https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/google-eu-android-fine.html

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/alphabet-earnings-android-antitrust-fine-wi...



I think the EU bureaucratic crew has finally reached some sort of tolerance limits with Trump and the USA.  The EU bureaucrats have flipped over into some sort of pure punishment mode and are now full on attacking US tech companies like Google.    

Google just got tagged for another 5 billion worth of EU fines.   Apple did not get any fines this time around.   Why?   Because Apple owns their OS system outright and licenses it out by hardware purchase only, so they can be as restrictive with it as they want to be by current laws worldwide.

Google attempts to remain a freely distributed FOSS based organization, gives their stuff away for free to everybody and gets PENALIZED by the Billions for doing that.   Go figure.

Google gets shite upon for BILLIONS because they sell ads and want you to use their free OS and the free infrastructure that they provide for free (even the parts they do own outright they give away for free to end users to use) so you can have the readily affordable phone to do all that ad viewing on.  

This is somehow non-competitive because they don't charge any $$$ for it.    I guess because it is free and free is too hard to compete against ?????

Admittedly, giving it away for free then insisting carriers use all the necessary chunks of it so everything will work correctly puts Google in a bad spot as every odd supporting requirement becomes a regulate-able issue with the EU.    

FOSS Android is becoming much harder to support, accordingly.    Free and Open Source Android may become unsupportable, actually, especially since the EU likes to fine Google for Billions and Billions and Billions every year now.

https://liliputing.com/2018/07/report-googles-fuchsia-could-eventually-replac...

There will be a lot more on this over the next few weeks I am sure, but I can give one immediate response from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Android/Chrome OS chief Hiroshi Lockheimer that has already happened.  

The number of full time Googlers working full time on Fuchsia jumped from ~40-45 up to well over 100 people literally over a two day period.

There are rumors popping up all over the place of 2-3-5 year completion deadlines out there now for Fuchsia (as it would run on Chromebooks, Tablets and Phones in that order).

The Linux and FOSS and Apache communities will all see these latest EU actions in different lights, but they all would agree what the EU actually did was very destructive of the trust environment that FOSS requires as an overall thing.  

Attacking FOSS Google on a whim means the EU can attack them next.

Who benefits from this big EU fine?   Track the money, see where it goes ......    

TO THE POCKETS OF THE VARIOUS EU BUREAUCRAT AGENCIES !!!!

EU internal $$$ greed seems to be the answer and "because they can" is a large part of it, to be sure.


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Who exactly complained and what was their real beef with Google?

Duck Duck Go is the only one who has come forth so far, and their viewpoint is that Google squeezes them out from any form of excellence by controlling the entire environment.

Seeing Google painted with the MS paintbrush is painful to me somehow, but I can see their point.  Every tweek Google does to make their own stuff work better, whether they give it away immediately for free or not, puts the little guys like Duck Duck Go at a further disadvantage.   They are free too, but not nearly as good in all (and any) particulars you can name.

How bad is it for Duck Duck Go?   They are the default browser on Linux Mint, installed by default as they are pure FOSS and are fairly good at what they do in sort of an old school fashion.   NOBODY USES THEM IN THE  REAL WORLD as Google is simply so so much better at all (and any) particular items you want to name.

Everyone loads up Google and then deletes Duck Duck Go from Linux Mint (now you have to actually go to Google's own website to get the Google to put it on your machine as Linux Mint won't even put Google in their repository) and everyone also loads up all of the related Google packages because you will use all of them (occasionally) if you want all the Google stuff that you have become used to to work correctly.  

Clem and the boys at Linux Mint currently reflect all sorts of extreme anti-Google bias attitudes  but nobody is suing them over Linux Mint's obvious bias situation.   Me, I just deal with it when I load up a new Mint revision.   Delete the default crap, put Google back in place.   Takes about 15 minutes to do.   I like Mint, but it works a lot better using Google search and Maps and Drive and all the rest of the Google stuff.


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Pundits are discussing this situation.   A lot.

Points made so far is that Google is so huge now that the recent astronomical fines only represent a few weeks worth of cash flow from ONLY the EU part of the market share that Google has already.    The fine is big enough to ruin the current quarter for Google as Google already booked the whole 5.1 Billion dollar fine all in a lump sum as a current regulatory debt since that is the US common practice.   Expect USA stockholders to be really pissed at the EU and be pushing at politicians to do something about it.

Google basically will work on appealing the fines, trying to refine what the heck it is that the EU actually wants them to go do about the situation, and then they will go do it.

Duck Duck Go is a nice little company, but they are so small it makes no sense to try to protect them against Google "competitively".    Not only are they not even vaguely competitive in any real sense, they are totally DEPENDENT on Google to exist.    So is Firefox.   Both FOSS companies depend on the monthly hits money check from Google to pay their bills each month.

A starfish on the beach in the tidal pools cannot be protected from ocean waves or from getting wet ......   Suing the Ocean is theoretically possible, but sorta futile as the starfish actually lives in the water that the ocean provides.   This is Duck Duck Go's and Firefox's situation.

It makes up an interesting Quandry .....    BTW,  Duck Duck Go gets none of the big 5 billion in fine money, the fine gets split up between the EU's bureaucrats.   That's the greed part, I guess.  EU Bureaucratic greed.

If the EU forces Google to go to licensing their products, Google can do that.    If the EU forces Google to not pre-install anything in the Android OS as provided in the EU, Google could do that.   Heck, Google would still get manually installed by most users, who would then bitche about having to do the work to go do that manual installation.

Go to the extreme, the EU outlaws Google Android completely and nobody can use it in the EU.   Then you got China all over again, it lasts about 2 days and the Chinese people quietly go get what they can use out of the Google packages off the internet and put them back on their new phones by side loading it.

Google could pack up their servers and depart the EU territories completely, and simply let the EU go hang.   This is EXACTLY what Google did in China when the China gov started with their big fines and their punitive this and that.  This one appeals to me, personally, but it isn't workable for a variety of reasons.   People would die in European hospitals and clinics because internet medical searches on mobile phones suddenly quit working (yep, people use that stuff all the time for important items).

This item now becomes a political issue for the EU's citizens to ring in upon.

The EU acts in ways that repress their citizens a lot, actually, as their EU bureaucracy spins more and more to its own tune instead of following the law of reason or any of the disparate laws internal laws or the wishes of the various EU nations.  

But this is what they get when they let Brussels run the show for all of them.

Sundar Pichai has no response here that doesn't piss somebody off somewhere in the world no matter what he does.   He knows that.   So he waits calmly.

Google took down the "Do No Evil" motto because they find they do evil in somebody's eyes all the time.   Simply because they did something.

It will be interesting to see what Google does and what the resolution actually becomes.