I love that the EU is cracking down on tech, but I also wish the US government could get in on that awesome rake.
Google: $2.7 billion
Apple: $14.34 billion
Google 2024 Revenue: $328.28B
Apple 2024 Revenue: $385.60B
Iโm sure theyโll behave in the future thanks to these Big finesโฆ
Revenue doesnโt equal profit. Appleโs 2023 net profit was 96b, so a 14b fine is a substantial portion of their overall profits (~15%).
Of course, theyโre not hurting by any stretch of the imagination, 82b is still a STUPID amount of money, but we should be getting the facts and numbers correct
And in Appleโs case theyโre just being forced to pay back taxes, not even any fines. Theyโre basically undoing an illegal tax break from Ireland, which has spent $10 million in legal fees to fight against receiving it. Technically the Irish government is the one that fucked up here. Apple will have to pay and move forward paying a normal tax rate.
Iโve said it before, Iโll say it every time itโs proven again: US consumers get more protection from tech company overreach from EU courts than our own. Our agencies need to have big gnarly angelfish teeth, not this wrist slapping โas long as you share the profits itโs basically legalโ nonsense.
That would require political system changes like making party anonymous donations illegal, putting them all on registers and setting max legal amount to $1000 per entity or something realistic. Then change preference system. The list goes on. Itโs a system setup to bias corporate and โspecialโ (rich) interest.
Honestly starting with the re-overturning of โmoney is peopleโ also known as Citizens United would be a good start. This act more or less made it so money is considered free speech which allowed any type of Corporation to spend as much as they want on political groups, it was spearheaded as a thing that the country needed to avoid blocking things such as smear campaigning your opponent. But what it actually did was more or less remove the $5,000 limit that packs and super packs had on financing campaigns and and political donations, because all the Super PAC has to do now is say they arenโt politically aligned with a party and they can just funnel as much money into that party as they like, which obviously puts any party that remotely goes against profit(in most cases the democratic party because they generally want more social styled programs) at a significant disadvantage
Not to mention the federal committees that were intentionally implemented to stop corruption that happened within the government because we knew that we couldnโt be trusted to deal with important things such as communication and Airline Administration are being gutted by the same system that was supposed to protect them. While everyoneโs using the excuse of well theyโre not doing anything so why have them. Theyโre not doing anything because they canโt, hell the FCC has tried and the court system is saying they donโt have the right to rule over the department that theyโre a committee over. Itโs ridiculous
Iโm glad that corporations are actually receiving fines that are commensurate with their earnings and scale. Hopefully itโs enough to get them to not do this shit.
This is still a footnote on their quarterly reports. These are multi trillion companies.
You say that like Iโm unaware - maybe I should needlessly remind you that most of these fines are generally in the millions of dollars. A step in the right direction is not a bad thing.
Regardless, Iโm not sure shareholders will think of it that way if the anti-trust practices continue and the fines accrue. The EU likes to be punitive when their orders are ignored.
google is fighting the eu and the ftc at the same time lol
