Why does Google hide a bunch of search results in Europe if they are above the law?

It seems to me that your statement is in error.

As I'm sure you're aware, there is some room between "completely law abiding" and "totally above the law", where corporations find themselves quite comfortable.

Corporations are amoral, and so conform to local laws only because it is economically efficient to do so, not out of ideological adherence to principles of justice.

> As I'm sure you're aware, there is some room between "completely law abiding" and "totally above the law", where corporations find themselves quite comfortable.

Great, so don't write "above the law". Hyperbole is annoying and distracts from real, important discussions about these kinds of things.

Omniusaspirer actually wrote "they're effectively above the law", which is hardly hyperbolic, and was directly preceded by a decidedly relevant example: "Without a global government agreement you simply can't bust up megacorps like you used to".

Consideration of the fact that multi-national corporations transcend national law-makers is part of "real, important discussion about these kinds of things", as you put it.

What he wrote is plain false. It's wrong. It's incorrect. Those companies must - and do - respect the laws of the countries they wish to operate in, although clearly they try and wiggle and squirm around them where they can. When push comes to shove, they are most certainly not above the law.

When you write things that are false, it does not help a conversation go anywhere useful.

Your definition of illegal behaviour seems to rest on a very narrow view that unless behaviour is prosecuted then it is not illegal. By this view, corporations are not above the law because when any illegal behaviour is discovered they are duly prosecuted, when laws are available, and if laws are not available then it was not illegal behaviour in the first place. However, Omniusaspirer's contention was that corporations are "effectively above the law", not that they were literally above the law.

The exemplary area in which corporations are effectively above the law is tax arrangements, where multi-national corporations can take advantage of their multi-national status to pay lower amounts of corporation tax than companies in all the national jurisdictions in which they operate.

The corporations are effectively above the law because they are legally paying lower taxes than those other companies. That is, they get preferential treatment by satisfying the letter of the law, but not the intent, that being evidenced by current international efforts to close these loopholes. Such issues can only be addressed by multi-national or even global agreements, as Omniusaspirer said.

So your definition is "corporations are effectively above the law if they do things I think are bad" ?

No, my definition would be that multi-national corporations are effectively above the law if, in a particular jurisdiction, they can engage in behaviour that companies constrained solely to that jurisdiction cannot engage in.

I am glad that we have cleared up the difference between being literally and effectively above the law, but I doubt we'll make any progress towards agreement about what being effectively above the law might mean. As we have already circumvented the HN efforts to avoid debates that aren't going anywhere several times, I guess I'll leave it at that. Have a nice day!

edit: Just to be clear, my above definition would also extend to arbitrary numbers of joint jurisdictions. So if corporation X, doing business in jurisdictions A, B, and C, can engage in behaviours within jurisdiction A that are unavailable to corporation Y, which only does business in jurisdictions A and B, then X would be effectively above the law with respect to Y. This definition seems very natural and clear to me: one group is allowed to do things another group isn't by some special status, ergo, they are effectively above the law.

Google also avoid to pay almost all the taxes it should in EU without anyone capable to stop them. The same thing is done by the others megacorps

Actually, it looks like you, too, may be incorrect, in that they're working to crack down on just that:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba95cff0-4fcd-11e4-a0a4-00144...

Also, in the United States, Amazon has generally not fared well when it came to avoiding collecting local taxes when local authorities decided to put their feet down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_tax

As an eu citizen I knew that, and I can tell you they are "working on it" since decades of years (almost since Apple for the first time implemented it around the '80s), Nothing changed because Ireland doesn't want to change its taxation because the corps on its field lobby under the threat to move to another country, and the EU commission has not the power to impose the change to Ireland.

If Google 'should' pay taxes and have not, why haven't they been taken to court? That's tax evasion. Tax avoidance is what sensible people do. You look at the rules, follow them and minimize your tax bill. Google's shareholders also expect no less.

No one can stop them (Google)? Of course they can. It's up to countries to change their tax laws if they think they are not fit for the job.