Rachel Whetstone, Google's European Director of Communications and Public Affairs, has posted some informaiotn on the Belgian court case concerning Google News.
It has been a very silly saga, but I was struck by one paragraph:
Last week we asked the court to reconsider its decision and requested that the requirement to post the ruling on our home pages be suspended. The court on Friday 22nd September agreed to reconsider its ruling in November this year, but maintained the requirement that we must post the initial judgment to our home pages for five days or face a fine of 500,000 Euros a day.
Seriously, what sort of crime justifies a fine of €500,000 ($640,000) a day? This is insane. Europeans are used to getting a laugh out of American court cases where someone sues Mega Corp Inc for $13.7 billion because they stubbed their big toe (though we also know they don't get it). We've already got the EC threatening Microsoft with a deranged level of fines -- €2,000,000 a day, or maybe €3,000,000 -- presumably based on the idea that it has too much money and, since it's Microsoft, nobody will care whether it's just or not. Well, if it works against Microsoft, why not try it on Google, too?
I've never seen any evidence that Google does not respect the decisions of any local or national courts (including China's), or that it will do anything except comply. I therefore doubt that threatening ridiculous fines to "enforce" decisions increases anyone's respect for such courts. Just the reverse.
