Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotify case

Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by FirmwareBurner on Monday March 04, 2024 @07:57AM (#39589896)

> the security of the continent depends on American hegemony, on American guns and ultimately on American money.

And the security of the American chip industry depends on ASML machines and American airline passengers depend on EU made airplanes. What's your point? Every post-WW2 economy is dependent on the other economies nowadays. There's no fully independent economy that can survive on its own anymore.

US companies get fined because they break EU laws, it's not done out of spite. If they dont wanna get fined they should stop breaking the laws. Simple.

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by paganel on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:05AM (#39589972)

I didn't say it was "out of spite", to the contrary, I said that the measures should have been (and could have been, given a different geo-political context) a lot harsher, such as trying to breaking up Apple's operations in Europe and more.

That type of action is off the table for the foreseeable future, and the same goes for the other big US tech companies that are operating in Europe in defiance of the spirit of EU laws, such as Alphabet and Meta (anything related to Musk is a special case because of politics-related concerns).

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by pb7 on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:08AM (#39589999)

The US doesn’t need Airbus. Europe would crumble without American tech.

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by RandomLensman on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:15AM (#39590068)

US without European precision engineering, machinery, etc. - might be tough for a while.

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by FirmwareBurner on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:10AM (#39590020)

Yeah, what would we do without Windows, Facebook and Instagram? /s

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by pb7 on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:16AM (#39590075)

Most of Europe’s communication can be severed by turning off WhatsApp servers. That’s just one product out of thousands.

Europe is extremely dependent on American tech.

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by FirmwareBurner on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:20AM (#39590106)

>Most European communication can be severed by turning off WhatsApp servers.

Oh no, what am I gonna do then?! Oh wait, I can just contact people by GSM voice or SMS, or use Signal or Threema the secure Swiss messanging service.

FYI, the US communication can be disrupted too because they're using Nokia-Siemens 5G stations since the US has no local players in this space anymore.

Let's stop being childish, ok? This isn't a CoD lobby for edgy 8 yearolds.

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by pb7 on Monday March 04, 2024 @09:47PM (#39598898)

And yet you use WhatsApp because the European alternatives are hot garbage. Same with every other product domain.

Regulation isn’t innovation.

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by sensanaty on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:50AM (#39590457)

My company is highly intertwined with WA and if they killed it off in the EU, we'd just switch to Signal/Telegram/the millions of other secure messaging services out there ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

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Re:Apple hit with over 1.8B euro EU antitrust fine in Spotif... by Hamuko on Monday March 04, 2024 @08:53AM (#39590483)

Disrupted, sure. Severed? You do know that we still have a functioning SMS network, right?

Also, personally, I don't even use WhatsApp since I can communicate with my family using Signal. It's so easy that even my grandma uses it.

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