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Google and Apple lose their court fights against the EU and owe billions in fines (abcnews.go.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 58 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Google 2024 Revenue: $328.28B

Apple 2024 Revenue: $385.60B

I'm sure they'll behave in the future thanks to these Big fines...

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  • [–] 140 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Revenue doesn't equal profit. Apple's 2023 net profit was 96b, so a 14b fine is a substantial portion of their overall profits (~15%).

    Of course, they're not hurting by any stretch of the imagination, 82b is still a STUPID amount of money, but we should be getting the facts and numbers correct

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago

    Revenue doesn't equal profit but many companies are using multiple schemes to show that they are not profitable. So we also need to check the revenue. A company can just increase the CEO salary to eat up all the profit.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Still less than the lowest tax bracket in the US

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago

    Yeah but also this is only for their EU profit, so it’s really an even higher percentage.

    It doesn’t really make sense to talk about money they made in other countries when talking about these fines, as if they make 5 billion in profit in country X and get fined 6 billion, they would still have lost money for operating in the country regardless of how much money they made other places. Since they lost money in the country, that fine would be high enough for them to want to fix their law breaking or totally pull out of the country, and so the fine accomplishes its purpose.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    And in Apple’s case they’re just being forced to pay back taxes, not even any fines. They’re basically undoing an illegal tax break from Ireland, which has spent $10 million in legal fees to fight against receiving it. Technically the Irish government is the one that fucked up here. Apple will have to pay and move forward paying a normal tax rate.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    The sad part of this is it is just a fine, a cost of doing the business. I'm sure they have already collected more money by their monopoly than these fines.

    What we need to give them is punishment. Not financial ones.

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