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Groton Daily Independent
Wednesday, June 28, 2017 ~ Vol. 24 - No. 349 ~ 37 of 41
ping. If it does not, Alphabet faces more nes of up to 5 percent of its average daily revenue worldwide. That would translate into roughly $14 million (12 million euros), based on Alphabet’s revenue during the rst three months of the year.
Rather than comply, Google could shut down its shopping service in Europe.
If that happens, “it will mean consumers in Europe are going to be worse off than consumers in the rest of the world,” predicted David Balto, a consumer advocate and antitrust expert who formerly served as the FTC’s policy director. “Consumers rarely bene t when bureaucrats put their thumbs on the economic scales to tip them one way or the other.”
Google’s critics applauded the EU for standing up to the company after the FTC backed down.
“Some may object to the EU moving so aggressively against U.S.-based companies, but these authorities are at least trying to deal with some of the new competitive challenges facing our economy,” said the News Media Alliance, a group representing U.S. newspapers whose revenue has plunged as more advertising owed to Google during the past decade.
Other antitrust experts believe the ne levied on Google means European regulators are more likely to rein in other U.S. technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Net ix as they win over more European consumers at the expense of homegrown companies.
“We already have been in an information trade war,” said Larry Downs, who studies antitrust issues as project director at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy. “But I think it just went from being a cold war to a hot war with Europe.”
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This story has been corrected to re ect that Alphabet Inc. has $56 billion ($50 billion euros) outside of the U.S. instead of Europe.
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Liedtke reported from San Francisco. AP Technology Writer Tali Arbel contributed to the story from New York.
Making Ivanka Trump shoes: Long hours, low pay and abuse By ERIKA KINETZ, Associated Press
GANZHOU, China (AP) — A worker with blood dripping from his head marked a low point in the tense, grinding life at a southeastern China factory used by Ivanka Trump and other fashion brands. An angry manager had hit him with the sharp end of a high-heeled shoe.
Workers from the factory, including one current and two former employees who spoke to The Associated Press, reported overtime that stretched past midnight, steep production quotas and crude verbal abuse at Ganzhou Huajian International Shoe City Co. They said beatings were not unheard of, but the shoe attack, which all three say they witnessed last year, was violent enough to stand out.
“He was bleeding right from the middle of the head,” the current worker said.
“There was a lot of blood. He went to the factory’s nurse station, passing by me,” said a second man, who said he quit his job at Huajian because of the long hours and low pay.
The three workers are the rst people with direct knowledge of conditions at the Ganzhou factory to speak with the media. All three spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution or arrest. Last month, three men investigating conditions at the Huajian Group factory in Ganzhou were detained, accused of illegally using secret recording devices to steal commercial secrets. They, like one of the three men AP spoke with, worked with China Labor Watch, a New York group that has been investigating Ivanka Trump’s Chinese suppliers for more than a year. The group said the men were released on bail Wednesday,
the nal day of their legally mandated 30-day detention period limit.
Li Qiang, founder of China Labor Watch, describes Huajian’s Ganzhou factory as among the worst he
has seen in nearly two decades investigating labor abuses. His group says pay can be as low as a dollar an hour, in violation of China’s labor laws. According to China Labor Watch investigators, until recently, workers might get only two days off — or less — per month.