(Drivebycuriosity) - Europe follows the tradition. In medieval times the Rhine Valley, a section of the River Rhine, that flows from the Swiss mountains to the North Sea, was flanked by castles. There lived robber barons who made their living from robbing and blackmailing traders who traveled through their territory. Today the European Union, controlled by the European Commission, does the same. The EU demands ransom from US technology corporations who do business in Europe.
“This year, like last year, the European Union will again make more money from fining US tech companies than from the total tax income from Europe’s own public tech companies!", reports Alex Tabarrok ( marginalrevolution).
Recently the European Commission fined Google €890 (x.com ) million for breaching their Digital Markets Act. In 2024 the European Commission fined Apple over €1.8 billion "over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers" (ec.europa.eu ). Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been fined several times by EU regulators, including for violations of user privacy and competition laws. It is also facing new fines over purportedly "addictive" features of its apps. In 2021 the EU hit Amazon with a $886 million fine for an alleged data law breach ( bbc.com). The fine was issued by Luxembourg's National Commission for Data Protection, which claimed the tech giant's processing of personal data did not comply with EU law.
The enormous fines are not surprising. Google and other Big Tech corporation earn a lot money - that animates greed and the EU has the power to extort the profits by taking their European business ransom and blackmailing them. If US Tech wants to continue business in the EU they have to pay whatever the EU demands.
The EU created a complex scrub of arbitrary rules to catch US Tech and accuse them of wrong doing.
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