In 2024, governments worldwide fined some of the world’s largest tech companies — Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft — a combined $8.2 billion. At first glance, it might seem like authorities are finally holding Big Tech companies accountable for their anti-competitive practices, privacy violations, and other abuses. But a closer look reveals the stark reality: For companies generating up to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, these fines are paid off in mere days — sometimes hours — with barely a dent in their bottom line.
Google received the most fines this year, just short of $3 billion. Yet even using its free cash flow (which takes its revenue and subtracts its expenses for equipment, property, and other items essential to its business), it can pay off all its penalties after roughly three weeks of business. Meta can cover its $1.46 billion in fines from privacy violations in under two weeks. Amazon’s $57 million in fines was a rounding error — basically a single day’s earnings erased its penalty entirely. These numbers highlight a troubling truth: The financial penalties imposed on Big Tech are not meaningful deterrents.
If fines aren’t working, what will? To address this imbalance, regulators need to rethink their approach, targeting systemic change rather than symbolic punishments. This article explores how current policies fall short and what must be done to ensure accountability in a world dominated by tech giants who view fines as the cost of doing business.
We’ve covered this topic in 2022 and 2023. While the fines have grown larger, they still have not reached the scale that would cause concern for leadership at any Big Tech company. There are several reasons for this.
Fines are essentially licensing fees to continue abusive practices
These fines are governments’ efforts to ensure Big Tech companies respect their laws. Each fine represents a punishment for breaking the law — abusing their users’ data or illegally obstructing another company’s ability to compete fairly.
The fines on tech monopolies over the past three years have grown by leaps and bounds. In fact, Big Tech companies received more in fines this year than they did in 2022 and 2023 combined. Unfortunately, despite their unimaginable size, these fines remain inconsequential to Big Tech.
| Company | Total fines in 2024 | Time to pay off its fines (using free cash flow) |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $57,478,000 | 1 day, 0 hours, 51 minutes |
| Apple | $2,117,203,000 | 7 days, 2 hours, 28 minutes |
| $2,974,752,000 | 16 days, 21 hours, 25 minutes | |
| Meta | $1,462,850,000 | 9 days, 19 hours, 15 minutes |
| Microsoft | $1,605,000,000 | 7 days, 21 hours, 49 minutes |
Most other companies would be crushed after receiving $2.97 billion in fines. But Google’s free cash flow (FCF) from the first three quarters of 2024 was $47.9 billion, roughly 16 times larger. Free cash flow is a way of accounting for how much earned is available to be used by the company by subtracting how much a company spends on purchasing property and equipment from the money it earns from its business operations. As Google explains in its earnings report(nowe okno), free cash flow is the “amount of cash generated by the business that can be used for strategic opportunities, including investing in our business and acquisitions, and to strengthen our balance sheet”.
| Company | 2024 free cash flow | 2024 free cash flow per hour |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon(nowe okno) | $15.08 billion | $2,313,112 |
| Apple(nowe okno) | $108.81 billion | $12,420,091 |
| Google(nowe okno) | $47.93 billion | $7,337,622 |
| Meta(nowe okno) | $40.51 billion | $6,204,044 |
| Microsoft(nowe okno) | $74.07 billion | $8,455,593 |
Fines need to grow by an order of magnitude to be an effective deterrent. Take Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has been penalized more than $3.7 billion since we began tracking Big Tech fines in 2022. Yet there are no calls from the board or public for him to be replaced. That’s because the business practices that led to all these fines also generated hundreds of billions of dollars for Facebook.
This also isn’t a total accounting of all the different payments Big Tech companies will need to make (pending appeals). Apple faces a $14 billion bill for unpaid taxes(nowe okno) in Ireland, and there are hundreds of class action suits against Big Tech companies worldwide (one of the largest is being brought in the UK by Which? against Apple(nowe okno) for $3.66 billion over its domination of cloud storage). Still, it would take Apple less than two months (59 days, 5 hours, 19 minutes) to pay off this $17.66 billion in additional fines.
The sad fact is each of these companies is a monopolist. They’ve taken the internet — the globe’s most important and irreplaceable infrastructure that links billions of people to jobs, loved ones, entertainment, and critical information — and chopped it up so they each have a market they can control. Google and Apple dominate smartphones. Google and Meta dominate online advertisement. Amazon dominates online markets. Put in simple terms, Big Tech recognizes it is more profitable to pay these fines indefinitely if it means they retain this control.
Big Tech thinks they’re above the law
Governments are beginning to learn this lesson. In addition to the increasing the size of their fines, EU lawmakers passed the Digital Markets Act, which came into effect in 2024. This allows policymakers to demand changes from companies that act as gatekeepers in specific markets. The first market they tried to make more fair was the smartphone market, trying to force Apple and Google to open up their iOS and Android devices.
Perhaps predictably, Google and Apple responded by ignoring the spirit of the law and proposing reforms that would achieve little (or, in Apple’s case, be actively punitive). This reaction shows that Big Tech will not give up its illegal market dominance willingly. Governments must be persistent and forceful to return choice and fairness to the internet.
The good news is this effort seems to be global. The US, long a laggard in enforcing market fairness, has recently come to life. In a case brought by Epic Games(nowe okno), Google Play was found to be an illegal monopoly. In a separate case brought by the US Department of Justice(nowe okno), Google was found to be making illegal deals with mobile device partners to secure a monopoly for Google Search. Potential remedies include forcing Google to spin off Android or Chrome into a separate company. The Department of Justice also has ongoing cases against Google’s ad tech business(nowe okno) and Apple(nowe okno), while the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Meta(nowe okno) is set to begin in April.
A fairer internet is possible
For the first time in a long time, governments are taking their duty to their citizens seriously and beginning to fight the tech monopolies that have corrupted the internet’s initial promise. But make no mistake, the fines are still too small to make Big Tech sit up and pay attention. Rather, it’s the attempts to unwind Big Tech’s structural advantages that hold the most promise to restore online freedom and fairness.
A fairer internet will allow competitors that provide services that respond to people’s demands — by protecting personal data instead of exploiting it, for example — to succeed. Unfortunately, making the internet a level playing field will take years. Until then, the burden of protecting your privacy falls on you. By keeping your personal data out of Big Tech’s greedy hands, you’re not just safeguarding your information — you’ll make them take notice by affecting their ad revenue.
The easiest way to shield yourself? Use end-to-end encrypted services. Sign up for Proton for free today and join our mission to build a better internet where privacy is the default. From emails and calendars to photos, files, browsing, passwords, and online identity, Proton’s encrypted services let you take control of your information.
