If you're suggestion that EU companies don't lobby for preferential treatment and against foreign (see: US) competitors then you're either lying or delusional, as for US regulator they don't have the economical nor the political incentive to go after US firms contrary to EU regulators.
You'd expect there to be more and heftier fines levied on EU-based companies since it's the regulator overseeing the eurozone, but they save the record fine for US firms.
Beside most of that is on cartels i.e the ones they don't require convoluted reasoning to prosecute and the large fines are shouldered by several companies.
"Given Google’s dominance in search and browsers and the popularity of its many web services, Pichai’s warning looks more like a bluff to court popular opinion than a genuine threat that Android will no longer be free."
I wish these bloggers would keep their biases and unsubstantiated commentary to themselves.
This fine is an assault on open source, the fact linux didn't attain mainstream appeal on the desktop was largely due to the lack of condition and harmonization across distros.
In any other context fining an open source project for antitrust violations is absurd.
You tell me. It certainly appears that the EU spares no resources at seeking and investigating US corporations and certainly they have no qualm in sticking them with record fines.
It's always surprising how much comments and postings in these parts are vehemently in opposition to data being usefully incorporated into these apps and services, I remember a recent post about how Google's passive on device music identification worked on the Pixel 2 which turned hostel.
I understand that certain types of people are attracted to certain topics but it's still somewhat jarring when in a technology discussion board there is this amount of anti tech sentiment.
This feature is useful, it puts that data gathered to a good use, and it's upfront about it, if you don't like it just swipe the notification away.
Don't be fooled, the iPhone is gathering the same type of data it just only snitches on non system apps doing so in the background. Not to mention that it looks like they don't put that data to good use which as far as I'm concerned is the greater sin.
Google can display the results they want in any fashion they see fit, it's their website/apps and their publishing/curation is protected by the first amendment.
A study this year by Stone Temple, a prominent analyst of the industry, showed Google’s search engine answered 74.3% of 5,000 questions, and on those answers it had a 97.4% accuracy rate. Both percentages are higher than services from Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
Alternative WSJ:
Let's bury that tidbit under the fold while we nitpick and highlight edge cases in a constantly improving system.
We should also emphasising how integral google's search is to the health of society and civilization because we are mandated by management and ownership to produce anti-google PR and provide a steady supply of ammunition to its critics.