EU Slaps Google with $2.7bn Fine for Abuse of Market Power

EU imposes largest penalty to date against a company for market distortion

Link submitted by GooWatch:

“Google has been fined €2.4bn ($2.7bn; £2.1bn) by the European Commission after it ruled the company had abused its power by promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results,” said a report.

“Other corporation to have been targeted include:

• Microsoft (2008) – the Windows-developer was fined €899m for failing to comply with earlier punishments, imposed over its refusal to share key code with its rivals and the bundling of its Explorer browser with its operating system. Five years later, it was told to pay a further €561m for failing to comply with a pledge to provide users a choice screen of browsers
• Intel (2009) – the chip-maker was ordered to pay €1.06bn for skewing the market by offering discounts conditional on computer-makers avoiding products from its rivals. Intel challenged the fine, and a final court ruling in the matter is expected in 2018
• Qualcomm (2015) – the chip-maker was accused of illegally paying a customer to use its technology and selling its chipsets below cost to push a rival out of the market. If confirmed, it faces a fine that could top €2bn, but the case has yet to be resolved
• Apple (2016) – Ireland was ruled to have given up to €13bn of illegal tax benefits to the iPhone-maker since 1991, and was ordered to recover the funds plus interest from the company. However, Dublin missed the deadline it was given to do so and has said it will appeal
• Facebook (2017) – the social network agreed to pay a €110m fine for saying it could not match user accounts on its main service to those of WhatsApp when it took over the instant messaging platform, and then doing just that two years later

“The commission is also investigating Amazon over concerns that a tax deal struck with Luxembourg gave it an unfair advantage.” the report said.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

The ‘endgame’ has begun!

“60,000 workers culled from just one factory as China’s struggling electronics hub turns to artificial intelligence” —SCMP

At least 600 other companies look to decimate their workhorses, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.

Apple’s supplier Foxconn and three dozen other Taiwanese companies spent about 4 billion yuan (USD610 million) on artificial intelligence last year, according to the Kunshan government.

“The Foxconn factory has reduced its employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000, thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs,” said a local official.

“More companies are likely to follow suit.”

Kunshan was regarded as the most economically successful county-level administration in China. Its GDP grew substantially from around 20 billion yuan in 2000 to over 300 billion yuan in 2014.

It manufactured about 120 million laptops a year at its peak, but output had fallen to only 51 million because of falling demand, local officials said.

Home to about 4,800 Taiwanese companies, it accounts for over 60 percent of the county’s GDP, with two-thirds of the population of 2.6 million comprising of migrant workers.

Worker suicide rate could shoot through the roof!

Foxconn, then world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, has been plagued by a spate of suicides since at least 2007, and peaking at 2010, when at least 18 attempted suicides by the employees resulted in a minimum of 14 known deaths. The suicides occurred at “Foxconn City” industrial park in Shenzhen, China.

At least 7 other suicide deaths at the company were reported between 2010 1nd 2013.

Prompted by the first wave of suicides in 2010, two dozen Chinese universities worked together to compile a report on Foxconn manufacturing environment, which they described as a “labor camp.” Foxconn’s management style was criticized as “inhumane and abusive.” Interviews of 1,800 Foxconn employees at a dozen factories also discovered evidence of illegal overtime and failure to report accidents.

Robots replacing bipeds: 260,000 robots are working in U.S. factories

As of February, at least 260,000 robots were working in U.S. factories, according to a report.

“Orders and shipments for robots in North America set new records in 2015, according to industry trade group Robotic Industries Association. A total of 31,464 robots, valued at a combined $1.8 billion, were ordered from North American companies last year, marking a 14% increase in units and an 11% increase in value year-over-year.”

Selected Corporations of the Week

Corporations in the news

In reverse alphabetical order (Z-A):

• Volkswagen
• TEPCO
• Peanut Corporation of America
• Microsoft
• DHL
• Apple
• Amazon
• Alphabet (Google)

Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe to Pay $324m to Settle Conspiracy Lawsuit

We Told You Schmitt was a Pathological Liar and Jobs a …

This is how they treat their workers?

Four leading tech companies headed by Google and Apple have agreed to pay a total of $324 million to settle a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to hold down salaries in Silicon Valley, just weeks before a trial had been scheduled to begin, Reuters quoted “sources familiar with the deal” as saying.

“Tech workers filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Inc, Google Inc, Intel Inc and Adobe Systems Inc in 2011, alleging they conspired to refrain from soliciting one another’s employees in order to avert a salary war. They planned to ask for $3 billion in damages at trial, according to court filings. That could have tripled to $9 billion under antitrust law,” said a report by Reuters posted HERE.

Note: The above image incorporates the Google logo, which is a trade mark of that evil corporation.

Related Links

• Eric Schmidt you’re a LIAR!
• Google: Tired of Being “Closet Evil” December 17, 2013
• The First Design for a Tablet April 26, 2011

Apple, Cisco, Google, IBM, Microsoft … Screw You in Other Ways, Too

RULED BY MASS DECEPTION
SCREWED BY CORPORATIONS
.

The top 20 U.S. companies hold more than $936 billion outside the U.S.

U.S. Corporations have accumulated nearly $2 trillion outside the U.S., up just under 12 percent from a year earlier. Six of the top  tech companies have more than 303 billion in their off-shore accounts.

U.S. taxpayers pay billions of dollars to the top technology companies that hold hundreds of billions in US government debt in tax-free offshore accounts.

307 US multinationals hold nearly $2 trillion in profits outside the U.S.The top 20 hold about a half of that amount.

Magic Mushrooms

“U.S. multinational companies reported earning 43 percent of their 2008 overseas profits in Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland, more than five times the share of workers and investment they have in those jurisdictions, according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service report.”

“The loopholes in our tax code right now give such a big reward to companies that use gimmicks to make it look like they earn their profits offshore,” said Dan Smith, a tax and budget advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Twenty-six of the largest U.S. multinationals paid no federal income tax between 2008 and 2012, according to Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), a public advocacy group.

The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes

“Our new report shows that both of these claims are false. Most of the biggest companies aren’t paying anywhere near 35 percent of their profits in taxes and far too many aren’t paying U.S. taxes at all. Most multinationals are paying lower tax rates here in the United States than they pay on their foreign operations,” said Robert McIntyre, Director of Citizens for Tax Justice.

Excerpts from the recent CTJ Report:

• 111 of the companies enjoyed at least one year in which their federal income tax was zero or less.

• 26 companies, including Boeing, General Electric, Priceline.com and Verizon, enjoyed negative income tax rates over the entire five-year period, despite combined pre-tax profits of $170 billion.

• Of the 125 multinational companies in this sample, two-thirds paid a lower U.S. tax rate than the rate they paid to foreign governments on their foreign profits. On average, their foreign effective tax rate was 12 percent larger than their U.S. effective rate.

• The total amount of federal income tax subsidies enjoyed by the 288 profitable corporations over the five years was $362 billion.

• Five companies — Wells Fargo, AT&T, IBM, General Electric, and Verizon — enjoyed over $77 billion in tax breaks during the five-year period.