And there's other places on Earth that may impose their own fines.
What you're suggesting is economic war.
Huge fines are the only thing that will work. Corporations these days are richer than nations and these little 2 billion dollar fines do nothing.
They can and usually do. I don't think you'll see any US government action over this $2.8b fine. If the EU decided to try to fine Google out of existence, the US government would be displeased, as that is a direct attack on US interests (it hurts US GDP, tax revenue, employment rate, and US tech dominance), and can and would take action, whether to prevent the fine from happening, to prevent Google from going out of business, or in retribution to prevent the EU from doing anything similar in the future.
> They're free to either pay or get out of the country that's imposing the fine.
Yes, and the EU isn't dumb enough to fine Google enough that would make them consider pulling out of the EU, as that would do pretty significant damage to the EU economy and the willingness of foreign companies to do business in the EU.
> Why does Google get to exploit foreign citizens and violate their rights while under the protection of the US government?
The US government doesn't really care whether Google exploits foreign citizens or violates their rights, as the US government has no obligations to protect foreign citizens and their rights, and does plenty of exploitation and violation of its own to foreign citizens. As long as Google is a net benefit for US citizens and the US government, the US government has incentives to protect Google from foreign governments. None of this is unique to the US or Google, you could replace any country and major corporation and this all still holds true.
> Huge fines are the only thing that will work.
Huge fines are politically impossible, they can't work at all.
> Corporations these days are richer than nations and these little 2 billion dollar fines do nothing.
I don't think so, on either count. The richest corporations are richer than the poorest nations, but that's been true for a long time. The richest corporations are still an order of magnitude smaller than the richest countries, though. And a $2b fine doesn't do nothing, it may do less than you want, but it's still a lot of money that the corporation no longer has and would rather have not paid.
A $70b fine would justify the excessive targeting of a major EU corporation in response.
If the EU were to pretend that Google deserved an arbitrary $70b fine, then they could just as easily pretend US big tech broadly deserves several hundred billion USD in fines.
It's pretty clear where that kind of insane behavior leads.
Proportionality doesn't work with companies that are disproportionally rich. The purpose of the fine is to get them to stop violating people's rights and it's clear that pitiful 2 billion dollar fines are not going to accomplish that objective.
> It's pretty clear where that kind of insane behavior leads.
It leads to Google no longer being a monopoly as well as being more respectful of people's privacy.
Ok, how much should the EU be allowed to fine Google?
How about $12b, that should be 10% of the money they have on hand as I understand it. I think getting fined 10% of your operating money might make you compliant to the law - or is the problem that Google should never be fined any amount that would cause them to become compliant to the law?
on edit: put dollar sign in
A happier, less evil world.
these large coorperations and the nations backing them is nothing new.
Also, it is a strategic intrest of europe to protect airbus, especially considering it is the model in terms of being a multinational, truely european company[1], compared to a national one.
You come to our market, you play by our rules. We don't bend the law for capital interests quite as much as you do, either get used to it or get out.
> Alphabet only ever has ~120 Billion USD on hand at any given point in time
To them, 2.8 billion USD is change. It's a tip for the government. Make it something like 70 billion and they might start caring. And if it looks like they aren't caring, fine them again until they do.