Hacker News Reader

Comment by strictnein | Hacker News Reader

At some point it seems like the US government needs to step in and somehow mediate these things. I'm sure it's incredibly popular to fine US companies huge sums of money in Europe, but this is starting to get out of hand.

View on HN

Like US is not doing it...

Google broke EU laws on purpose - their revenue is huge from European markets, thus they should pay a huge fine. As simple as that.

No, it's not "as simple as that". Deciding that a company owes 10% of its worldwide revenue because of something like this is not simple.

> Like US is not doing it...

They're not.

The US fined Deutsche Bank $14B & BNP $8B. That's how these things work at the moment.

Got it. Moving billions of dollars through the US between illicit governments and banned groups is totally the same as tweaking search results and should be fined in equivalent amounts.

The US only fined 5 billion to Goldman for the financial worldwide crisis.

That's peanuts

Ps. http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/goldman-sachs-doj-settlement/

Looking at this completely coldly and amorally... The governments aren't considered 'illicit' under French law. Perhaps search result manipulation isn't illegal under US law (I don't know). That's irrelevant as the laws of the land where the acts took place were broken. The companies breaking the laws must have known that and taken the risk anyway. They lost. They got fined. The more fines that happen the bigger the incentive for the other party to reciprocate.

One of them is about stealing money while the other one is about controlling your sources for information, products, and services that you apply to your everyday life. If anything, Google should pay more. They can either play by the rules the people give them or give up their monopoly on web search voluntarily. There is a reason we have antitrust laws.

In the case of BNP, deals were made by a french bank (not US jurisdiction) in its swiss branch (where stuff was legal, also not US jurisdiction).

The bank was not judged guilty, but entered a plea, specifically because of the way the US justice system is structured. The jurisdiction claim was therefore not evaluated.

What do you mean? If you don't want to be subject to EU judgement, don't do business in the EU. It's the same everywhere, European countries that enter the US have to follow US laws and obey US courts.

In the US a company wouldn't be fined $9 billion for "antitrust violations" simply because they may have tweaked their search results to favor their own products.

The US fined VW $2.8 billion for falsifying their emissions testing, a far more serious thing. That's less than 2% of global revenue.

Let's see if GM will be fined as well after latest findings... Destroying many other businesses with "antitrust violations" is also serious for many people loosing their jobs...

The fine is not $9 billion, that was a complete guess by Reuters. It's the classic "the max penalty in theory could be this", like reporting that a criminal "could face" life in prison even though in reality they'll get a couple years.

I don't understand your comparison to the US. Obviously EU courts do not follow US laws, they follow EU laws. If the laws are unfair, don't open a business there. For example, I think the blasphemy laws in Iran are unfair. The logical conclusion is to not go to Iran or at least not commit blasphemy there, not to go break the law and then complain that "this would never happen in America".

Sounds like the US should fine companies more for doing bad things, too, then. That sounds like a pretty straightforward solution to this terrible injustice.

(And besides: Google isn't an "American company" any more than any multinational. The EU is fining the European-incorporated arm of the company.)

The US already does this (one could say the US justice system is tailored for this, as foreign companies fall under jurisdiction without representation). There were calls for the EU to boost its fines as a consequence of this.

I was being a touch sarcastic. Everyone does this to enforce the laws in their jurisdiction.

That's simply not true. See http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistic... point 1.6. Of the companies hit with the 10 largest fines, none were from the US:

    Year     Undertaking**      Case                  Amount in €*
    2016     Daimler            Trucks               1 008 766 000
    2016     DAF                Trucks                 752 679 000
    2008     Saint Gobain       Carglass               715 000 000
    2012     Philips            monitor tubes          705 296 000
    2012     LG Electronics     monitor tubes          687 537 000
    2016     Volvo/Renault      Trucks                 670 448 000
    2016     Iveco              Trucks                 494 606 000
    2013     Deutsche Bank     (EIRD)                  465 861 000
    2001     Hoffmann-La Roche Vitamins                462 000 000
    2007     Siemens           insulated switchgear    396 562 500

Would you say the same thing if America fined China for its companies taking advantage of US citizens? Or is it selective sovereignty?

If they levied a $9 billion fine because of how a Chinese tech firm possibly manipulated search results? First, that wouldn't happen. Second, yes, I would.

The US would be fining the US arm of a Chinese company, and has already done so multiple times.

Similarly, China has fined a bunch of Chinese arms of foreign auto companies for monopoly issues around spare parts.

Fining companies heavily is something the EU learned from the US. Examples given : BNP $8bn fine a few years ago, WV just recently, etc.

What ground would the US have to defend their companies, when every time an euro country has tried to weight on these issues, the answer has been: "The justice system is separated from the executive" ?

VW's fine is equivalent to less than 2% of global revenue for a far more serious act.

BNP (which must be at the top of the search results when people are googling this) violated criminal law while illegally helping Sudan transfer vast sums to illicit and blacklisted groups through the US financial system.

Again, that was $9 billion for something far more serious than tweaking search results.

Google makes money in Europe, just like they do in the US. That's what this fine is about. If they don't like it, they can leave. Like they did with China, back in the day.

Markets have rules. Don't like the rules? Leave the market.

If Google were unreachable in Europe, this fine would not have existed.

Conspiracy theories would probably tell you that it's the retaliation of a string of Deutsche Bank's fines by the Fed in the last two years.

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=deutsche-bank+fine

[2]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/09/27/like-dodgy-pl...

What do you propose the US government actually do?

A multilateral treaty with Europe (you might call it a "Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership") would be one way to establish a process for dealing with such things. Those seem to be unpopular these days, what with them always putting America second and forever subjugating the sovereignty of the US to some poorly negotiated deal.

(Well, actually, they have for the last 70 years served American interests and had exit provisions that preserved sovereignty well enough)

I'm in favor of TTIP, so if that would help create a process to address this, then great.

A process to let US companies get away with abusing their monopoly position? No thanks.

I don't think Google is a US company for legal purposes. These violations, if there were any, were done by the European subsidy of Google.

It's also incredibly popular in the US to fine European companies, so to me this looks like tit for tat.

Do you have statistics to back this claim?

What claim did I make that would require statistical backing?

> I'm sure it's incredibly popular to fine US companies huge sums of money in Europe, but this is starting to get out of hand. reply

This claim

$9 billion is out of hand. I'm talking about the article.

First, no fine has been done.

Second, you're not answering what I have asked.

Do you have statistics about the EU fining more US companies than other companies?

You're free to google that for yourself. I'm not your research service.

> You're free to google that for yourself. I'm not your research service

So you don't have any source. Thanks, is what I thought.

By the way, I have done my research, and you're the one making a claim, you're the one that has to proof it

Why would you get downvoted for this exchange is beyond me. Believing that the European administration or courts act based on fashion is ridiculous.

I suppose that is information bias, only information about the EU fining US companies reaches USA

Reply on news.ycombinator.com