My understanding of the press release is that Google is fined for merging its supply-side (AdX) and its demand-side (Doubleclick For Publishers) plateforms into Google Ad Manager in a way which heavily advantages AdX users on Doubleclick For Publishers.
As part of the settlement negociation, Google has agreed to improve interoptability with other SSP.
As with the €2bn EU case with similar findings, the fine itself is the least interesting part. Google is clearly willing to spend much more than this for a lot less to maintain their position in the ad market.
What matters is the changes google has to make as a result. We haven't seen much of a muchness on this front so far. If the trend continues, antitrust (particularly european antitrust) will be more of a pseudo taxation system for monopolies than about trustbusting, regulation or whatnot. If so, I suggest we raise the rates.
Wouldn’t enforcing action be bette than raising rates? The amount of innovation google is stifling with their hand on both sides of the market must be significant at this point, I doubt the online ad market has many new startups in it at this point.
Yes, that was tongue in cheek. Honestly though, I don't really think its a job for courts. Courts have a role, but they're there to enforce laws, not enact policies.
Note that this fine is a settlement, it was negotiated and accepted by Google and the french watchdog. Some say it's because of how low-balling it is compared to actual damage.
Google's Q1 2021 revenue was $55.1bn [0]. So EUR220m is 0.4% of one quarter's revenue.
Commercially at least, that's basically a noise-level cost of doing business. It might be that it instigates a change in market dynamics but we'll have to see.
More generally, it is another example of the growing sentiment against the big tech players - and one of the few (thus far) that have come to conclusion.
I'm assuming the $55.1bn is international, not just in France. What was its revenue in France? What would its profit look like if other nations fined it similarly?
We don't need a single nation to fine FAANG or others "once and for all" on behalf of all nations. We need every nation fining them over and over again for each offense.
Google declared 440m revenues in France in 2018. So that's 50% of its official yearly income.
Of course, this was a fiction, that was attacked in court, Google settled this one for 1 billion in 2019.
The principle of the fines in France is that the first one is a warning, that serves to clarify rules that may not have seem obvious at first, but non compliance a second time can cost a lot.
It seems there have been quite a few fines like this recently, anyone have a running tally. I mean sure, it's only 0.4% of a quarter's revenue, but if your total fines is coming up on 4% of a quarter's revenue that might start to look like a warning - especially as you haven't started getting into real hefty gdpr fines yet.
Can someone explain to me the point of having a law that says "if you do this bad thing and we find you guilty, we'll fine you a tiny fraction of what you made from doing that thing"?
Because the fine isn't the interesting part of this settlement, this is:
> "Google proposed commitments aimed at improving the interoperability of the Google Ad Manager services with third-party ad server and ad serving platform solutions," the watchdog said.
> If the punishment for a crime is a fine, then it only applies to the poor.
If its a fixed fine that is not adjusted in either direction for ability to pay, or which maxes out at a level which only is meaningful to the poor, sure.
If the fine is ““Your net worth minus the lesser of half your actual average annual income from legal sources for the last five years or double the federal poverty level for an individual”, it doesn’t “only apply to the poor”.
Of course, most criminal fines do only apply to the poor, but that’s not inherent to fines, but just what fines look like when the law is intended to punish the poor to start with.
Often the meat of these agreements is the agreed behavior changes, not the fine. (It's very annoying that the articles often focus on the fines, rather than the rest of the agreement.)
Setting the fines at a level that doesn't cause endless appeals gets the behavior changes sooner, and may be more net efficient.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 74.0 ms ] threadThe press release is in French, but they usually release an English translation in the following hours. I'll update this comment when they do.
The press release (contains more details): https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/en/press-release/auto...
As part of the settlement negociation, Google has agreed to improve interoptability with other SSP.
https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/07/google-fined-220m-by-fre...
What matters is the changes google has to make as a result. We haven't seen much of a muchness on this front so far. If the trend continues, antitrust (particularly european antitrust) will be more of a pseudo taxation system for monopolies than about trustbusting, regulation or whatnot. If so, I suggest we raise the rates.
Commercially at least, that's basically a noise-level cost of doing business. It might be that it instigates a change in market dynamics but we'll have to see.
More generally, it is another example of the growing sentiment against the big tech players - and one of the few (thus far) that have come to conclusion.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267606/quarterly-revenue...
We don't need a single nation to fine FAANG or others "once and for all" on behalf of all nations. We need every nation fining them over and over again for each offense.
Of course, this was a fiction, that was attacked in court, Google settled this one for 1 billion in 2019.
The principle of the fines in France is that the first one is a warning, that serves to clarify rules that may not have seem obvious at first, but non compliance a second time can cost a lot.
So it's not like this was just a cost of doing business to maintain the status quo, but a fine applied despite the changes they have to make.
If this starts to build up (fines + changes) seems better then nothing, or just fines alone.
There is no disincentive from what I can see...
> "Google proposed commitments aimed at improving the interoperability of the Google Ad Manager services with third-party ad server and ad serving platform solutions," the watchdog said.
Basically, this is threatening but not hurting. Yet
Google probably spends more on toilet paper.
This means the fine was too cheap.
If its a fixed fine that is not adjusted in either direction for ability to pay, or which maxes out at a level which only is meaningful to the poor, sure.
If the fine is ““Your net worth minus the lesser of half your actual average annual income from legal sources for the last five years or double the federal poverty level for an individual”, it doesn’t “only apply to the poor”.
Of course, most criminal fines do only apply to the poor, but that’s not inherent to fines, but just what fines look like when the law is intended to punish the poor to start with.
Would be great is everyone did. But as the rich are so good at dodging taxes, already, I imagine it wouldn't be as effective as desired.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...
Often the meat of these agreements is the agreed behavior changes, not the fine. (It's very annoying that the articles often focus on the fines, rather than the rest of the agreement.)
Setting the fines at a level that doesn't cause endless appeals gets the behavior changes sooner, and may be more net efficient.
Would it be far-fetched for fines to be part of an annual/quarterly budget?
- revenue 182B
- earnings 40B
The fine is 0.5% of their earnings or 0.12% of their revenue. Basically nothing.
They should start fining in the order of B not M