Someone much smarter than me would likely have to determine whether stockholders benefit more from a split up company that can do business in Europe, or a unified company that can't.

With 6 weeks being the required notice before everyone is laid off or whatever.

Everyone there uses a local alternative and doesn’t give a fuck about Google anymore

which is also why Google was fine with leaving China

Google has a strong position in the email space, but it isn't anywhere as dominant as it is with search and web advertising.

What?? The whole point of a breakup is precisely because they are dominant in all of the things you mentioned. Also, my comment is irrelevant if they actually comply with a breakup order. If they don't, and they withdraw from the EU, it doesn't matter how the breakup is structured because they cease doing business in the EU anyway.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/16/google-news-sp...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2014/12/14/spanish-newspapers-want-go...

EDIT: I guess I didn't mean "what if Google was forced to do this overnight?", but rather I meant more like "couldn't Google make this backfire by doing this overnight?".

Good luck finding somewhere else you can reimport that and continue working. It might as well be an encrypted blob.

Legally speaking, I'm sure there's plenty of ways the EU can force Google to do things it currently does not want to do.

I'd say the EU has lots of negotional angles currently to win things from Google. That is kind of what you get when you have more or less universal legislation power over 40% or so of the world's purchasing power (please correct me, I just bullshitted that guess). And that, alas, was also a large part of why the EU was born. So now we'll will reap the benefits.

If I could say anything to our EU negotiators in this case, it would be: stay brave.

Europe GDP is 20.9 Trillion USD. The world GDP is 107 Trillion USD. So Europe is only 20% of the world GDP.

But one can make the argument that EU citizens are better connected and spend more on digital goods. Though I'd be surprised if it drives more than 30% of Google revenue.

EMEA, APAC, Other Americas, US

Out of this, in 2017, EMEA was 32.5% of total revenue, based on numbers from page 33 of https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20171231_alphabet_10K.pdf.

My bullshit-guess is that out of those 32.5 percent units, EU/EES was responsible for about 31 units or so, and the rest 1.5 was from the middle east and africa. (Reasoning: the ME certainly has money, but no population to speak of. Africa has lots of people but besides relatively tiny South Africa very little revenue for Google.)

So yeah, the EU has a pretty powerful hammer.

Unless you stop people from just heading to the top search engine in the world, they'll keep using it.

The EU can also disallow sales of Google's products, like any android phone. Or products like the chromecast, and don't forget Nest and Google Home.

And selling ads in Europe from a foreign country isn't too easy either. It is a lot harder to do business with a company which is on the other side of the ocean, and officially doesn't have a precense in the same economic area.

If Google leaves all of that behind in Europe, and is not really allowed to do business in Europe anymore, soon enough there will be a competitor that stands up and can do things better. Especially if they can actually open offices in Europe and do business without major hurdles.

> The EU can also disallow sales of Google's products, like any android phone. Or products like the chromecast, and don't forget Nest and Google Home.

Without giving them plenty of time to pullout? This will probably trigger panic across of the multinationals.

These things take a long time. Google was abusing its search monopoly before the EU started a seven-year investigation that resuled in a $2.7 billion fine ... which it is now appealing.

Google settled with the US in 2013. It agreed to change some of its search practices and got away without a fine.

I'd be surprised if Google didn't know it was abusing its search monopoly. I'd assume it calculated that it was more profitable to keep doing it until compelled to stop.

Either way, a seven-year investigation provides plenty of time to prepare for exit strategies, if required, and it would grossly incompetent not to have prepared for them.

Google currently has a monopoly for search, email, maps (and many other services which I care less about) it is crazy that we allowed it to happen.

It's not too far fetch that Google pretty much owns the internet. If Google blocks you or your company you might as well not exist.

There never should be a single entity that has so much power.

This didnt even work when it was simply a question of having transnational companies on the level of facebook having to pay taxes.

E.g., seizing Google’s copyrights and patents, and selling EU usage rights for them. Or seizing the physical hardware, and selling them (and the software on them) off.

There’s many many solutions here.

In the past, european governments have already seized airplanes from airlines upon landing, and threatened to auction them off, to pay a single unpaid $500 ticket return fine.

The retaliation from the US government on that one would be pretty epic. I wouldn't want to be an owner of a patent heavy European company at that point. Our current President is quite familiar with eminent domain.