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What happens when Google says “we aren’t going to pay your fines”?

35 points| longstaff2009 | 7 years ago |medium.com

76 comments

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[+] mcv|7 years ago|reply
If people's GMail and Android phones stop working, they may get angry at the French government, but outside France a lot of people would also want to move away from Google services like GMail, Android, etc, because Google would show your access to them can't be trusted. Google would lose a lot more users than just France.

Yes, it would cause chaos in France, but it would also really hurt Google.

[+] writepub|7 years ago|reply
If you've paid attention to Facebook's most recent quarterly, you'll realize that people don't really care about the things they claim to care about. Facebook's recent privacy breaches haven't really affected their bottom line. Likewise, a couple days of Google flexing it's power over France may not really cause a widespread exodus.
[+] longstaff2009|7 years ago|reply
if Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft formed a union of sorts it would be hard to move away from
[+] aristus|7 years ago|reply
People forget this has already happened, more or less. In 2011 Google blackholed Belgium's newspapers when they got uppity. Pretty sure it happened a few times before that as well.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/0028255/belgian-new...

Also, many years ago, Google ghosted CNET because they didn't like their reporting. They didn't blacklist them from results, but it was an option.

https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/

[+] jonahb|7 years ago|reply
> Google is a business, it has a responsibility to make money for shareholders. This is its sole responsibility.

Uh, where'd you get that from? The company has an obligation to act in the the interest of shareholders, but "interest" doesn't necessarily mean "money." Moreover, that's not its _only_ obligation. This guy seems to agree:

https://www.cultofmac.com/268413/tim-cook-tells-profit-obses...

[+] longstaff2009|7 years ago|reply
You are right, it should say "act in the interest of" rather than "make money".
[+] salthound|7 years ago|reply
That's one silly power fantasy.

But what if they really tried to do it? Well, the most likely outcome would be the US government declaring Google a risk to national security, and taking direct control. After all if this could happen to France, it could happen to the US, and governments of sovereign states really really hate non-state competitors that could potentially meddle with the operation of the state.

After that, whatever remains of Google would probably be auctioned off to cover the costs of the backlash (and probable legal action) from Google's corporate clients.

[+] longstaff2009|7 years ago|reply
I would call it a thought experiment rather than a power fantasy, but sure.

Would it be a thread to US national security in the same way it could be to France? It might depend how the President at the time is and where their campaign funding came from.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Proves Just How Easily Corporate PAC Money Can Influence Politics

https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/vb.908009612...

[+] mruts|7 years ago|reply
You're saying that Google would be nationalized if they backed out of France? Notwithstanding that it would be illegal, how is choosing which countries to transact business in a breach of national security?
[+] siedes|7 years ago|reply
2.2 billion would not be worth the money to alienate an entire nation and cause major lashback around the world who hears of the news. Those are all potential customers. They would do better to just pay up.

Now the question is, when will it be worth it for an all-powerful multinational corporation like Google to say fuck it and use their power to influence government policy on a global level? How much money or what would have to be at stake for them to turn their back on "Don't be evil"?

[+] tyingq|7 years ago|reply
I would guess an exodus from the other side too. Even though I'm not French, if Google blocks France...it affects me.

I'd have to quit hosting my things on Google's cloud, app engine, Google drive, analytics, etc, if I expected people in France to be able to see it.

[+] longstaff2009|7 years ago|reply
Yes ! At some point the cost of the reputation hit becomes less than the value of the fine.

Google removed 'Don't be evil' from its code of conduct last year. Hopefully not a sign of things to come

[+] ctrlaltdev|7 years ago|reply
That would be the best thing that could ever happen.

Refusal of service?

I don't know anything that would make people run to another service faster.

[+] longstaff2009|7 years ago|reply
for consumers maybe, but if you don't have access to your data its problematic. for business and government departments it could be crippling
[+] lukevdp|7 years ago|reply
Given that Google execs were having another crack at entering China (and all the “compliance” that comes with that) last year, my guess is that Google has a pretty high pain threshold for compliance.
[+] sunstone|7 years ago|reply
Then the Googlers go to jail or they bomb Google's headquarters. Google is not a nation state and wouldn't last long in a fight. More seriously, check out Huawei to see how a huge company pissing off a large country is doing.
[+] avmich|7 years ago|reply
> At some point, compliance becomes bad business.

It's not even funny. If compliance is bad business for you, well, your other choice is to not have business.

Wonder what shareholders would say, but not too much. Not one of them.

[+] longstaff2009|7 years ago|reply
So I think that is why the fine is 0.05% of global revenue instead of the full 4% that can be enforced under GDPR. Both the government and Google can spin it as a win.

But say instead France asks for 4% of global revenue, and there are rumblings from Spain, Italy, Germany, UK, Sweden, Poland, Romania, Denmark and Greece that if France is successful they will do the same.

Suddenly the potential fines are 40% of global revenue, but Europe doesn't generate 40% of global revenue.

[+] lykr0n|7 years ago|reply
The countries start seizing your assets, which for Google would be their Datacenters in Europe.
[+] beerlord|7 years ago|reply
The average person doesn't care about privacy (they have nothing interesting to share anyway), and better-targeted ads makes capitalism more efficient. Plus, the services that ads enable are very widely used and popular.

All that the EU has served to accomplish is to kill tech in Europe, place popups and opt-in buttons onto every website (accept cookies?), and to extort a few billions out of American tech companies.

Europe can't do tech because its taxes on labour are too high and the whole continent speaks 30 different languages. There, I said it.

[+] unnouinceput|7 years ago|reply
You forget that 'murica can't do tech either these days, hihi. With all the outsourcing these days hardly any tech is there to make anyway.
[+] davidgh|7 years ago|reply
I think the big tech companies are just fine with increasing regulation. They are in position to manage them, and benefit from the fact that the regulatory environment makes it that much more difficult for new companies to enter the market.
[+] unnouinceput|7 years ago|reply
I cannot wait for this to happen. I dare, I double dare GAFA/FAANG or whatever acronym you want for them to make such move. I want them to flex their muscles to see who wins. My guess? DuckDuckGo, Linux and the likes. Maps? OpenMaps. Social network? I don't give a flying fly, definitely another in a year will rise. As for costs for not paying? Like all those companies don't have distributed offices to make local caches in each country? Rally them all up and auction baby. Get some money against those fines. I bet in 2 years all those companies will either disappear like Kodak when refused to change with times or they will comply with GDPR big time. I have news for Ben Longstaff, the article's author, GDPR is new times; your "My guess? Not long." is shortsighted.
[+] dgllghr|7 years ago|reply
"There are no nations. There are no peoples... There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars... It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And [France] has meddled with the primal forces of nature, and [France] will atone!"

This is the dystopia we have built. We have allowed corporations to have to much leverage and control.

[+] longstaff2009|7 years ago|reply
I think the extent of that leverage is not well understood.

It's like AMI trying to blackmail Jeff Bezos, but having all of their sites hosted with AWS ....

What happens when it makes business sense for Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook to start charging nation states a license fee for offering their services into their country and all the government services rely on their cloud offerings?

[+] anovikov|7 years ago|reply
See, at least companies can't send you to jail, or start a war. Isn't it nice that we have an equivalent counterbalance to governments (with their known history of absolutely irresponsible and destructive behavior, which became even more so in the age of mass democracy, because the governments are now at least indirectly driven by idiots)?