Google just got hit with a $314 million fine for secretly tracking Android users’ locations. Sounds big, right? Not really. In 2024, Alphabet made $62 billion in net income — this fine is just 0.5% of that.

History shows fines this small don’t change corporate behavior.

Take HSBC. In 2012, they paid $1.9 billion for laundering cartel and sanctioned-country money — 11% of their profit that year. Still, they were later linked to another $4.2 billion laundering ring between 2014–2017[1][2].

Or Pfizer. In 2009, they were fined $2.3 billion for illegally marketing drugs — about 25% of that year’s profit. Yet more settlements followed in the years after[3][4].

If 10–25% fines didn’t deter repeat offenses, a 0.5% fine won’t even register. Google will just move on and likely continue the same behavior.

People here think the fine is trivial because it is. Unless you include some sort of regulatory oversight or criminal charges, corporate behavior doesn't change, it's just the cost of doing business to them.

Sources: [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-20673466 [2] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-07-28/mon... [3] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-... [4] [5]links weren't working unless through google, leaving the wiki page here instead on the lawsuits: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer particularly the section on Illegal marketing of Bextra settlement (2009): it required a "corporate integrity agreement with the Office of Inspector General that required it to make substantial structural reforms within the company, and publish to its website its post approval commitments and a searchable database of all payments to physicians made by the company." Finally something more than just a fine.