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A comment on EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling.

Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by YetAnotherNick on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:00AM (#36324552)
Google will rather split up the internet by pulling out of Europe than follow this. And isn't ads the only profitable business Google has? If they sell it, there Google search, Gmail etc couldn't exist.
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by jefftk on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:43AM (#36325035)
This is about ads on non-Google websites. That business could be spun off without making Search/Gmail/YouTube/etc non-viable.
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by Gareth321 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:17AM (#36324728)
EMEA is Google's second largest market, and it's not even close for competition. There is no way Google would be willing to cut revenue by $90 billion annually. It would be corporate suicide. The single greatest loss event of investor capital in history.

They'll comply, just like Apple will comply with the DMA. They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. Unlike the U.S., E.U lawmakers can't be bought.

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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by YetAnotherNick on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:42AM (#36325026)
You are including an entire continent and countries like UK, UAE, Saudi for coming up with this revenue number for EU. Also my guess would be that profit margin will be much lower than US due to all the regulations like GDPR.

Google's overall ad revenue is 4x greater than EU total revenue. It will definitely loose EU business than it will loose ads business. But yeah there are always legal loophole in things like this and likely it could keep both.

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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by nonethewiser on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:37AM (#36324957)
But how much is it from the ad business that the EU is breaking up in this hypothetical?
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by Timon3 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:48AM (#36325085)
Why does that matter?
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by ChuckNorris89 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:30AM (#36324883)
> Unlike the U.S., E.U lawmakers can't be bought.

I'm curious if you're that naive to believe that or if you were trolling and wrote that with a straight face.

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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by permo-w on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:51AM (#36325117)
if EU lawmakers could be bought in the same way US ones can, there is absolutely no way that GDPR or the DMA would have been enacted. this isn't to say that they are completely unbuyable, but look at how much the companies affected had to lose. literally tens of billions in some cases. there's evidence online that they were pumping money into any channel possible to try and stop the DMA, but they failed
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by sebzim4500 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @10:52AM (#36326903)
If US lawmakers could be bought the same way that EU ones can, there is absolutely no way that they would have increased the corporate tax rate from 19% to 25%.

/s

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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by permo-w on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @05:29PM (#36333013)
that's a false equivalence and you know it
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by unmole on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:52AM (#36325124)
> Unlike the U.S., E.U lawmakers can't be bought.

My sides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-ger...

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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by gmerc on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:15AM (#36324711)
Bullshit. See Facebook in Australia or Hongkong. See every company that went into china anyway. For the EU, google leaving would be a feature.
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by vooffle on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:12AM (#36324681)
If Google's ad business was split from the rest, it would mean the ad business having to pay the search engine business and other Google businesses to advertise on them.
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by senko on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:10AM (#36324655)
> Google will rather split up the internet by pulling out of Europe than follow this.

Citation needed.

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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by anhner on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:16AM (#36324720)
Sure, they'd rather lose 50B+ than do this...
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by malermeister on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:11AM (#36324659)
They already have a lot of their revenue tied up in their Irish entity. An exit might not be feasible.
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Re:EU suggests breaking up Google's ad business in prelimina... by hnbad on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:27AM (#36324847)
Breaking out the ad business doesn't mean selling it, it means creating red tape through layers of indirection between the ad business and the rest of the company. In essence, this would be no different than the split between Alphabet and Google (or Waymo, even): https://www.kamilfranek.com/what-companies-alphabet-google-o...

"Pulling out" would be a massive blow to Google's revenue and shareholder value, even compared to the massive costs of restructuring the business to comply with the breakup. It would be economical suicide and career suicide for the CEO.

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