This. There is one thing to have a lawful evil like Putin, who acts rationally. You know if you give him Crimea or whatever, he will stop bombing Kiev, or if you buy his gas, he will not suicide your politicians. With Trump, it's just like throwing a dice each time. It doesn't matter what you do, might as well do what's good for you.

That's one read. For me it feels like practically (ASML, ARM, SAP not withstanding) their only "contribution" to tech is fines and exporting regulation. Sometimes this works out well (usb-c on iPhone), but most of the time it feels like if they want software, hardware, or the web to operate the way they want, perhaps they should try to actually produce some of it instead of being wholly reliant on others while also trying to dictate the terms. I also don't really feel like Trump will do anything, mainly because neither he, nor anyone else before him has any track record of attempting to block or slow EU overreach into US tech interests. Or maybe I'm just cranky and pessimistic.

The diaper baby is so full of noise it's best to just ignore him

Imagine regular laws worked that way, where a prior conviction is only relevant if it was for the exact same crime, and you can go around committing dozens of crimes and be treated like a first offender every time because this time you chose robbery and last time it was theft.

Actually you know that giving Putin Crimea won't stop him bombing Kiev, seeing as they gave him Crimea, and then he bombed Kiev to get Donetsk. He also suicided politicians while we were buying his gas.

"Once you pay the Danegeld, you'll never get rid of the Dane."

The current government has defied the supreme court many times. It can do this because the police force is controlled by the government, not by the supreme court, so it won't arrest the government.

The fines do scale with noncompliance, if Google were to continue to offend they would get a daily fine that is retroactively applied to the full duration.

Because the goal isn’t to punish, it’s to get them to do what the law wants them to do. The fine is supposed to be a slap on the wrist - the actual desired behaviour is compliance

And then there are no European hardware startups and your own options for hardware are Chinese and American, both with backdoors.

The same principle evoked in the rest of this thread, if the penalties match exactly or are under the profits you can generate by injuring (in the legal sense) EU citizens it's not really a penalty but rather a cost of business. Plus markets are very interconnected, especially the digital ones.

EU competition law is not framed around valuing Europeans more than others, it is framed around protecting competition and market functioning inside the EU.

No need to moralize it and pretend anyone is using this "value" European humans more than other humans.

India is doing 10% as well.

The reasoning is very simple just "carry a big stick", multinational companies need to fear the fines to want compliance.

Because they decided that way. Any other country in the world can decide the same thing but they don't have the same leverage as the EU. Google makes a lot of money in the EU.

The damages done that caused the fine are usually spread over multiple years.

I'd rather have that than insecure hardware. It seems like it forces security to be a first class priority instead of an afterthought.

You appear to be arguing with the assumption that "get the operators to comply" is false.

These companies do, in fact, change behaviour in response to such actions; they may hire lawyers to find and exploit as many loopholes as they can, but they do ultimately comply. Even X ultimately complied in response to Brazil, and the EU is a much more important market for Google than Brazil ever was for X.

(Why would you expect to get dollars from an EU settlement?)

It‘s nice to have such revenue to fund EU programs on digital sovereignty. European institutions give plenty of money to startups. You need an entry to the program, but when you are in, it can account for 50-70% or more in your early stage funding. And that‘s nice, because you keep more equity.

> I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim.

There's this standard assumption that HN users are well educated.

Budgets don't work like that. It's not like the US federal government collects taxes and then deposits bags of gold coins on people's doorsteps.

Taxes, fines, etc are all collected and then they mostly go to a general, undifferentiated budget which is then divided by the various ministries (departments, whatever).

So yes, if you're a EU citizen you did get the back. As roads, hospitals, research funding.

> I've never received a dollar from the EU as a victim.

This isn't a class action.