EU's attack on technology

Do you want my opinion or do you want me to correct you on the stuff above?

A good bunch of it is not the way you described it.

I can go through every point you made and show you that its worth to read more than just the headlines of some articles on the internet if you want to.

But not today.

There is an attack on technology... yes... and to a very large amount it is justifiable.

again, not true

Michael, if you imply to know what I am going to say why do you even ask for an opinion?

I did never say that there is no fine, but what you wrote is still not correct.

Like I wrote, nice headlines but your conclusions (or where ever these conclusions come from) are wrong.

I also said:

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

But not today.

no, i wont be able to do that

because its relevant

I am fine with fines of big technology companies. And its not that you Michael cannot switch search engines or try to access other stores - its about that there plenty other normal users who dont know how this works - and i believe those numbers are much greater than those who know how all this works.

Also somehow these big tech companies needs to get involved into the communities - that is also bearing the financial costs to keep communities running. I mean they pay "most of" their taxes in the US and not in Europe (some just pay nearly nothing here) - but they use the infrastructure others have or had to build and pay and they make huge profits dealing with personal data which dont return to the public. This money can be used to invest in infrastructure or other culture stuff, the big companies dont do or avoid by shifting profits out of the reach of EU.

Ok, lets get started with it.

First off, you have a very negative and biased view on this topic. The bad EU which terrorizes the poor companies and does decisions without asking every citizen for their opinion.

If you ever want to understand what really happens you should get rid of this one-sided point of view.

As you might have noticed specific EU regulations even had an impact on this website and forced me to act. Yet, I am not willing to see it in a negative way, because it is not negative. Behind every decision, behind every regulation there is a positive intention.

From all that you wrote I would say that roughly 5% is correct.

The EU does overregulate, thats a fact. (that is where I agree with you) But the EU does that with a good intention in mind.

Lets just take the General Data Protection Regulation or the proposed changes to Article 13. The protection of consumer data and the protection of copyrighted material was overdue and shows that the EU acts with good intention.

At the same time it shows that these laws and regulations are written by politicians, not by people which actually know how the internet works.

It is great that the GDPR protects the data of customers from the influence of of the big companies (google, facebook, etc.)... but it is overregulated in terms of small websites which have absolutely no intention to collect user data. It is a sick condition that a small company or even a club/society has to follow the same rules that the big players on the market have to follow. It is a terrible situation that a contact form on a website of a small flower shop is considered to be the same data privacy risk as google or facebook. "Aunt Claras Flower Shop" is violating your customer rights.

The EU overregulated in this example because it didnt know a better solution. The intention to protect the customer data is still good and valid.

I dont even thing that the EU is the main problem here. The EU will never sue the small flower shop. But asshole lawyers that specialized on such a business model will. These vultures search the web to use existing laws and regulations again the people in order to make profit. The good intention of the EU regulation is used for bad practices by such people.

The Article 13 crap (actually I didnt want to judge about it) is not much different. The EU has a good intention. Unfortunatly the first time in history the politics are not decades behind existing technology. This time decisions were to be done without having working technology at hand. Only one company has working upload filters and "working" is a very subjective expression here since these filters are absolutely not perfect.

I can not blame the EU for their intention to protect data and property... its just that the guys which wrote Article 13 dont seem to know that we have no existing technology that can enforce this regulation in a reliable way (without causing more problems than it would solve).

One thing to mention at this point is that not the people of the EU stopped Article 13. The delegates did. At no point they were forced to vote against it... they made that decision. Yes the people made them aware of the problems but in the end it still was the decision of the delegates which stopped the law. That in my eyes proves that the EU is a working system which does not force ill-adviced decisions.

You are wrong about the 7 new articles, they didnt get preapproved. These articles were nothing but prewritten suggestions that required to be approved in a vote. That is the normal process how laws and regulations get done (in almost every democratic country). If you believe that the delegates meet and discuss about how to write the content of a law then you are wrong. Delegates get to read prewritten suggestions and then they simply vote. Best condition of course would be if they actually understand what the words in these suggestions actually mean (thats not guaranteed).

You have been mentioning Traian Basescu and that the EU prevented the impeachment. That is not even remotely correct. The impeachment vote had clear conditions that never were met. I am no expert on national rules on impeachment but generally impeachment only works if the majority votes against the guy that they want to impeach. That means that at least more than 50% of all people which have the voting right have to vote for an impeachment. That never happened. Even if the majority of the people that voted for impeachment is higher than the people which voted against impeachment such an impeachment can fail if enough people refused to vote. And exactly that was the case in Basecus impeachment vote.

The only thing the EU did was to voice concerns regarding the opponent which had his own legal troubles at that time. But that is no wrong doing of the EU. Pointing out that the coin has a 2nd side is legit.

The situation in Spain is a bit more complicated than your views on it. I could go in detail but that would go so far off topic that we probably never would find a way back.

Just to spoil it for you... in my eyes the EU respected existing contracts by doing what it did.

Anyways, back to the "attacking technology" topic.

You went over that Cookie comment like it would be absurd.... like it would be the most normal thing in the world. Go and ask your grandparents if you can check their cookies. You might realize that their reaction will be different than your expectation.

Generally I got the impression that you have a fixed point of view from which you do not realize what happens outside of it. What you see normal is not neccesarily normal for others. Like a pro gamer that complains about n00bs because he/she cant remember how it was when he/she was a n00b years ago. I suggest you start leaving your point of view now and then in order to get a different perspective on situations.

You talk about antitrust and antimonopoly regulations like it would be something bad.

Do you really think that it is better if a monopoly has full control over the entire market? Do you think that is a good idea that the company XYZ has a monopoly on ... lets say ... water and starts to charge you 10€ per bottle just because they can?

These regulations ensure that customers are protected from companies. These regulations ensure competition, fairplay and overall even the stability of the market. Without these regulations, especially on the technology market there wouldnt be any innovation. Why would Microsoft have to improve their products if there are no competitors? They could sell their same product for the next 100-200 years.

Dont even bother to tell me "but companies never would do that". They always did and they always will do. The companies and managers have the obligation to make the highest amount of profit. They dont serve the customers, they serve the share holders. Period. A company, trust, monopoly which sees the chance to make profit will do exactly that, regardless of the consequences for everyone else. Capitalsm is driven by greed. Thats how the system works.

I highly recommend that you change your opinion on antitrust and antimonopoly regulations because right now you are on a path into a very dark future.

Taxes btw. are not raised to pay politicians. What they get is miniscule compared to the taxes. The tax increases go into social projects, schools, infrastucture, subsidies, support for countries with struggling economies, etc.

Dont even try to make taxes look bad. Yes, it hurts to pay them but without them we wouldnt have a working infrastructure, education and social systems in our countries. All the stuff that keeps our society running is paid with taxes.

Are the fines for companies justified?

ASBSOLUTELY!

What google has to pay 5%... at this point I have to ask "why not more?".

Lets stick to the number aspect here a bit before we look at the reason.

You wrote that they have to pay 5% which results in 3000 million$. I highly question these numbers.

After the first quarter of 2018 Alphabet (googles parent company) valued at $739 billion. Of course there are more companies in Alphabet than just google but in 2017 it was said that google is responsible for more than 90% of Alphabets revenue. I dont have current numbers and I am way too lazy to google for it (haha) but 3000 million$ looks more like 0.5% value.

The true story behind is that the height of the fine represents ONE DAY of Alphabets revenue.

You wont see me shed tears when google only earns money on 364 days a year instead of 365.

That is a one day fine for a market manipulation that google probably had done over a period 2 decades. That fine is laughable.

What? Which market manipulation?

And here we come to the reasons why google/alphabet was fined.

Google manipulated the search results in a way that google products always had better ranking eventhough the criteria of other products would have place them higher.

What does it mean to have the higher ranking? yes... more website visitors, more customers, higher ratings, more ad revenue... in the end this manipulation has direct influence on the growth of other companies and even on the stock markets. Google manipulated the market, prevented that other companies could grow and instead collected the billions of revenues from their priorized own products to enrich the own company.

Dont get me wrong... I like google... but its such an asshole company.

The fine is absolutely justified and the height in my eyes laughable. Google made way more money with the manipulation than it was fined for.

The one day fine wont hurt google much. The annual growth is at least 4 times higher than the fine. Google it.

Google and Android mobile phones.

Yes thats also such a thing.

I am not sure if you understood the problem correctly. I think you probably didnt.

You are right, if put the url of the play store in my browser I can access it no matter if I use chrome, firefox, opera, edge or whatever else I have installed. It also does not matter if I do that on PC or my mobile phone.

But that is not what the article said and thats now why the EU is preparing fines for google.

As customer you are free to install and use whatever app you want on your mobile device.

You have that choice, I have that choice.

Phone manufacturers DO NOT have that choice.

Already today Google is dictating which apps phone manufacturers have to pre-install on their phones if they want to use Android as OS. Did you never wonder why your new phone is already full with google apps that you actually dont want, dont need and partly even cant uninstall without rooting your phone?

Google is telling Samsung, LG, HTC, etc what they have to install and also tells them which alternatives are not allowed on these mobile devices. Mobile devices are full of bloatware (partly) because google said so.

The manufacturers cant say "no" because then they all of a sudden dont get an Android license anymore.

Google is abusing its power on the market to influence the manufacturers and in the end also the customers.

Lets face it... you know how use a mobile phone and how to install all the different apps. The majority of customers however sticks to what already is installed.

And everytime people use the pre-installed Chrome google will log the user data and make even more money.

Google makes money on the android market by "blackmailing" the manufacturers.

The upcoming fines are justified. Googles dirty business practices backfires.

The playstore stuff you mentioned is from license of a not yet released Android version. Today you can visit the playstore with every browser... but if google does not change its license you better get used to the idea that other browsers wont work anymore.

Btw. there have been fines on similar business practices before on PC software.

Why isnt that a deal on IPhone?

Simply said because there is no conflict of interest. Apple is the hardware manufacturer and also the company which developed the software.

10% fine of Alphabet resulting in only 11 Billion$ again appears to be VERY low. Reminder, Alphabet is worth 739 billion dollar.

Why is Alphabet fined and not google?

Because the company google is not responsible for the development and licensing of the Android OS.

With the foundation of Alphabet the old Google company outsourced everything that is not related to the search engine and its associated products to Alphabet and its subsidiaries.

With other words: search engine + the other online tools and their ad revenue = google.

Everything else = Alphabet (or other subsidiaries).

It was googles decision to do this a few years ago and if the license contract of the android OS is between Alphabet and the hardware manufacturers then Alphabet is the right company to be fined.

Again, I wont shed a tear.

Oh, here you have two points.

1) I explained that above already. Wont repeat it

2) Its a nice and simple explanation you have there. Its called google and so google has the say. Well, its also called World Wide Web... and so far I have not seen a spider that told me what I have to do.

Jokes aside.

Of course can google set rules for the play store. It is their website.

They can turn it into a subscription model and put a big lock infront of it. They have to watch the customers and app creators leave but its their right to do it.

What they dont have a right to is to dictate the way how customers connect to the store. And for sure they have no right to dictate such stupid restrictions to hardware manufacturers.

What customers and manufacturers put on their phones simply isnt googles business.

I already explain why Iphones the app store there do not have such conflicts of interest. Of course does the Iphone manufacturer put the app store on that device... its the same company. And well... its pointless to go to the apple store if you dont have an Iphone.

The comparison of Iphone and Android phones here defies any logic.

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My main problem with this is that taking away money as well as INCOME (through expensive changes in laws and filtering and etc) from technological companies, as to microsoft before, google, and hundred others, and creating taxes out of their asses, they are literally slowing down the technological advancement of humankind.

I dont even think that these companies even notice the fines. It does not hurt them, it does not bankrupt them, it does not lead to layoffs nor does it have any effect on development.

Whats slowing down technological advancement of humankind is the business practices of these companies because they hurt other companies, prevent competition and in the end also prevent that new innovative ideas get a chance.

But maybe you can tell me which innovations came from google and microsoft lately?

Most technological innovations came from small companies... thats a fact.

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EU seems to want to cause the fall of europe, as visible/proven that its already falling on several charts, and even trying to pull down rest of human kind with it. What is left to ruin ?

WOW

Do we speak of the same europe that I live in? because... its doing fine.

In the past 15 years there always have been people claim "europe will fail... next month for sure, bla bla", and so far I have not seen the slightest indicator for that to be true.

Europe currently is going better than most other regions of the world.

I dont see it fail, not from economical aspects nor from political issues. There simply is no reason, no indication that it could fail.

Oh almost through....

Taxes... nice topic.

Ok, I am from germany. If I am going to work in France then where do I have to pay my income tax? Of course in the country where I am living. Germany.

Germany has taxation contracts with over 70 other countries and above that taxation contracts there is the EU regulation (which btw. explain your question somewhat below why the EU can make such decisions -> the EU has the right to do that because the countries decided so long ago -> EU laws are above country laws in many areas (not in all)).

This generally is a problem because companies like google makes business in countries and makes profit without ever paying taxes. Billions of € are lost every year because google and co dont pay taxes eventhough they are active in our contries and take our money. Thats a problem.

If I would be in the position to make decision I would try to change the taxation system into one where taxes are paid where profit is made. That would be fair.

btw. just to give you a few numbers on taxes here in germany.

The max income tax is 42%, you dont have to be a millionair to pay that... the limit to reach it is relative moderate.

Companies pay between 7% and 36% depending on their annual profit.

That google has to pay a one day fine or 5% or even 10% is a joke.

Google takes money from ad revenues that are produced in our contries, does not pay any taxes on that money (taxes our countries might need to finanance social projects) and then they also manipulate markets to ensure that other companies which potentially are located in our contries earn less money. This of course means that these other companies (which are located in european countries) pay less taxes since their income due to googles market manipulation is smaller.

That means google is screwing european citizens twice with their shitty business model.

We cant do much about googles tax avoidance (its just the way it is - there currently is no legal way to prevent it) but we can at least fine google for their shady business practices which are a clear violation of existing law.

You wanted my opinion on the matter... here you have it.

You are free to question this stuff... I can substantiate that stuff with further number, statistics, laws etc... I just dont think we really have to go that much into detail.

Basically my opinion too.

ok... it seems you are not willing to think about a different point of view.

I got the feeling that you completely ignore what I wrote...

bad evil EU... good google

no matter what I say and no matter how detailed I try to explain stuff you are not really interested to understand how stuff works and how stuff has to work.

I wont further comment on your reply... its pointless.

Maybe you really think that highschool kids deserve unfair treatment or are simply not worth the effort. In my eyes it is not relevant if google got caught in a wrong doing against highschool kids or a wrong doing against a company. The only thing that matters is that google got caught. And the chances that google did the same with thousands of other companies is very close to 100%. This fine might motivate google to stop this shit now. The EU did the only right thing.

Your last sentense is relevant. I project it into this community and our FL server.

We have rules here and on the CF server. These rules are GOOD (just like most of the EU decisions). And still we require GRs, Moderators and Admins to enforce these rules. No matter how good the rules are and no matter how much we explain them to the people... there always will be some assholes violating them.

And the same princible applies to the EU... and shows where you are wrong with your thoughts about the situation.

I could be wrong but I think you have reached a point where you are unable to see any positive aspects of the EU. You have resentments that are hard, maybe even impossible to overcome.

I wont discuss this topic any further (eventhough I once more disagree on many thing you have written in your last post). You wanted my opinion and now you have it.

It is your choice if you want to re-think your point of view or not.

You mix up things to fit into your world. But it isnt right.

Spain would have every right to prove extradition of persons to Germany. If they don't do it (which I strongly believe they do prove), then it is up to them. But actually the law tells them to prove before they extradite to any other country. So we dont extradite him due to treason but our law finds legal actions against him for embezzlements and corruption justified why we still prove to extradite him to Spain. Result yet unknown but could be certain that we will follow the extradition request to Spain.

There is a good reason why justice is in the hands of the judiciary powers and not in yours or mine or anyone else who feels to be right or wrong :=) And i am happy that it is this way. Works like a charm if everyone would obey.

Point is, germany is following existing laws instead of subjective opinions. I see no wrong doing from germany here.

Based on own interests germany would even have a reason to book the next flight to spain for him. But law is law. Period.

And dont tell me that Spain would do a different decision. Spain did exactly the same decision just a few months ago when Turkey demanded an extradition under exactly the same circumstances.