Google May Face Another Record EU Fine, This Time Over Android (itwire.com) 192
troublemaker_23 shares a report from ITWire: The EU is contemplating another record fine against Google over how it pays and limits mobile phone providers who use the search company's Android mobile operating system and app store. Reuters reported that a decision could be expected by the end of the year if the opinion of a team of experts, set up by the EU to obtain a second opinion, agree with the decisions reached by the team that has worked on the case. The report quoted Richard Windsor, an independent financial analyst, as saying that the Android fine was likely to hurt Google more than the search fine or the verdict in a third EU probe over AdSense. "If Google was forced to unbundle Google Play from its other Digital Life services, handset makers and operators would be free to set whatever they like by default potentially triggering a decline in the usage of Google's services," he said.
In the chargesheet, issued on April 20, 2016, the European Commission said Google had breached EU anti-trust rules by:
-Requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
-Preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
-Giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
In the chargesheet, issued on April 20, 2016, the European Commission said Google had breached EU anti-trust rules by:
-Requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
-Preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
-Giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
Gotta Pay the bills (Score:1)
They have to make up the money they will lose when the UK leaves somehow.
Why this when Apples sysem is WORSE? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously - Why no mention of apple - surely they should be going for apples jugular given they don't allow anyone else to use their devices, *OR* install competing stores on them
At least with googles system you can disable the bits you don't want, *AND* install other app stores. You can't do that on apple.
Re:Why this when Apples sysem is WORSE? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently Google is willing to foot the bill or less able to pull out of the market. Apple and Microsoft has enough clout, if they just threaten to pull out of Europe or pass on the cost to their educational and government customers, the fines are quickly forgotten. These things are just a political game, it's pure protectionism.
Google's market is much more fractured and less important to continuity of businesses. There are plenty of other search engines and Android and their ads are not just sold by Google, but by hundreds if not thousands of smaller parties. Even if Google threatened to pull out of the market, they would be doing enough residual business to still qualify for the fine.
They also need the European market much more than Apple or Microsoft combined and have little to no leverage over their customers.
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It's basically a game of chicken. Let's see who blinks first.
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Do you have any evidence of those claims?
The EU has in fact gone after Microsoft.
The reason they haven't gone after Apple is perhaps related to the fact that Apple has always been a niche player, although that niche at times has been pretty large.
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The EU has gone after Microsoft over a complaint by Novell from 1995, they were indeed fined to the tune of $500M later reduced to ~300M by the courts in 2007 and I believe it may still be in appeal at this point. The EU has in the mean time threatened Microsoft over other practices but never followed up.
isn't it obvious... (Score:4, Funny)
Isn't it obvious, the EU regulators are a bunch of Apple shills and fanbois.
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Seriously - Why no mention of apple - surely they should be going for apples jugular given they don't allow anyone else to use their devices, *OR* install competing stores on them
At least with googles system you can disable the bits you don't want, *AND* install other app stores. You can't do that on apple.
As much as I disagree with this verdict the answer to your question is obvious: Apple iOS, it's associated products and services, and all its restrictions are only available on Apple devices. So by limiting what they do they have no one to affect but themselves.
Now as to why I disagree with this verdict is that Google Play services is optional. AOSP is available for 3rd parties to do with what they want. And before someone cries about the binary bits and things that are only available in the "real" Android,
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Seriously - Why no mention of apple
Just checking: Apple also has 88% of the smartphone market, right?
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Because:
1. Apple does not have a market share significant enough to exert pressure on other markets (e.g. a monopoly)
2. Apple is not using that monopoly they don't have (see #1) to exert pressure on other markets
3. Apple does not have OEMs that they have forced to use other Apple services (see #2) in order to get access to the Apple service with the significant market share that they don't have (again, see #1).
See where I'm going with this? You can't expect anti-trust action against someone that doesn't
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Yes a phone maker could go AOSP with f-droid or their own store but consumers will expect Google Play whether it's a Samsung, Moto, LG or whatever.
The issue is setting defaults to Google services and baking Google bloatware in the stock ROM as a pre-condition to allow access to Play store.
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The issues here is the bundling of the google applications. A manufacturer can't decide that it wants to install e.g.: maps and gmail but not google search. Either full AOSP without maps, etc. or full blown google. This seems pretty similar to the Microsoft Windows / IE bundling things. On the other hand, Microsoft was charging money for windows, while google gives away Android and the apps for free. I wonder if they could actually do something like gapps+gsearch+forced chrome default->free, gapps withou
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nothing stops you from replacing them and calling it something else.
Other than a contract banning selling both Android phones with GMS and AOSP phones without GMS.
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I bought an Android device that didn't have any of the Gapps.
When, in what country, and in what store chain? This fine is not about market conditions in 2010 or China.
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I bought an Android device that didn't have any of the Gapps.
When
Amazon Fire phone...
So sometime between July 25, 2014, and August 27, 2015, according to the "First released" and "Discontinued" items in the infobox of the device's Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]. Its warranty has almost certainly expired by now. Therefore, I guess Google faces an EU fine over its behavior since August 28, 2015.
Besides, Amazon had to look for one of the few manufacturers that could build phones but already wasn't building Android phones with GMS. If I recall correctly, Amazon had to go with a laptop maker that hadn't made
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The problem with your argument: Apple doesn't license their OS to anyone. iPhones are Apple devices, manufactured for Apple by a contracted manufacturer. This is vastly different from an OEM that licenses the software.
Because Apple makes and markets the whole thing either through contract suppliers or in-house development, they don't have contracts with OEMs forcing those OEMs to do anything that is a potential violation of EU antitrust regulations.
The one point you have is about the forced use of the We
android devices are disposable junk! (Score:1)
If you want a phone that isn't a consumerist piece of trash that you'll throw in the garbage in two years, you need to go with Apple. I don't know why Google fanbois hate the environment so much, but they should get some ethics and some taste.
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If you want a phone that isn't a consumerist piece of trash that you'll throw in the garbage in two years, you need to go with Apple. I don't know why Google fanbois hate the environment so much, but they should get some ethics and some taste.
This is more than a bit specious, given the average iPhone user's propensity for upgrading whenever a new model is released.
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Built in obsolescence, built in to the whole ecosystem, that's hard to take sometimes. I had t
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There's approximately 3 words there that are true. The rest is bull shit.
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Partly agree (Score:2)
The agreement Google forces upon manufacturers that want to release Android phones also states that they can't release any device bearing an Android-derived OS. That is, Amazon can release their tablets with an Android-derived OS, bug Samsung can't do so since they do release devices with Googl
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An alternative to the forced bundling of apps and services would be that the manufacturers paid for the privilege of using the closed source bits of Android and Google's apps.
From Google's point of view that is failure, not an alternative. It is their mission to put their apps in the hands of users so that they can derive ad revenue from them, directly or indirectly. They are therefore trying to encourage manufacturers to include gapps. Charging for them is the opposite of what they're trying to accomplish.
Sigh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
Bundling. Naughty, naughty.
-Preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
Really? I thought they were just denying them the use of their trademarks for the purpose.
-Giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
Exclusively? Really? Or just not on the home screen?
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What happened to you? Why did you have this moment of clarity in your mind that is normally clouded with collectivist ideology? Google is a giant corporation that has money, so obviously it has to be raided for money by governments, everything else is an excuse.
Corporations should be raided for money by governments, when they are avoiding paying their fair share of the tax burden. That, however, does not preclude fair treatment.
Re: Sigh. (Score:3)
Corporations exist on a whim of the government, it is so simple even you should be able to understand that. That is the problem with the free market extremists like you - you want all the profits, but no personal responsibility. Accept unlimited personal liability for every business transaction and the government will treat you differently.
Sounds like we're back to the 90s (Score:3)
-Requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
-Preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
-Giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
This all sounds like Microsoft and the browser wars all over again. If this is indeed the case, Google should be punished "hard."
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Except it's not as vendors are free to install what they want on their devices.
The difference in the Browser wars was that there was no other company offering to sell you a version of windows without IE. Yet there are plenty offering to sell you different services with different stores, and Google even offers the source code up for free for you to roll your own (okay you don't have the resources for this, but the likes of Samsung do).
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The difference is that Microsoft *charged* for their OS. AOSP is free. Google is staying in business by monetizing Android with a deal: "you install our apps on your phone and we will give you Google search and access to the App store". All of which cost Google money. So they need to recoup their investment somehow. Apple does it by charging high prices. Google does it by giving it away but requiring a bundle to use any of their own software components.
Wired article still relevant (Score:3)
Here's a great article about why this makes no sense (basically, regulating a market that doesn't need it):
https://www.wired.com/2016/11/... [wired.com]
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Scary for American readers.... (Score:3, Insightful)
... but this is what is looks like when your government actually cares about protecting its citizens. Microsoft was first, now Google, other abusers to follow.
Forced bundling, undeletable apps, different pricing per region, forcing out competition, regional locking, all will be taken care of for EU citizens. As a result the capitalist model is working well causing competition which results for example in low prices for food, medication, insurance, internet, TV subscriptions, no caps on fixed line etc.
But please, don't believe me; there is already a considerable influx of American scientists and retirees, so don't come. It's horrible over here!
Posting as AC because I value my privacy.
Re:Scary for American readers.... (Score:4, Insightful)
'Helping consumers' in this way is why the EU doesn't have a Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or Facebook. These companies have created a tremendous amount of consumer value, but they couldn't ever grow in an environment like that.
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The EU says that companies should not be allowed to create such "tremendous amount of consumer value" at the expense of shitting on their citizens in other ways (privacy, surveillance, bundling, exploiting labor, etc).
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You're talking about 3 of the most hated companies for just what part of the consumer they actually "value".
The thing is, most of these companies created most of their consumer value before they grew into abusive pieces of crap. Note that it's not the size of the company that is under fire in the EU, but rather a set of very VERY specific decisions about very isolated parts of the business.
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Eh, so Siemens, Nokia and all these companies listed here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
could never happen?
I don't think GP is right, though. There is anti-trust legislation in the US too. I just think these American businesses are more succesful at lobbying in the US and hence seem to avoid getting in the spotlight.
It's the same in Europe - take the VW emission scandal as an example. Huge fine across the Atlantic, but what about in Germany? It's depressing.
Another thing you need to keep in mind about Eu
As it should be (Score:2)
In Europe they're at least attempting to serve notice that the rights and interests of individual citizens outweigh those of the corporations. I find it interesting that Europe, with its long history of monarchies and empires, seems to be doing a better job of defending Joe Average's rights than is America, with its history of individualism and personal freedom.
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No they're not.
They're simply going after large, cash-saturated companies to wring a payday out of them.
The EU could not give less of a shit about "individual rights and interests" if they tried.
What about the carriers? (Score:2)
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Please clarify: what are the carriers, and how are they complicit?
Note: Mobile Service Providers (if that's "carriers") in Europe are not operating in manners similar to those in the US, and in some countries locking phones to a provider is even illegal.
EU trying to take money from American Companies (Score:3, Insightful)
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Does anyone think it is a coincidence all these huge fines in recent years are against American companies.
American companies like Gazprom? Or you mean Mærks? ICAP? Eberspächer? Oh, wait, American company LG Display, right?
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Interesting. ATM the only responses to you are somewhat invalid arguments from AC's.
The one link that I saw stated the conclusion in the address: "the-largest-fines-dished-out-by-the-eu-commission-facebook-google.html"
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Cost of doing business in the EU (Score:2)
Oh well, I guess that what it takes to do business in the EU. Play by the rules, pay the correct taxes, and especially pay the right person. But if you think about it paying a €1B fine for making €100B is just the cost of doing business in those countries.
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Oh well, I guess that what it takes to do business in the EU. Play by the rules, pay the correct taxes, and especially pay the right person. But if you think about it paying a â1B fine for making â100B is just the cost of doing business in those countries.
Sounds kind of like a twisted, modern-day, updated version of "noblesse oblige" for the EU tech market.
Well, they say that old tricks are the best tricks, and what once was old will be new again. Too bad more people everywhere don't pay more heed to "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Strat
They never learn (Score:2)
You'd think after Venezuela companies would learn that it's risky doing business in an area where a socialist government sees their earnings simply as a piggy-bank to be raided whenever their own shitty economic fallacies collapse? When the kleptocracy says "they have many billions, they won't miss a few" it's time to take your toys and go home.
Ultimately, such economies are going to have to face that either they play nice with the rest of the world, or the end result is that they're going to be shut out a
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Ultimately, such economies are going to have to face that either they play nice with the rest of the world, or the end result is that they're going to be shut out and have to depend on their local crappy replacements for the goods and services no longer available to them from better companies elsewhere in the world.
More likely, they do what EU nations have always done when their economies and/or governments/leaders fail...start a war. It's the most common form of 'reset' through Europe's past.
Strat
Are they going to break up Microsoft Office too? (Score:3)
Companies release their products as bundles all the time. If Google had been leveraging their search dominance to Android dominance, I could sorta understand this. But they're not - they're doing it the other way around. If you want the Play Store, you have to install the Google suite of Android apps which includes the Google search bar. Anyone who is already a user of Google search can continue to use it in a Google-free version of Android like Cyanogenmod in a browser, just like they do on the desktop. Google's version of Android is basically AOSP + their bundle.
The second charge doesn't even make sense. The EU is pretty much telling Google "you would have been better off if you hadn't released Android as open source." Way to destroy any incentive for any company to ever use or release anything as open source again. In the future companies will only release the absolute minimum source code as required by licensing, preferably not a fully functioning product (like AOSP) so no regulatory agency can ever blame them for a derivative product's failure.
The third charge has merit if true. No kickbacks putting a finger on the scales of the market's behavior.
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That would be a hard sell because Microsoft has less of a monopoly on office suites than it ever has had since the rise of Microsoft Office.
Google should geoblock the EU (Score:3)
After a few months of having to go to the library (remember those?) and look things up on paper - or worse, using Bing, Europeans will be clamoring to have the government let Google back in.
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I think Google should charge for any of their ad supported services and software when they're not allowed to advertise through them. Charge for search, charge for Android, etc. If Google gets fines and can't collect revenue then the users should pay for the services and software.
I only have a problem with a small part (Score:2)
-Requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
I don't care what's pre-installed, as long as I can remove it, or at least disable it. Defaults I could care even less about.
-Preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
This one's ugly IMO.
-Givi
good. very good. (Score:2)
they deserve it just for the thousand of times pressing the home button for a split second opens the dammed Google search app, which is useless and impossible to disable.
What about safetynet? (Score:2)
We might see some good come out of this, if the ruling ends the safetynet anti-consumer nonsense from Google.
If they are forced to allow play store to run on AOSP derivatives, they should also be forced to drop restrictions on installing apps on custom ROMs, unlocked bootloaders and rooted devices. All of these are legal in Europe, so discriminating against them should be forbidden and fined.
I'm only afraid that this commissioner is setting her agenda more on Microsoft's wishes than on consumer needs...
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
and not even allowing real browsers but safari. No, themes doesn't count as browsers.
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Probably when Apple has a dominant market position, and uses that dominant market position to get a head start in another sector, but they don't, so... probably not any time soon.
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Apple released iPhone while still DRMing music (Score:2)
Apart from the unpopular Motorola Rokr E1 and Slvr L7, Apple's iPhone was the only phone that could play iTunes purchases. iTunes Music Store didn't drop FairPlay DRM until a couple years after the iPhone was out.
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How about you remove your head from your shoulders? It's not as if anything useful is done with it, anyway.
Re: Excellent (Score:2)
true. they did that every step. but even on that apple sucks.
they make iphone owners buy new charges and extra cables every time.
they changed the headphone plug standard for the world when iphone launched just to get a fee from every headphone manufacturer (and with that, free insight into their Financials, which helped them acquire a few brands)
they are trying the headphones thing again with a dumb bt4 pseudo standard additions like it's a new groundbreaking thing.
they forced their way into silicon valley
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
so when will they go after the apple store being it only works on the iphone and apple products???
When Apple gets to 90% of the smartphone market.
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That may not be far off if the EU wants to outlaw Google's smartphone business model, which is to give away Android for free and to make money off of web search prioritization.
This will be a lesson to anyone who wants to try to monetize an open source model.
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This will be a lesson to anyone who wants to try to monetize an open source model.
And the lesson would be that if you try to do that, you shouldn't follow up with closed-source apps and strong-arming tactics from a dominant market position?
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Have you forgotten that the iPhone too was once the dominant smartphone around? For many years after its release, before the rise of Android, the iPhone was the only game in town, and owned the market even more than Android does now. Same with iPads, which arguably still dominate the tablet market.
And at the time they were even more restrictive and locked down. Where was the EU then?
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When was that? The iPhone had less market share than both Symbian and Blackberry when it had more market share than Android. Android surpassed the iPhone in Q2 2010, at the moment when smartphones became relevant.
I don't think the iPhone ever passed 23% market share world wide for a quarter. And this is because iPhone sales peak in the quarter after the release. The yearly average is lower.
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Fair point, Symbian and RIM were still strong then in some markets, but in others the iPhone was definitely king - such as this 78% share in Western Europe [gigaom.com] in late 2009, or 50% share worldwide [techcrunch.com] early 2010.
The iPhone certainly had dominant mindshare back then, but I will concede that its peak marketshare perhaps didn't last long enough to overly concern EU regulators.
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Your numbers are bogus. They are not smartphone sales. The iPhone never reached 78% in Western Europe or 50% world wide.
As I said, the iPhone peaked arround 23% world wide and this is for a single quarter.
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Utterly stupid reply - begs the question who modded this up...
It's like saying, when will they go after Bosch, because their coffee machines only run their own system?!
If Google created and ran a mostly closed-source OS on their own hardware, then they won't be in any violation, except perhaps not allowing other browsers on the OS. Thus, since Apple's iOS in mostly closed-source and runs on their OWN platform, and they don't give out iOS to any other manufacturer, Apple isn't in violation of anti-trust laws
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Nothing technically locks them down. The bundling is saying "Playstore and Google Search and the Android trademark is Google proprietary, if you want one you must get them all."
Google could probably get away with it if they charged money for Play Store, and credited that money back if loading Google Search.
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Well, being that the EU hasn't exactly been very buddy-buddy with Apple already, you think that if they weren't violating some regulation somewhere that they wouldn't go after Apple?
Just because you don't like the iPhone doesn't mean it is in violation of EU laws.
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"Then how does Microsoft get away with doing the same thing as well even though they're not the sole creator? In fact, they go one further by forbidding the user from changing the default search engine on their platform, in addition to giving it away for free. This whole lawsuit was spurred by Microsoft's "FairSearch" campaign over exactly that issue; this is all about making more people use Bing."/quote?
by their platform being essentially dead.
Google has the dominant smartphone operating system, that's why this matters..
Apple gets away with it by.. well I guess they don't require even a special search provider. but mostly Apple gets away with requiring safari as default on ios is quite simply because it has such a small fraction of overall sales.
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The big part is that you also have to run your own app store, and because many key publishers of applications for Android haven't shown themselves willing to publish anywhere but Google Play Store, this leads to customer confusion.
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Well, it's not 'all of the Google services'. My ZTE Axon 7 came with a bunch of proprietary ZTE apps - including a calendar (which I assume is one of the Google services) and an SMS app. The ZTE stuff couldn't be uninstalled or even disabled until the latest update after users complained really loudly.
My worry is that once OEM's start being able to bundle their own services into their phones, they'll start trying to grab bits of Google's search or ad revenue - bundling in their own inferior versions that
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1) Apple does not make their own hardware. Apple doesn't own any fabs/foundries.
Apple somewhat designs their own hardware from the outside in. Form over function. They decide on a form factor, style, etc. then go shopping for shit to put in it. They pay enough to get custom designs for many actual components (such as batteries, touchpad sensors, etc.), and semi-custom designs for others (CPUs, GPUs, memory). Still, many other components are nothing more than the standard design with a firmware tweaked
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I agree - I was always surprised that they are doing it, and that they think they can get away with it. It is a very clear example of anti-competitive practices - nearly a textbook example.
Good to see that they are not getting away with it.
Re: How is that any different from Microsoft (Score:1)
Check your history. They did get fined.
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And they will get fined again, because they keep pushing IE beyond what is acceptable.
Windows 10 S is the key in this (Score:2)
it would have to be argued that they're successful in promoting Edge (IE is no longer their focus) and in turn making it difficult for other web browsers to gain market share.
Windows 10 S runs only applications from Windows Store, and Windows Store has only Edge and Edge reskins. I concede that Windows 10 S is not a monopoly as of third quarter 2017, as it's targeted to the education market and not yet dominant in that market.
But there are rumors that Microsoft plans to replace Windows 10 Home on mass-market laptops and desktops with Windows 10 S, requiring users to pay to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro in order to run any other browser. If Microsoft goes this rumored route, it shoul
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The other big difference with Windows S vs Pro is that S is given away to manufacturers for almost free.
Whether that's considered questionable dumping to gain an advantage elsewhere depends on what requirements Microsoft puts on manufacturers related to UEFI Secure Boot.
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Correct, and that is one of the issues. Phone makers aren't allowed to use it on any device if they want the "official" Android with app store on any other device. Very clear misuse of monopoly power.
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Google can't possibly manage how apps approved for the Play Store will work, such as from a security perspective, on every possible variation of code from the AOSP.
The official Android means it uses Google's Android trademark, which means it's Google's product - having competitors products using the Android trademark would be confusing to users.
Google freely gives away code that cost them probably in the billions of dollars to create, and they're the bad guy? They've created smartphones that are available t
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uhm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Edge says: "Hmmm...can't reach this page"
Besides, even if Edge could reach browserchoice.eu, what would it display for Windows 10 S, which can't run any browser other than EdgeHTML wrappers?
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Specifically Fire OS by Amazon.
Re:no competing OS (Score:5, Informative)
Contract, if you make an Android derived device you have violated the conditions of the contract and you lose access to the Play Store and all of the "with Google" apps and all of the API libraries that use Google resources. Frankly I'm a bit surprised by this ruling, Google makes the base Android OS available to anyone, they only require that you follow certain rules if you wish to have your users use their resources. To me this seems perfectly fine. They even allow the users to set and change the default applications for any action which is exactly the remedy the EU used against MS when they went after them so this is some serious goalpost moving (how exactly are you supposed to avoid these money grabs if you follow the guidance from the last ruling and still get dinged?).
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They even allow the users to set and change the default applications for any action which is exactly the remedy the EU used against MS when they went after them
Not only that, but Google is making zero attempt to prevent handset manufacturers from bundling whatever apps they want to bundle. They're just trying to get them to include their apps. Microsoft was making deals to prevent OEMs from bundling other browsers with systems with preinstalled Windows.
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Apple lacks market power because the usage share of iOS is far lower than that of Android.
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Like iOS, Windows 10 S lacks market power because it lacks usage share.
Microsoft not eating own dogfood until VS is UWP (Score:2)
Seems like at the moment they want to avoid the community backlash, while nudging people towards UWP.
I'll believe that once Visual Studio goes UWP.
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it went out the window as soon as Eric Schmidt was installed as CEO. You know, Mr. "if you have something to hide, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place".
And of course the entire executive staff at Google from CEO down went all-in on Hillary Clinton, the most evil politician to grace our national government in a long time. Not only did they personally donate money to the DNC as private individuals, Google the company itself pretty much did everything it could to pull for Hillary without drawing
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VW is suffering quite a bit in the EU. For example they vowed to retract 8.5 million diesel cars in the EU. Legally, they have to retract about 2.4 million cars in the EU of which most are in Germany itself (~1.5m). Of course these things proceed slowly, just like the fines and sanctions that may apply to foreign companies. If you want some of the latest news know that Germany has just apprehended former Audi