EU sanctions Google again - €1.5bn fine almost meaningless

In some jurisdictions, courts impose standard fines for standard offences. In other jurisdictions, fines are directly linked to a person’s income.

If, in one of these jurisdictions, a person is convicted of, say, drink driving they are usually banned from driving and fined, say, three months’ income.

That seems a rational approach as it seems reasonable to suggest that a fine of €500 might mean little enough to some people but put others under a huge strain.

That idea seems to have relevance to the EU’s serial efforts to get Google to stop misusing its market dominance to stymie advertising rivals.

The EU’s Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has just fined Google €1.49bn. Two years ago Google was fined €2.4bn over its preferential treatment of its own shopping comparison service in 2017.

A €4.3bn fine related to Android and the preferential treatment of its own search engine within the mobile operating system had been imposed earlier.

That’s over €8bn which in any man’s language, even compared to the costs of the national children’s hospital, is real money. But is it?

Google measures its profits in tens of billions so it may be cynical to suggest that these fines might be seen as a cost of doing business rather than the kind of sanction that changes behaviour.

There are now daily examples of the great need for national governments to co-operate so these tech giants might be controlled. This is another, the urgency grows.