Re:Alternatives to Google Products
by Godel_unicode on Monday June 11, 2018 @12:27AM
(#17281790)
The fine you're proposing would cause a much larger hit to market cap than you're suggesting. Consider, Apple made ~20 billion in profit last quarter, your hypothetical fine would be a precipitous hit to profit margin which, when reported on the quarterly earnings call, would cause an abrupt downturn in share price. Consider the 13% hair cut earlier this year when the market thought Apple was going to miss. Then there's the existential panic of "does this mean Apple is in for more such fines?".
Let’s assume Apple violated their privacy policy and was fined $999 million, the highest “multi-million dollar” fine they could be assessed. That’s just barely more than 1% of their market cap.
Fines are definitely incentive to do right but the fine must be felt. I’m not aware of any cases where the tech giants have been levied a fine that really hits them hard.