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Comment by logicchains | Hacker News Reader

>while contributing nothing themselves

They contribute a service, in this case a search engine that's miles ahead of its closest competitor, Bing. They don't "take" anything, they offer something that you're free not to use. Unlike nation states, which are happy to take whatever they want (claiming they're owed it for providing you things you may never have asked for, which are paid for by other people potentially against their will, and for which you're probably not allowed to solicit alternative providers) and your only option if you don't like it is to emigrate.

Google doesn't throw black people in prison for recreational drug use, Google doesn't prevent people from marrying who they want, Google doesn't send people to die fighting pointless wars in the middle east, or drone bomb weddings.

>but if I have to pay company tax, why don't they

If you're uncomfortable with how much taxes you pay, then blame whoever's taxing you, not Google.

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Google aren't in France in order to better serve up search results - that can be done from anywhere. Google are in France to sell advertising, they are carrying on a business selling services to French companies.

One of the big things in the UK was Google claiming they sold all their adverts from the Republic of Ireland not the UK and thus could pay Irish taxes. This was despite having lots of sales staff at their London office...

>Google aren't in France in order to better serve up search results - that can be done from anywhere. Google are in France to sell advertising, they are carrying on a business selling services to French companies.

This doesn't contradict my point that Google are providing service to people (or the businesses people run) in France.

Except Google was heavily dependent on funding from various branches of the USG in its early stages. Search for it.

> case a search engine that's miles ahead of its closest competitor, Bing

Thats debatable. Any blind studies?

>Except Google was heavily dependent on funding from various branches of the USG in its early stages. Search for it.

But that funding could have came from anywhere. Just because the government funded something, doesn't mean that the thing would never be funded if the government didn't fund it.

>Thats debatable. Any blind studies?

Entirely anecdotal, but I've never met anyone who tried Bing and didn't switch back to Google after finding it flounders with more complex searches.

I'm not sure how one'd go about designing such a study, to avoid favouring one search engine by inadvertently testing queries it's more suited to (or picking people who make queries more suited to one than the other). Or how quality of results would be measured.

One somewhat empirical measure: Google has a much larger market share.

By the same logic Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo (much better for technical searches) could provide Google's services if they disappeared from the face of the earth.

The USG was wise enough to fund them when they were extremely risky.

What I meant was Google's founders could still have founded it without government money, it would just have taken them longer to obtain the funding.

Money isn't enough to make a search engine; Baidu for instance has the Chinese government behind it but still produces worse results even for Chinese language searches than Google. Bing's had quite a lot of funding from Microsoft put into it.

Even besides that early governmental founding. Companies aren't created nor exist in a vacuum.

Tax payer's money payed for most of the infrastructures, research and education those companies requires to operate.

How can you run a company like Google or any other without educated employees, roads, internet, etc.

Entrepreneurs love to think they built themselves alone, but they are just a product of the society they lives in.

Now as a society you can choose to either socialize or privatise your infrastructures, but you'll have to pay for them either way.

Do you need blind studies to know that you like Chocolate? To know that it's raining?

Yes, a study could show that Bing's results are x% less useful that Google's, but who would want to keep using Bing long enough to quantify the suck?

How scientific of you! :)

> but who would want to keep using Bing long enough to quantify the suck?

20% of the market?

Even if we believe the 20% figure, what's the chance that they made that choice?

Considering Microsoft popularized the dark pattern of changing preferences during auto-updates...

Sigh.

> Even if we believe the 20% figure,

Those are widely accepted.

> Considering Microsoft popularized the dark pattern of changing preferences during auto-updates...

You think Google never does anything like that?

http://hothardware.com/news/google-paid-apple-1-billion-for-...

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/eu-accuses-google-antitrust-vio...

> According to the complaint, Google requires companies that want to bundle Google’s apps with their products to make Google Search the default search engine on those devices. They’re even offered financial incentives to not even include any other search engines, European authorities allege.

When Google does it, it is all kosher I guess.

>> the 20% figure,

> Those are widely accepted.

Almost every time I saw IE, or MSN, and now Bing, I'd been tricked into using it.

MS users are rarely voluntary users, I know because I've been one.

> When Google does it

You're getting pretty defensive. Does that means you admit MS does it and the only defense is that other companies might as well?

What's your estimate of people who have tried two or more search or mapping engines and have intentionally settled on the Microsoft product?

> You're getting pretty defensive.

You are the one fetishizing Google. I know MS and Google are both slimy. Google just has a better PR machine.

> and the only defense

I am not defending MS.

> What's your estimate of people who have tried two or more search or mapping engines and have intentionally settled on the Microsoft product?

Most normal people don't know what a search engine and just go with the default.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/google-a-web-browser-is-not...

http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/17/yeah-what-is-a-browser-anyw...

> Most normal people don't know what a search engine and just go with the default.

Exactly. Microsoft's users are there because they don't know about the alternatives or are locked in.

> You are the one fetishizing Google. I know MS and Google are both slimy. Google just has a better PR machine.

I see, it is a personal thing for you.

I was just saying that Microsoft's services are essentially unusable. That's not because of Bill or Ballmer, but because Bing is just bad.

The only reason I'm mentioning dark patterns is to say that it's 20% with all the cheating they can do. Not because one in five people thinks their offering has value.

Google makes money in France. Given France's economy size, it's probably billions. They need to pay taxes to the french government for the privilege of doing business there, so the government can sped it on schools and other infrastructure, so the french citizens can be prosperous.

The idea that doing business is a "privilege" granted by the state is exactly why France's economy is famously bad, with unemployment double that of the UK.

Is doing business not a privilege elsewhere? In the US you need to register your business and pay taxes (money from corporations are doubly taxed as well). The only businesses here who don't do that are drug dealing / crime enterprises.

> money from corporations are doubly taxed as well

No they are not. Money is always taxed when it changes ownership, as corporations are legal persons, it pays taxes on its profit. When shareholders are given some of that profit via dividends, that money is again changing ownership so it taxed as income to those shareholders. Saying something is double taxed is to misunderstand "when" tax applies. If you don't want company earnings taxed that way, don't be a C corp, but it isn't double taxing.

Double taxation isn't just some vague term I made up: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/double_taxation.asp

What you described is commonly referred to as double taxation. I merely pointed out that this is more evidence that businesses are legal entities defined by the government. If businesses weren't legal entities, this wouldn't be an issue.

However you could have noted that most corporate money is dished out as salaries and bonuses, which isn't taxed twice because the company can deduct it as a business expense.

> What you described is commonly referred to as double taxation

Yes, just as liberals are referred to as leftists by conservatives, it's an inaccurate and derogatory means of referring to a perfectly normal tax practice whose sole purpose is intended to make the listener think it's unfair by glossing over the fact that money is taxed when it changes hands, not when it's earned. Anyone who calls it double taxation is participating in partisan propaganda and intentionally spreading ignorance.

Hmm, wasn't aware of that. I learned it in my econ textbook in high school, so I assumed it was standard terminology. My intention wasn't to offend, and I personally have no issue with the practice.

This idea is in place for every government, everywhere in world, at any point in history.

Can you cite that? That's certainly not the opinion of ~50% of Americans

Which might explain why Americans are driven slave labor with little to no protections and a laughable excuse for social safety net.

Just because an opinion is majority, does not make it intelligent, nor right.

>the government can sped it on schools and other infrastructure, so the french citizens can be prosperous.

One of the fundamental take-homes of economics is that government spending is not what makes people prosperous. It may help achieve social outcomes, slice the pie more evenly, but not make it bigger. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP..., and cross reference against tax rates; most of the countries above France have lower tax/government spending. Singapore, with a purchasing-power adjusted per-capita GDP double that of France, has a top tax rate of 20%, and unlike some of the other top countries on that list doesn't have any significant supply of natural resources to fund government spending.

I'm not even sure why you saying this. Google does not pay its taxes in France.

Education, healthcare and law enforcement is what makes people prosperous. How do you propose to have them without taxes?

Or are you saying that French government spends enough already and thus Google should avoid paying taxes if they don't feel like it?

>Education, healthcare and law enforcement is what makes people prosperous. How do you propose to have them without taxes?

>Or are you saying that French government spends enough already and thus Google should avoid paying taxes if they don't feel like it?

I'm saying Google's paid all the taxes it's legally required to pay and has no moral compulsion to pay any extra.

But yes, I do believe the French government spends enough already. If Singapore, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Switzerland can achieve better education, health and crime rate outcomes than France although they have less government spending, maybe the French State should work on spending what it has more efficiently rather than just trying to take more and more.

>I'm saying Google's paid all the taxes it's legally required

You don't know that. The court will say if this is true or not. How can you make this judgement? Do you have a law degree? Do you have experience in international tax law? Have you seen all the relevant paperwork?

>But yes, I do believe the French government spends enough already

This is not pertinent to the case. If you want the french government to tax less, go and vote for it. Campaign for it. What would happen if everybody disregards any law they don't agree with?

> What would happen if everybody disregards any law they don't agree with?

About the same thing that would happen if someone government used a "because we don't like it" clause to arbitrarily punish legal behavior. Essentially an anarchy where legality depends on the media-savvy lying to everyone else rather than the text or the intent of the law.

Get too successful and you'll be cut down to size by the jealous, and by those promising your money to them.

Pardon me if I see both of those as wrong, not only the one.

Google sells ads through auctions, primarily. Do the auctions take place in France?

One would imagine, that these are adverts served to French people by companies that want to sell products in France.

The advert cost is based on views (I.E. eyeballs, of said French people in France).

That's not answering the question at all. The service being sold is an auction. Who owns the machines that run the auctions? Google France?

Governments tax generated income or goods sold or imported. Your question is non pertinent.

And France deserves a piece of this? That's silly. Like saying that Comcast deserves a piece of what I pay to Netflix.

But robbing Peter to pay Paul is a valid political decision because you only have be appear to be doing something...

The idea that France is owed a piece of all media-spend directed towards french people is disgusting and legally unsupportable.

The only reason it's even a debatable issue is that they forced Google to redirect the .com domain to the .fr domain for IPs geo-located in France. No country can be trusted with this power because this is only where it starts.

This is just pointless drivel. Do you understand why taxation exists at all? Government is not some arbitrary institution that just sits there and gets money. The government is the people. The french people say "if you want to do business with us, you have to pay for the privilege". The government is the vehicle to facilitate this. Less Ayn Rand, more real economics and politics before criticizing, please.

Why the government of France though? Their only involvement is that people are advertising to French people.

The French people have already been taxed to build-out the shared infrastructure, and have payed tax ISP, etc, and will be taxed on any purchases. So why should their government get yet another cut? And of things being done in other countries.

> The government is the people. The french people say "..."

The French people did not ask to be locked into the .fr portal. That's the only way this scheme works.

When Trump is elected (or maybe Hillary) will you roll over and accept everything they demand, justifying it as the will of the people? Or do you recognize that the government very frequently acts for the good of the politicians and against the people. Up-front tax money is good for politicians; look at them, raising money, and fighting the good fight. But long-term they've just built internet walls that will be used for oppression and destroyed the goose that laid those golden eggs.

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