[Update] Google to be fined 5 billion dollars by the EU for breaching Antitrust laws

[ItsMitch]

S: Verge

 

Google is set to be slammed by the EU Regulators for violating Anti Laws in a ruling just announced. The EU Commission slammed Alphabet for abusing their market dominance and for forcing Chrome as the default browser. They went on further to state that Google blocked phone makers from creating devices that run on formed versions of Android.

 

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Bloomberg News reports that the European Commission has settled on a significant fine for Google’s Android app bundling that will be announced around 6AM ET today. The European Commission has accused Google of abusing its Android market dominance by bundling its search engine and Chrome apps into the operating system. Google has also allegedly blocked phone makers from creating devices that run forked versions of Android.

The 5 billion dollar fine is to be the largest Google has ever had, even beating out it's 2.7 Billion dollar fine from a few years ago where it abused search engine results.

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The European Commission has been investigating Android more closely over the past year after rivals complained that Google has been abusing its market dominance in software than runs on smartphones. 

The EU commissioner has been investigating Google for more than a year now and has finally made it's conclusion on the matter. Google as always, has the option to go through the EU courts to appeal. 

 

I'm fairly happy with this conclusion, Timothy left it's hand in the cookie jar and got stung hard when Mom came home. Little Timothy now has to face the big punishment of having no more cookies.

 

Google has yet to comment on the ruling. 

 

Update

Google has since responded to the fine

 

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“Android has created more choice for everyone, not less. A vibrant ecosystem, rapid innovation and lower prices are classic hallmarks of robust competition, Google spokesman Al Verney said Wednesday.

 

And it has said it'll be appealing to the EU courts over the fine. 

 

 

[Sfekke]

The EU is on a roll!

One new regulation after the other, fines left & right when do we start throwing punches & kicks

[dizmo]

So this year they make $2,000,000,000 instead of $7,000,000,000. I'm sure they're not happy, but let's face it, it's not that big of a deal to them.

If it wasn't profitable for them, they likely wouldn't have continued doing it knowing it angered foreign bodies.

[Tartandy]

6 minutes ago, Sfekke said:

The EU is on a roll!

One new regulation after the other, fines left & right when do we start throwing punches & kicks

Makes me proud to be in a union that actually serves the people. For another year at least... Thanks brexit!

[Sfekke]

4 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Might as well just fine all criminals $1000 and do jack all to prevent them from repeating an offence.

Isn't that what we do lol

We fine them -> put them in some brick house with others for X amount of time.

Then we let them loose .. what do we expect?

[dizmo]

8 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Useless. EU just after money.

If they actually cared for the people, they would have instead make a rule that any browser that comes with any computer/smart device must be completely removable and replaceable without difficulty (unless being locked into specific browser is explicitly requested by customer, or part of its selling feature)

 

Might as well just fine all criminals $1000 and do jack all to prevent them from repeating an offence.

Sounds like Canada.

[Sfekke]

1 minute ago, huilun02 said:

Put Google in a brick house with others for X amount of time

The man with a plan!

Ladies & Gentleman lets get the pink/plush handcuffs and arrest everyone at Google including their AI which we'll lock up in DigiJail Where all naughy robots/AI go!

[Sfekke]

11 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

I was thinking something along the lines of outright banning the distribution of Chrome for a while

But .. but I actually love Chrome and I couldn't bare using FireFox because habits

[Sfekke]

7 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Then you use a Chromium based alternative

Vast majority of which can use Chrome extensions as if it was Chrome

Mhh I should take a look at it, maybe I'll switch since Chrome memory usage is bugging me a little.

Especially since I come from Devils Canyon with DDR3 and recently upgraded to Coffee Lake with DDR4 but prices are insane so I only got 16GB's instead of a cheaper CPU.

Coming from 32GB's it hurts .. a lot lol

Keep in mind I'm experimenting with VM's a lot while doing the usual tasks.

[mrthuvi]

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They went on further to state that Google blocked phone makers from creating devices that run on formed versions of Android.

Hmmm... Doesn't this have a point in term of security?

[Arika]

1 hour ago, SC2Mitch said:

The EU Commission slammed Alphabet for abusing their market dominance and for forcing Chrome as the default browser

i dont get it. microsoft does this with edge and apple do this with safari. and you can change the default browser on all 3 (at least on my phone you can)

[Spotty]

1 hour ago, SC2Mitch said:

The European Commission has accused Google of abusing its Android market dominance by bundling its search engine and Chrome apps into the operating system.

So is this like a few years ago where the EU made Microsoft no longer able to install Internet Explorer as default browser when installing Windows 7 because it was 'anti competitive'?

[Genuine question and not just a PCvsMac debate], but if this applies to Google for including its assistant/search engine and Chrome browser in its android OS, then shouldn't this also apply to Apple for including Siri and Safari in iOS? What's the distinction between Apple doing it and Google doing it?

 

It's easily argued that a search engine and web browser are essential for the level of functionality that a user of a smart phone would expect, and as such makes sense that the OS creators would include software for that purpose bundled in with their OS. I don't see a problem with what Google was doing at all.
If I buy a new smart phone I don't want to have to go find an app for a web browser, and app for a search engine, a camera app, a calendar app, a clock app, an alarm app, etc. I expect it to come with such functionality built in out of the box, and the way they achieve that is with default apps. If I want to download an alternative app to do those functions, then I can do so on the app store. I would be pretty pissed if my new $1000+ smartphone didn't have a web browser pre-installed out of the box.

[ItsMitch]

10 minutes ago, Arika S said:

i dont get it. microsoft does this with edge and apple do this with safari. and you can change the default browser on all 3 (at least on my phone you can)

I think it's also to do with the fact you can't uninstall chrome from Android devices too, like, it's literally impossible (as far as I know you're unable to do this with Android 8 and Developer Beta) 

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

I'm sure they're not happy, but let's face it, it's not that big of a deal to them.
If it wasn't profitable for them, they likely wouldn't have continued doing it knowing it angered foreign bodies.

It is a big deal. To put it in perspective, it is 4.5% of their last year revenue. Not income, but revenue. To put it even more in perspective, Alphabet's net income was $12.66 billion last year. 

[Arika]

4 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

I think it's also to do with the fact you can't uninstall chrome from Android devices too, like, it's literally impossible (as far as I know you're unable to do this with Android 8 and Developer Beta) 

aah ok. that makes sense.

[vorticalbox]

4 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

I think it's also to do with the fact you can't uninstall chrome from Android devices too, like, it's literally impossible (as far as I know you're unable to do this with Android 8 and Developer Beta) 

You may not be able to remove it without root but you can disable it, same for all "system" apps aka crap manufactories install as default.

[porina]

28 minutes ago, Arika S said:

i dont get it. microsoft does this with edge and apple do this with safari. and you can change the default browser on all 3 (at least on my phone you can)

I think the difference is that here, Google is seen as being in a dominant position.

 

As for the fine and judgement, the detail will be in the legalese and I'm not sure I'm motivated enough to dig through that. My gut feeling is that Google and Android does offer choice, there's the Google full fat Android experience, or you can roll your own through AOSP (right letters, not necessarily in the right order). So it will be interesting if that argument was made and why that wasn't considered sufficient by the EU.

[NelizMastr]

1 hour ago, Sfekke said:

 

We fine them -> put them in some brick house with others for X amount of time.

 

And give them playstations and TV's while they're in there. Yay!

[Spotty]

6 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

And give them playstations and TV's while they're in there. Yay!

You can't do that. That's anti-competitive and would drive up sales of playstation games and accessories and hurt the sale of games, consoles, and peripherals of other manufacturers and developers in the marketplace. You would need to put them in jail and give them the option of choosing their preferred gaming system - PC, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, etc.

[lewdicrous]

The only solution google can think of is making Chrome use even more RAM..

[sof006]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

So this year they make $2,000,000,000 instead of $7,000,000,000. I'm sure they're not happy, but let's face it, it's not that big of a deal to them.

If it wasn't profitable for them, they likely wouldn't have continued doing it knowing it angered foreign bodies.

This will hurt Google. It's a lot of money, no company wants to be fined, especially this kind of money. Also more than a fine it's bad publicity.

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Useless. EU just after money.

If they actually cared for the people, they would have instead make a rule that any browser that comes with any computer/smart device must be completely removable and replaceable without difficulty (unless being locked into specific browser is explicitly requested by customer, or part of its selling feature)

 

Might as well just fine all criminals $1000 and do jack all to prevent them from repeating an offence.

EU did fine Microsoft for bundling Microsoft Media related technologies and stuff with Windows 8/8.1. that's why if you bought Windows 8/8.1 in EU, it would not have  and Microsoft Media related technologies and stuff installed, but if you bought it in US, it did.

[ItsMitch]

5 minutes ago, sof006 said:

This will hurt Google. It's a lot of money, no company wants to be fined, especially this kind of money. Also more than a fine it's bad publicity.

So far it's not really hurting them in the pre-market stocks. Investors don't seem that interested so far. Who knows what will happen later. Good time to keep a eye out though

[ItsMitch]

Update

Google has since responded to the fine

Quote

“Android has created more choice for everyone, not less. A vibrant ecosystem, rapid innovation and lower prices are classic hallmarks of robust competition, Google spokesman Al Verney said Wednesday.

And it has said it'll be appealing to the EU courts over the fine. 

[NelizMastr]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

You can't do that. That's anti-competitive and would drive up sales of playstation games and accessories and hurt the sale of games, consoles, and peripherals of other manufacturers and developers in the marketplace. You would need to put them in jail and give them the option of choosing their preferred gaming system - PC, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, etc.

Dutch prisons do it anyway. Sue them all!