A British couple who took on Google and cost it £2.1B

Re:A British couple who took on Google and cost it £2.1B by flexie on Wednesday February 14, 2018 @07:31AM (#16375274)

Google should be split up. It's wrong to have a company that controls search, one of the major browsers, and one of the two major operating systems for phones.

And then of course it should be made to pay tax where the search results are shown. An ad shown in the EU should be taxed with an indirect EU tax on the ad (30 percent of what is paid for the ad plus an EU VAT). That would once for all make the large advertising companies such as Facebook and Google pay tax in Europe. Every ad should include an ID number with information on the money paid on the ad, who paid it and to whom. Then, consumers and EU tax authorities could easily check if tax had been paid on the ad and who paid what for the ad.

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Re:A British couple who took on Google and cost it £2.1B by imglorp on Wednesday February 14, 2018 @07:56AM (#16375382)

Taxation philosophy aside, I really like the idea of traceable ads in general. There are so many intentionally tangled and obscured intermediate steps between the ad buyer and the ad viewer, a transparent record would benefit the honest parties and the consumer. Prosecuting, or at least deterring, malware served over sketchy ad networks comes immediately to mind.

Is there ever a case where untraceability is a good thing?

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Re:A British couple who took on Google and cost it £2.1B by jacquesm on Wednesday February 14, 2018 @10:10AM (#16376253)

And runs the largest advertising network on the planet as well as the major email service provider.

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Re:A British couple who took on Google and cost it £2.1B by amelius on Wednesday February 14, 2018 @02:59PM (#16378841)

> Google should be split up.

Agreed. One question, though: I somewhat trust Google's security, but is our data still safe after such a split-up?

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