A business model that fails because you explicitly make them illegal isn't exactly a failed business model. The lawmakers made them fail and they either knew it was going to happen or were incompetent.
> A business model that fails because you explicitly make them illegal isn't exactly a failed business model.
It literally is, by definition. Any business success has to happen within the legal context it exists in.
> The lawmakers made them fail and they either knew it was going to happen or were incompetent.
I could reword this as "the elected representatives of the people decided that certain business models were undesirable and anti-consumer, so legislated against them".
>It literally is, by definition. Any business success has to happen within the legal context it exists in.
Yes, and they had business success until the rules were changed from under them.
>I could reword this as "the elected representatives of the people decided that certain business models were undesirable and anti-consumer, so legislated against them".
And I could reword this as "lobbying groups have bought our politicians and use them to enact laws to put our competitors out of business".
I'd say my rewording is closer to reality, because of course the two biggest ad networks increased in size while the smaller ones decreased as a result of this regulation.
A goal of the GDPR was to make these business models illegal, because they are considered bad. It has not been successfull at this, mostly due to lack of enforcement.
Or maybe that's what the voters are told. Why do so many people suddenly believe politicians? Do you think European politicians don't constantly lie through their teeth?
The business model of Google isn't a failed business model.
What the GDPR does do, quite successfully, is build a moat around Google so wide and deep as to minimize competition with them, because they're one of the few firms that can both (a) afford the engineers with the technical expertise to comply with the law while accomplishing their goals and (b) afford the lawyers to address the issue when they fail at the former.
They are a giant and those can be hard to topple in one go, but the fact that a giant can continue a failed business model for a longer time does not make it a not failed model.
Hell, at least around 2017, there were voices from Google that they considered ads to be unsustainable long term and sought to diversificate income streams.
The fun thing is, GDPR didn't actually introduce much change in law. It just gave, for the first time in history, existing laws a real set of teeth, even if they are still baby teeth.
So yeah, all that data companies had been vacuuming for no sensible purpose? It was always illegal
> afford the engineers with the technical expertise to comply with the law while accomplishing their goals
Google is in breach of the GDPR as it stands, so no.
> afford the lawyers to address the issue when they fail at the former
Potentially, though again a clear-cut breach like theirs should result in a fine regardless of how much money they throw at the problem.
As far as building a moat, I'm not sure. Whether it's Google or a one-man shop, neither can accurately track users without being in breach. There is no moat that I can see, you either break the law or you don't.
> They were fined in Jan 2019, but are they still out of compliance?
They were fined on one specific thing and they maybe fixed it (or silently replaced with an equivalent, non-compliant thing once they went out of the spotlight), however they are plenty of other things they do that are in breach and those are not being investigated nor fined which is why we're discussing the lack of enforcement.
> Which is why good lawyers are so important.
True, but a good law should be one that you can't lawyer your way out of and so far the GDPR outcome of that is inconclusive given there is barely any enforcement at all.
