Trump scolds and threatens the Europe Union on recent Google incident

The billion-dollar fine of the EU against the California technology giants Google has stirred up a lot of dust. Now also Donald Trump interferes. And the US president does what he does best: he scolds the European Union and threatens her.

This week, the EU imposed a record € 4.3bn fine on Californian technology giants Google and Alphabet. The EU Competition Commission has identified a misuse of market power in Android’s competitive model, more specifically the implementation of the licensing of various Google services and the de facto compulsion related to Android.

This was also not good on Google, yesterday threatened Sundar Pichai even that Android could not be free in the future. Experts think that is not a realistic scenario, because the Google CEO has more or less straightened out his argument here.

Most see this as a threatening gesture, which will ultimately remain inconsequential (or can and will appeal to Google against the EU penalty). However, Google now gets backing from someone who is certainly not one of the most popular people in Mountain View, but who is well acquainted with threatening gestures, namely US President Donald Trump.

Trump tweeted yesterday, intervening in EU internals again and wrote, “I told you, the European Union has just blasted one of our great companies, Google, a $ 5 billion fine USA really, but not much longer! ”

 

What exactly Trump means by that and how he wants to retaliate is unclear. But Cnet notes that the EU keeps tapping its fingers on companies in matters of taxation, monopoly matters and privacy (Microsoft can sing a song about it), but Trump interprets the current punishment as an affront to the entire United States.

Via Winfuture