for perspective, €403M = ~30 hours of net income, or ~10 hours of revenue (based on 2025 numbers, current exchange rates).

Do they only fine American companies in Europe?

Someone recently fined Facebook $17 Billion. It was on the front page of NYT for 6 days (like as if it was a huge "get").

About 1% of FB's market cap. And their sins get washed away.

Everybody wins.

At this rate, fining tech-cos will be a major source of revenue for governments. Everybody wins.

They don’t seem to be getting the message that companies need to comply with laws of the country they operate in.

Maybe start adding zeroes until it sinks in…

it's depressing how small google's / meta's fines are. should be a % of revenue or total stock valuation or something.

They need to multiply by 100 to move that fine out of “cost of doing business” range.

Oh geez, GDPR again. Does this mean I'll have to close out a popup every time I open Google Maps or do a search?

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The EU seems to live in a world all on its own. They can’t fine enough to actually change the behavior of big companies, but they can fine enough to kill their own startup culture.

I don’t feel bad for them anymore. Their voters seem to be fine with this status quo. And I get why other countries see these fines as trying to raise taxes by other means because it hasn’t and won’t change anything.