If they lost the case, and the appeal was dismissed, what is ‘alleged’ about it?

Sure. Which is why alternative stores like F-Droid are under threat now.

https://keepandroidopen.org/

Do the fines get reapplied for the 8 years that passed while they did nothing?

Google has what, 100B+ revenue in EU? This is a once-only, 4% fine from 8 years ago.

Still too little.

I'd say that with court ruling these are no longer alleged. Right?

Are they 'alledged', it seems the court doesn't think so!

I love how the US will just let companies walk all over their citizens and then criticize others for not letting it happen. "Please think of the poor multi billion dollar companies".

One could argue that if you provide an OS for free you can do that and should not be fined for it.

Imagine what these companies are doing in the US to their citizens, if ambassador is ready to defend them for violating rules/laws

Google is too big and enjoys a monopoly in too many connected sectors (browsers, mobile os, search, advertising, data). Should've been broken up long ago.

https://keepandroidopen.org

So then the EU signals how "tough" they are... Google pays for the cost of doing business in the EU... little people like us think that "we are fighting the big bad corporation", and all is good for one more year.

In all seriousness we need a couple more orders of magnitude before they'll listen or care.

Google needs to learn being monopolistic and anti-competitive makes less money than playing nice. Otherwise nothing will change.

And this is this cause for celebration and justification for more such legislation?

Thanks for reminding us not to rely on U.S. models as access to them might one day depend on letting U.S. companies break the law..

Can the EU force Google to divest Chrome and Android? They should.

We all see that Google does not care about fines.

It is time to:

a) split up Google b) but the responsible CEOs and higher ups to court c) allow competition to happen again by having basic laws that can not be bypassed by mega-corporations in general

I feel that our understanding of trust and antitrust, along with the legal and regulatory premises... Just isn't very useful in the 21st century.

I understand the motivation, and justification for employing antitrust. Google's business model, and much of modern tech economy is really all about Monopoly-like market power.

In fact, one of the main concerns for AI investors is price competition, insufficient lock-in, weak network effects and consumer choice. They call this commodification... a telling choice of word. It's a worry that $trn valuations are impossible without something resembling monopoly to ensure longevity and high margins.

Peter Thiel gave a talk in favour of monopoly. It's worth reading. Even if you completely disagree, there are some subtle points that are relevant either way. A company facing market dynamism, price competition... Is unlikely to be investing billions in speculative r&d, for example.

Our core ideas about Monopoly, and antitrust... Tend to be highly derived of the industrial revolution, which is in turn all about manufacturing. Capital, labor, technology, marginal costs, marginal utility, price theory, etc. you can count the number which it's coming off the assembling line to understand the productivity of the firm. The product is concrete, and therefore productivity can be reasoned about.

There's no real way of applying this to Google. Google's users generally don't pay anything. Google doesn't have marginal costs.There is no price. The AdWords auction, is very clearly designed assuming monopolistic dynamics.. the seller is price maker and the buyer is a price taker. Prices are set as close as possible to buyer marginal value. Competition has no effect on pricing.

Otoh, where is the EU or any other antitrust regulator going with any of this. In the 90s, the Microsoft Monopoly was the biggest antitrust case. They used their os Monopoly to crush Netscape.

Now that it's history, we can look back and learn that the antitrust case just didn't matter one way or another. Nothing was really gained by victory, and nothing would have been lost by defeat.

The theory appears to be (a) regulated capitalism is good (b) tech monopolies clearly have market power and abuse it. There is no theory of desired outcome or the benefits of such an outcome. Are they regulating monopolies, preventing monopolies, pursuing an abstract notion of Justice?