How many people remember the NOISE coalition against Microsoft?
During Microsoft’s transatlantic antitrust woes?
N.O.I.S.E.?
The people who secretly and publicly funded that mofo working with Penfield Jackson to bring down Microsoft?
Novell. Oracle. IBM. Sun Microsystems. Everyone Else.
Surreptitiously, Google was in the “Everyone Else” category, until outed.
At every turn, Google complained to the EU, coming up with farcical BS market dominance theories that yum-yums running the EU antitrust offices eagerly lapped up like the, well, lapdogs that they were!
It was horrifying!
Under the intellectually-deficient Mario Monti, the thoroughly-incompetent Nellie Kroes, and the dumbass Joaquin Almunia, Microsoft was hobbled.
All the while, Google had a free hand to become unlawfully dominant.
Fast forward to today.
Thankfully, the current European Commissioner for Competition is Margrethe Vestager.
The competent Ms. Vestager has been able to cut through Google’s BS, and has undertaken to hit Google in the wallet for [economic] crimes against the people.
Today, the blow came to €4.3 billion.
Not a small sum to sneeze at, but smallish, to Google.
Sadly, this won’t stop Google.
What the EU competition authorities should have done, was to wrest control of the Android store, called Google Play, from Google.
Allowing Google to maintain control over that marketplace enshrines Google’s dominance over the Android ecosystem no matter what other remedies are ordered.
I sincerely hope that Ms. Vestager is still keeping a close watch on Google.
Until then, schadenfreude bites.
