priority isn't too bad. I assume that the EU will create import restrictions if there is a meaningful shift to avoid EU rules.
You know that when a regulation mandates a role like this, it isn't the person's entire job, right? When GDPR says you need a data protection officer, it doesn't mean you need to hire someone to be your data protection officer. In a very small startup, it could mean the CEO is also the data protection officer.
You don't need a whole full timer for that either. When we had to deal with the usual iso stuff it was one guy hired through the agency working on Thursdays
It kills those hardware startups that attempt to make money by selling us insecure crap?
See also, the GDPR killing startups that attempt to invade our privacy and exploit personal data without permission.
And then there are no European hardware startups and your own options for hardware are Chinese and American, both with backdoors.
From what I gather, the cyber resilience act applies to all products placed on the EU market, regardless of whether the manufacturer is based inside or outside of the EU. So European hardware vendors will be competing on the same terms as American and Chinese ones when it comes to the CRA.
Interesting that US Americans think letting their companies do whatever they want everywhere (as they currently do) is the better "strategy".
it sometimes feels (some part of) US citizens are so used to companies systematically abusing them that they think it's normal
and some other part seem to have "I have suffered so you must suffer too" mentality
and in generally there seem to be an increasing lack of basic human empathy ... which is very worrisome
A significant percentage of HN readership are those working in US Adtech, who's very salaries are dependent on abusing peoples privacy. Hardly surprising a hefty part of the HN demographic slants towards opposing privacy laws (for software and hardware).
Tariff the EU 1000% and ship packages of garbage waste to their offices.
Tariffs so far are on paper entirely, and in practice still overwhelmingly, paid for by the buyer.
So go ahead, make the stuff you buy from us 10x more expensive with you (not us) paying the difference to your government, then be surprised by how many of your factories can't run because they can't afford stuff they need that only we make.
Or, shock, substitute us with China.
But either way, you're hitting yourself and calling the pain a sign of victory.
Google knowingly and _intentionally_ breached the law.
A fundamental rule for capitalism to work well long term is that oligopoly and similar should not exist and must be rained in or outright split up if they exist. If that rule isn't followed capitalism turns from a tool which can support democracy to one which will sooner or later tear it apart. It's basically the economic version of the number one rule of democracy: "never concentrate too much power into two few people".
This also isn't just some theoretical thing, if you look through history having too much money/power in to few entities(1) always sooner or later lead to suffering of people, injustice and collapse.
Lastly it's worth noting that historically companies often do challenge such fines and managed to cut them down by quite a bit, that is iff they actually started being compliant by then. Sadly the end result is often still that, the economically benefit of huge companies systematic breaking the law, outweighs their penalties. I mean they often do calculate the most likely level of penalties into their cost-benefit analysis.
(1): Through it should be noted that this is about effective power, not theoretic power. It isn't rare through history to have people which theoretically are autocrats with absolute power, but practically the power is spread quite widely and in turn them having a brain fart, mental decline, megalomaniac, irrational hate against some groups of people etc. didn't lead directly to atrocities being committed.
You are describing free markets, I think, not capitalism. Capitalism is when rich people control everything, and we've achieved that.
That usually corrects itself too, eventually.