this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
735 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
60079 readers
3484 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
For a middle class person, that’s equivalent of being sued for €1000, with a good chance of getting away with €100 even when losing. When will fines for big multinationals ever be adequate?
According to this, the fine includes a punitive damage:
Still not enough in my opinion, but hopefully if this sticks, future damage awards will be even higher. In any case, there will be a lot more fines and regulations coming down on Apple into the future (thanks in large part to the DMA), so even though this is just a single instance, they will hopefully add up pretty significantly in the coming years.
$1.8B is quite a chunk, and the EU is not shy about levying further fines if the behaviour continues.
It's less than 0.5% of their annual global revenue. It's nothing for a company like Apple.
It's not company threatening, that's for sure. But that's big enough to show up on their annual report, and pull their profit margin down a point or two. That is very much enough to get their attention.
Based on Statista, Apple profit from EU was 36B in 2023. The fine in this case amounts to 5% of their profit from the region. This is something that will impact the company's decisions.
Or they will fund more infrastructure development in the EU. It's still just March.
While I do agree that the fine could be higher, this is not like a US regulatory lawsuit. In the EU, fines have to be paid immediately, and Apple can appeal if it wants and may receive some of the money it paid back. Apple doesn't get to drag it out, and there are no out of court settlements that usually get the fine amount down.