UK slaps 'strategic market status' on Google, unlocking power to pry open search The UK's competition watchdog has officially slapped Google with "strategic market status," a new legal label that gives the regulator far-reaching powers to rein in how the search giant runs its empire. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Friday that Google meets the legal threshold for "strategic market …
A google spokesman was later quoted:
"Well its hard to say , what with exchange rates, digital transformations, employee costs, snake insurance, accounting errors, and general hiding of revenues, but at a rough guess I'd say £0.00, in fact most years we here at google run a loss on all our operations and therefore qualify for tax credits which means the UK government pays google £100 million pounds per year just for google to operate in the UK"
A government spokesperson added "Its a price well worth paying for such a well meaning and charitiable company to trade here", A tory party spokeswoman said that the 100 million is typical of labour not appreciating modern business and demanded that the government increase tax relief by 300%, A reform party member was dragged out of a pub to say "at least its not going on migrants"
Because obviously encouraging innovative home grown competition and alternatives is way beyond the concept of this government, so attempting to control the output of a global leader that regards the UK as a rounding error on its balance sheet is an easier choice.
This has the same intellectual depth (possibly less) as Trump sticking tariffs on things he doesn't like (and penguins).
Our political class are clueless in technology and equally clueless in business.
Um... you're making my point for me. Google has been abusing it's market dominance for decades now, and all the regulation and tutting in the world has made precisely zero difference, has it? Not in the UK and not in Europe. No-one is denying their abuse here, though I am pointing out that the proposed remedy is not very effective.
Just remember though that search is pretty much dead these days - Google is providing Email, shared workspaces, online storage, advertising, analytics, AI, cloud office applications, streaming, datacentres and cloud platforms. Each of which has viable alternatives that don't have to be 'global' to be legitimate marketplace offerings. In fact, if you can be bothered, Europe conveniently provides a list of independent domestic service providers that public organisations (and private individuals) can use in preference to American companies. Where is the equivalent for the UK? Why are UK public entities routinely using overseas providers? Where are the tax breaks and special deals for UK startups to get a foothold? Why are all our government advisors employed by American companies?
We've demonstrated quite effectively that when it comes to carrot and stick, using the stick only gets us nowhere. So why on earth people insist on "more stick" is utterly beyond me.
It seems like best business today is not AI, but brown envelopes factory.
Regulator: You can't do that!
Strategic company: *drops brown envelope* are you sure?
Regulator: Yes, I am sure!
Strategic company: *drops brown envelope* are you sure?
Regulator: Yes, I am sure!
Strategic company: *drops brown envelope* are you sure?
Regulator: Yes, I am sure!
Strategic company: *drops brown envelope* are you sure?
Regulator: Yes, I am sure!
Strategic company: *drops brown envelope* are you sure?
Regulator: Yes, I am sure!
Strategic company: *drops brown envelope* are you sure?
Regulator: Umm, I can't see you. So many brown envelopes. Let me clean them up.
*Strategic company disappears*
Regulator: What I was on about hmm... ahh I need to grab Salmon from Waitrose.
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