EU vs Google

ZeroHedge reports that the EU is doing the job America’s DOJ won’t do: bring antitrust actions against Google.

Shares of Google parent Alphabet are in the red on Wednesday morning as European Union antitrust regulators unveiled a record €4.3 billion ($5 billion) fine against the tech giant for allegedly anti-competitive practices related to Google’s Android operating system. The wide-ranging probes into Alphabet have been a primary focus of Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s famously aggressive competition commissioner, since she was first appointed to the role in 2014.

Wednesday’s fine follows a then-record 2.4 billion euro ($2.8 billion) levied by Vestager last year over allegations that Google’s search feature unfairly benefited its comparative-shopping service.

When small-souled globalist technocrats fight each other, the world wins.

It’s embarrassing, really. The worst Google is facing here in the US is James Damore’s class action lawsuit. However, while Trump’s obstinate bureaucracy can’t be bothered to tackle the tech oligarchs that are strangling American public life, GEOTUS may have factored into the EU’s decision-making process.

Of course, the size of the latest fine is certainly notable, and begs the question: Is the bloc using these fines to retaliate against the US tech industry and President Trump for his refusal to grant a permanent exemption to the EU from the US’s tariffs on aluminum and steel imports? Like China, which is also employing similar “stealth” retaliatory measures, the bloc also has a massive trade surplus of roughly $150 billion with the US.

If the EU is slapping Google with a five billion dollar fine in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs, it either means 5D chess is real, or the President’s mere existence has whipped his enemies into such a frothing rage that they’re turning on each other in their impotence.

And the EU is hitting hard.

While the fine is immense by most standards, it’ll hardly dent Alphabet’s profits. To wit, the company earned $5 billion every 16 days in 2017 based on its reported revenue of $110.9. But the size of the fine is a secondary concern for Google: What’s worse is an accompanying order that will force Google to allow phone manufacturers to choose non-Google apps to be pre-installed on Android phones. For app developers, this could be a huge opportunity, considering that 80% of the world’s smartphones run Android.

The Justice Department should strike now and force Google to fight on three fronts. They won’t, but ZeroHedge hints at how Trump himself could turn up the heat on the tech giants that hate him.

While antitrust investigations of Alphabet in the EU date back at least eight years, the bloc launched its investigation of Android in 2015 following a complaint from a lobbying group. Seeing as this fine is nearly double the previous one, it begs the question: will Vestager go for broke and slap Alphabet with an even larger fine when the EU renders its judgment on its probe into Google’s AdSense service, which the EU claims was used to block other rivals in online search advertising?

Perhaps that will depend on how Trump responds: whether he backs down on his aggressive EU trade policy – unlikely – or doubles down.

That’s not even a false binary. Trump can goad his enemies into eating each other simply by doing nothing. And it will be beautiful. Stock up on popcorn.

P.S. Congressional Republicans’ inaction against Big Tech, apart from a bit of kabuki theater for the plebs, is smoking gun proof they want to lose. The real electoral interference isn’t Russian bots buying anti-Hillary Facebook ads. It’s Facebook itself, plus Google, Twitter, et al. actively muzzling Republican voters.

Fat lot of good it’ll do them when the Democrat Party pulls out all the stops in its metamorphosis into the anti-white, anti-law and order, anti-peace party. Leftist insanity will drag Republicans kicking and screaming across the finish line. Hopefully they wise up and start fighting back before insane Leftists drag them somewhere less pleasant.