"The Emperor does wish to audit your books," the Count said.
"Any time."
"You... ah... have no objections?"
"None. My CHOAM Company directorship will bear the closest scrutiny."
The point is if everything is in order (or made to look as if it's in order), then Google has nothing to fear, no matter how many probes the EU launches. And the Baron didn't take it personally, and neither should Google. It's all in the game, after all.
I bet your attitude would be different if you didn't, as you'd be able to see how many anticompetitive behaviors Google does to make money (and pay your salary).
Some money is just cursed. Like when you are Meta and spreading depression and anxiety around the world, backed by thousands of studies and not caring.
Those companies deserve similar labelling as cigarettes do, with pictures of depressed people killing themselves or having their data mined for profit, shoved into an AI and making them jobless.
pointing out someone's stake in an argument does not constitute an ad hominem fallacy
How many other good engineers at Google are working on ethically dubious practices, like tracking users that are in explicit do-not-track mode through browser fingerprinting?
How many other good engineers at Google are working on <insert any other terrible practices>?
Maybe paying a few engineers to clean up their reputation is not enough? Maybe you just picked a bad role and are looking for the wrong culprits?
For browser fingerprinting, there doesn't seem to be many sources. There is this post:
https://community.brave.com/t/new-version-youtube-fingerprin...
Yet this is very easy to reproduce, and there is no other way to explain the personalized video suggestions in private mode.
Europe's probes works differently w.r.t. US. It's not "assumed guilt", it's "we want a clearer picture".
If you did everything alright, there's nothing to be afraid or be irritated of. You answer your questions and move on.
If you tried to work your way around, then, well...
I have sympathy for you as a SWE, but I have no sympathy for megacorporations - they should never be trusted.
This is what tech companies deserve to get (not just Google) when they try to play the different laws and circumvent them.
"WAH! WAH! The EU doesn't apreciate the job at Google I signed up for and getting paid $400k+ to do."
The EU hasn't got any beef with you or your job. Nobody at EU said that Google engineers aren't working hard on DMA compliance.
It's Google's (management's) responsibility to prove to regulators that they're DMA complaint, not their employee's to go public under burner accounts to say this.
"Trust AND verify".
Blame your management for lack of (proactive) action and lack of communication to the authorities, not the EU for looking into your employer.
"The 2 May 2023, 6 months later, the regulation started applying and the potential gatekeepers had 2 months to report to the commission to be identified as gatekeepers. This process would take up to 45 days and after being identified as gatekeepers, they would have 6 months to come into compliance, at the latest the 6 March 2024.[8][32] From 7 March 2024, gatekeepers must comply with the DMA. [33]"
This is the part that you and Google don't agree. If you look at your comment from that perspective, you can see why probe makes sense.
> Whether Google preferences the firm's own goods and services in search results
Are you saying that Google doesn't preference it's own goods and services on the 'Google' platform ahead of it's other competitors on that platform?
Is it possible Alphabet has complied with some parts, but not all?
This might not be pedantic. Maybe they're missing important details?
I'm not even sure how it's controversial, I assume you are biased and emotional as a Googler, but every company will do the very least possible to loosen their grip on the market.
That said, the gap is a lot smaller than it used to be. There was a time in the past where google flights was light years ahead of priceline, kayak, etc. in bloat, bugginess, responsiveness, etc. That gap has shrank considerably and it's more a matter of preference today.
If you pass with flying colors, that doesn't diminish any of your work - it confirms that you did it well.
Just like when we were building medical stuff that came with it's own audits and how banking also does.
Cost of earning all that sweet cash.
> I mean, if you did a good job, then this is no extra work for you.
And now we're at
> What of it? Comes with the size and money.
which is quite the difference. It no longer matters if you did a good job, suck it up and take the audit?
It also wholly misses what the root-comment Googler was complaining about. You may feel that Google as a whole "deserves" this somehow, but the engineer was saying it feels like a slap in the face to everyone who was working hard on DMA compliance.
> Why should trillion dollar companies get a pass? Because some engineer will feel bad about a probe that is a mile over their head?
No, but this is a remarkably unsympathetic take to someone who is venting. You're looking to Google-bash, and that's fine, I'm usually happy to join you in that, but look past the megacorp to the person who is pissed that their hard work and that of their team seems pointless.
Well just because you take it seriously does not mean you have done a good job in implementing the changes? I dont know about google but apple certainly flaunted the rules completely so its a good thing that they are not letting it go.
Google charges 12-17% for "linking out" to a web purchase screen (aka "external offers").
> has opened proceedings to assess whether the measures implemented by Alphabet and Apple in relation to their obligations pertaining to app stores are in breach of the DMA. Article 5(4) of the DMA requires gatekeepers to allow app developers to “steer” consumers to offers outside the gatekeepers' app stores, free of charge
Our entire team was working overtime and liaising with regulators to figure out what some of those pretty vague statements actually meant when it came down asking user permission for third party analytics and how to ensure we were compliant (what counts as essential, how many non-essential can you reasonably ask someone to review, who creates that list, what happens to the companies not in it, etc.etc.).
Nobody else knew either because they were all looking at us, as we'd be likely to get sued first anyway. Cue the articles after launch on how we either didn't care to do it right or we were actually being our usual evil selves in sneakily not implementing it in properly.
I feel your pain
Maybe I'm underestimating the complexity at scale, but I've read GDPR in original (it's not long), and the intentions and what's required seem pretty clear. I only have practical experience with it from a regulator side, though.
As context with these kind of regulations it's not always bad for the big players when it gets implemented across the market. Many smaller companies will not have the regulatory bandwidth to figure out compliance, and as the regulation acts as a way to level or cap what everyone can do, it's not like you will lose customers to someone else.
Complexity was mostly either definitional, e.g. some markets (ironically Germany's big publishers in particular) were absolutely convinced that almost anything they did on their sites fell under legitimate interest, even though we tried to convince them many times that would not fly.
Or it would be on specifics such as how many non-essential data providers can you reasonably ask a user to review? Keep the number too small and you'll be accused of favoring the big players, make it too big and you'll swamp users. Who decides?
By the way I agree that GDPR is pretty well written. Just that implementing these type of things and getting stakeholders to agree to it can be extremely complex. Fun days
"Make infra compliant, but try to pull some shit with billing, to see how serious the EC is about DMA. That way, if they're serious, we're ready, but if not, we can still make money."
And even those people will only understand a limited aspect or perspective.
So the people commenting can only comment based on their outside impressions and emotions about generalities and how the specific implementation details seem to affect they as an end user.
I try to take anything said with that in mind. There is information in the comments about user experience but anything else is at the level of bullshitting at the bar with your friends, and not to be taken personally.
Web Environment Integrity.
Those three words burned up a lot of what little goodwill was left for google.
The probe is to determine if the effort was effective not if you are taking it seriously. If your work was effective then nothing will happen, if it wasn't effective than the fine or lack thereof would be sized appropriately to how serious they believe you are taking it. That is just effective regulation in action.
From the press release:
> The Commission has opened proceedings against Alphabet, to determine whether Alphabet's display of Google search results may lead to self-preferencing in relation to Google's vertical search services (e.g., Google Shopping; Google Flights; Google Hotels) over similar rival services.
I will admit to not having used google search for ages because of these practices and other modifications making it worse and worse, so off I go to search for "hotels paris" the sort of search I might make when planning a trip to Paris and I want to avoid booking.com for similar reasons.
And the top is google maps followed by some excerpt of google lodging links redirecting through google. So yeah, seems like google lodging is being preferenced over booking (which I also don't want) and tripadvisor, hotels.com, expedia etc. all prioritised over organic results that I would actually want.
So google search certainly preferences google maps and google lodging, maybe that is a preference consistent with the DMA but I feel like maybe it shouldn't be. If you were involved in a project to depreference google maps or lodging in a way consistent with the DMA, then I feel like you were targeting a little too deep into the grey area or didn't have enough time. As others pointed out, this is just a probe to determine if compliance has been achieved or not. There is no assumption of guilt.
As a SRE SWE at Alphabet/Google, I find this assumed-guilt and assumed-lack-of-giving-a-shit irritating.
For the past several quarters we have spent a significant proportion of our effort on DMA compliance, right down to the infrastructure & RPC level. It is top priority mandate level stuff and getting absolute top billing from managers and TLs in planning and day-to-day activities.
I have spent a long time over the past few months working almost entirely on DMA projects so it is pretty aggravating to then see these "probes" into if we are taking it seriously.
Don't get me wrong, I think the DMA is a good thing and it is totally the right thing to do. But this assumption that Google don't care and are ignoring it or whatever is just exasperating when myself and many other good engineers are working their hearts out to implement it.
</rant>