It’s hard to imagine how much the latest Google fine really equates to. Really difficult in fact. But don’t worry! We’ve worked that out for you. Surprise, surprise, it’s a lot of money. How many times a day do you say or think “I’ll have to google that!”. Probably a lot. Google has definitely become essential for a lot of us. But it’s become so big a company that it needs to be regulated.
Google’s latest fine, unlike last year’s fine, was handed down by the EU commission in June 2017, is a reported at 2.42 billion Euros. That’s around £2.13 billion GBP or $3.42 billion CDN. Whew! That’s more money that most of us can even fathom. What did they do that was so wrong? Well, they broke competition law, by prioritizing their own shopping services, causing competitors services to drop dramatically. None of which have ever really recovered.
Ariel Ezrachi, director of the University of Oxford Centre for Competition Law and Policy, says “it objects to Google leveraging its power in search to give itself an unfair advantage in price comparison.” That’s one in the eye for Silicon Valley’s “winner takes all” attitude. Google are well equipped to handle a fine though, even one that sounds so hefty. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, made a profit of almost £2 billion in the first six weeks of 2017 alone.
So, it sounds like that fine is just a drop in their considerably large ocean. But it’s still hard to imagine such a huge amount. Which got us thinking. If the average Joe were to be fined in a relative way, what would that look like? Maybe something like this infographic from credit.angel.co.uk. Much easier to understand (and far less than I imagined to be honest!) For the Silo, Danielle Mowbray.
