Apple Inc yesterday lost its court fight over a 13 billion euros (US$14.4 billion) Irish tax bill and Google lost its challenge over a 2.4 billion euros fine for abusing its market power, in a double boost to the EU’s crackdown on Big Tech.
The EU’s Court of Justice in Luxembourg backed a landmark 2016 decision that Ireland broke state-aid law by giving Apple an unfair advantage.
In another victory for EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, the same court ruled on the same day that Google illegally leveraged its search-engine dominance to give a higher ranking to its own product listings.
Photo: Bloomberg
Vestager — who is just weeks away from departing the Brussels-based European Commission after two terms — made Apple and Alphabet Inc’s Google top targets after taking up her role in 2014.
The Apple decision was by far the biggest in her decade-long campaign for tax fairness, which has also targeted the likes of Amazon.com Inc and automaker Stellantis NV’s Fiat. Vestager has argued that selective tax benefits to big firms are illegal state aid that are banned in the EU.
“It’s important to show European taxpayers that once in a while, tax justice can be done,” Vestager told reporters in Brussels in response to questions on her Apple win.
Apple CEO Tim Cook previously blasted as “total political crap” the EU’s 2016 move to order the firm to pay 13 billion euros in back taxes, while the commission’s 2017 fine against Google was leveled for abusing its search dominance to give a higher ranking to its own product listings.
Vestager ordered Ireland to claw back the sum, which amounts to about two quarters of Mac sales globally. The money has been sitting in an escrow account pending a final ruling. Ireland must now decide what to do with its unwanted windfall.
“We are disappointed with today’s decision as previously the general court reviewed the facts and categorically annulled this case,” an Apple spokesperson said.
Separately, a Google spokesperson said that the company is “disappointed” with the court judgement on its appeal and that a 2017 offer to remedy the EU’s concerns helped to generate more clicks for other shopping services.
The EU’s focus on Google paved the way for global scrutiny, from the US to the UK. The EU has not merely targeted the firm’s search dominance. Its shopping case was the first round in a trio of fines that led to penalties totaling more than 8 billion euros.
The EU’s competition watchdogs are hoping that the conduct of Silicon Valley will be definitively fixed by sweeping new regulation that came into effect last year — the Digital Markets Act.
The shopping case “was symbolic because it demonstrated that even the most powerful tech companies could be held accountable,” Vestager said. “No one is above the law.”
Among other dos and don’ts — it forces Big Tech players to refrain from favoring their own services over rivals — an obligation inspired by the bloc’s near decade-long tussle with the tech giant’s search dominance.
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
RSS