Also worth noting that the FTC investigators reached the same conclusion as the EU.

http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/

"Staff concludes that Google's conduct has resulted - and will result - in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets. Google has strengthened its monopolies over search and search advertising through anticompetitive means..."

Their bosses, though, voted 5-0 to not take action as recommended.

Common origin does not disprove animosity or self interest.

One wonders what NewsCorp or Oracle concerns are in ecommerce search, but then you remember that they had well publicized scuffles with Google.

The last record fine was against a US company, as were recent tax related fines, patterns are harder to refute.

"patterns are harder to refute" -> there is also a pattern, how big US tech companies avoid tax payments in EU, it even has a name ("double irish sandwich")

...and as a result a hefty fine under an unrelated law should be levied? Europe is and should be a place where laws are more than just tools with which to punish disfavored parties. If the double Irish should be illegal, then make it so, and hold on tighter to the straight and narrow path.

Double Irish is treated illegal as "illegal state aid". Would it be legal in US, if Delaware decided to give some foreign company (registered in Delaware) only 0,1% tax on everything they earn in the US? I thing the federal court would rule such "state aid" as illegal...

Which is legal. The Apple case was about "illegal state aid" of all things.

So either EU is grossly incompetent to stop such thing at EU members level or they just think acting against individual companies will generate more fireworks and public support.

It's more that the EU doesn't have the political will to do what is perceived as the common good here.

Ireland has a selfish interest in attracting tech companies, and the rest of the EU can't bring enough political leverage against them to change the legal structures that make Ireland preferable for headquartering.

Equally Luxemburg is another EU location abused by corporations for TAX reasons. Ironically it was set up By a Mr Junker ages ago, who then went on to run the EU and has made much rhetoric about TAX avoidance and yet managed to do nothing to fix, in-part a situation he created. Which given his knowledge and experience in the matter, you would of thought he was ideally placed to fix now. He has not alas.

No political will? What about the EC's order for Apple to pay 13B € in unpaid taxes?

Ordering an US corporation to do something is entirely different from making a member state change their laws.

Can you show how you have established that there is a pattern? I was actually looking for a list of all the entities fined by the EU Commission. Seems like you have some data.

I'm sure EU court have based its decision on a number of different factors.

The letter from Oracle is just one of them.

Court? the problem is that these fines don't go through any court.

The fines are applied by the Commission, but the companies can appeal to the EU's general court and then to the CJEU.

So just like FCC decisions in the US then.

The FCC isn't the right equivalent here, the FTC or the DoJ are, and they have to successfully sue in federal court for their fines to stick.

Disclaimer Oh I contain multitudes how can you process this comment? Sorry it's not reduced to one non-dissenting ideological line, but contains ideas you may have trouble reconciling. Abort now if ambiguity crashes your harddrive.

Can you process that I am both: happy that Google is fined.

And also: it's a bit rich of Oracle to say that. Larry: "It's not enough that we win. Everyone else must lose!"

But losers are always gonna hate and pile on the winner. They wouldn't be making up their own fictions of Google's "evil" if they hadn't lost.

Are they gonna take responsibility for their failed business practices? Or keep blaming the Giant? By golly, if they were successful they'd have a mighty different view.

That's fair. Any official statement by a corporation is total horseshit 100% of the time.

Corporations literally exist only to protect and grow their bottom line, and are engineered to reflexively throw everything else under the bus--employees, the environment, the general public, reason itself--to defend that goal.

Their statements will never come out and admit this, however, because it compromises that goal. Thus literally, literally everything corporations say in an official capacity is a lie, almost without exception. The subtext is always "we are doing this primarily because we believe it will help us make more money".

The best we can do in a capitalist society is create smart regulations that channel that inevitably self-serving motive to align as closely with what's good for society at large as possible.