Europe’s top court just delivered multi-billion dollar blows to Apple and Google
CNN
Apple has lost its fight to dodge a €13 billion ($14.4 billion) tax bill following a ruling by Europe’s top court Tuesday, suffering a blow just a day after the iPhone maker unveiled a host of product upgrades to boost sales.
Apple has lost its fight to dodge a €13 billion ($14.4 billion) tax bill following a ruling by Europe’s top court Tuesday, suffering a blow just a day after the iPhone maker unveiled a host of product upgrades to boost sales. The European Court of Justice also upheld a €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) antitrust fine against Google, in a separate decision, delivering a double whammy to two of the world’s most powerful tech companies. The two ECJ decisions are final, which means the companies cannot appeal them. The rulings highlight the European Union’s tough stance on Big Tech, which in recent years has extended to enacting sweeping regulations to curb the power of major tech companies. In the ruling against Apple (AAPL), the ECJ upheld a 2016 decision by the European Commission, which found that Ireland had granted Apple unlawful state aid that it was required to recover. According to estimates by the EU’s executive arm, Ireland had given Apple “illegal tax benefits” worth €13 billion. The tax case against the company was part of a crackdown by the bloc’s now outgoing antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager on deals between multinationals and EU countries that regulators saw as unfair state aid.
The DeepSeek drama may have been briefly eclipsed by, you know, everything in Washington (which, if you can believe it, got even crazier Wednesday). But rest assured that over in Silicon Valley, there has been nonstop, Olympic-level pearl-clutching over this Chinese upstart that managed to singlehandedly wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap in just a few hours and put America’s mighty tech titans on their heels.
At her first White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made an unusual claim about inflation that has stung American shoppers for years: Leavitt said egg prices have continued to surge because “the Biden administration and the department of agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”