Good.

Still wait for Google to be punished for abusing it market position to push its browser in a much worse manner than Microsoft pushed IE back in the days.

For those who are new to this game: Microsoft was basically punished for bundling a browser with their operating system.

If that was punishable (and thankfully it was), what should we say about the worlds largest advertising company pushing their browser in ad spots so valuable that no others were ever allowed to touch them (the otherwise clean front page of Google)?

And of course: with its current behavior, MS should of course be punished again for its abusive use of a dominant position when it tries to stop people from downloading other browsers and tries to prevent people from setting other browsers as default.

“This significant penalty [...]" is it really a significant penalty when Google has deep coffers?

i've always wondered where the money is going in those kinds of trials.

It's supposed to be a compensation for damages to the consumers, but are the consumers ever getting any money from the fine ?

$60M seems a lot to normal people, but what if Google earned say $61M with that practice, therefore they were aware it would turn as a gain for them? I mean, the penalty should be of course proportional to the offense, but prosecutors should also calculate in some way the benefits so the penalty works as a serious deterrent in the future. Also, part of the fee should be compensation for the users involved, even if that would be a few bucks, as it's important they're made aware that they were lied to and how, so they can develop more resistance to false advertising or mistreatment of their personal data in the future.

$60M, provided they have 60M users, that means a penalty of $1 per user. And I bet they have more users than that, so that is why companies keep on doing this, because it is damn cheap.

This "[...] sends a strong message to [other] digital platforms [...]" that it is not possible to compete with any FAANG at these shady business battlefields. But these so called "penalties" just solidify these monopolies by raising the bar too high for everybody else but them. Virtue signalling at it's best.

$60M is "cost of doing business" for Google when they make something like $200B. Pocket change fines like encourage them to continue to break the law.

Call me back when the fines hit 25% of revenue earned. Then we'll see some changes.

>"“This significant penalty imposed by the Court today sends a strong message to digital platforms and other businesses, large and small, that they must not mislead consumers about how their data is being collected and used,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said"

This is a company that made $257 billion last year.[1] How is that penalty significant exactly? It's practically a rounding error. How does Gina Cass-Gottlieb make that statement with a straight face? I almost think these folks are more interested in putting a check in the win category in order to feather their resume than they are in trying to meaningfully deter these companies from these practices.

[1] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q4_alphabet_earnings...

Australia has had a thing against Google.

In Australia, News Corp (Rubert Murdoch) dominates the media landscape.[0] They have the power to dictate who wins elections and who loses. Thus, politicians bend to News Corp will.

One of the results of this dynamic is that politicians forced Google to start paying News Corp to show news links in Google News in Australia but not anywhere else in the world.[1]

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/fact-file-rupert-murd...

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/17/news-corp-agre...