Big tech needs less than three weeks to pay off more than $8 billion in fines due by 2024
Big Tech companies needed just 16 days and 21 hours to pay off the more than $8.2 billion in fines accrued by 2024 for violating your privacy and competition rules.
This is the shocking finding from Proton, the Swiss privacy company behind one of the best VPN and secure email services on the market. The team compared the free cash flow availability of the big four – Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta – with the fines these companies received worldwide throughout the year.
The results are astonishing. Indeed, in 2024, fines against Big Tech were the highest ever levied, exceeding those in 2023 and 2022 combined (over $3 billion per year). However, the actual consequences remain minuscule. As Proton puts it, privacy and competition fines are still “simply a cost of doing business for companies whose revenues often exceed the GDP of countries.”
A decline in Big Tech’s cash flow
For the third year in a row Googling the company was hit the most by fines in 2024, with the total amount reaching $2.9 billion. Still, it is unavoidable to make use of free cash flow (the money a company can subsequently generate). expenditure), it can pay off all its fines after about three weeks of operation – 16 days, 21 hours and 25 minutes to be exact.
Apple followed suit with a total of $2.1 billion to pay off, which would cost the Big Tech company about a week of cash flow. The same goes for Microsoftwith over $1.6 billion of fines.
Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) would take just under two weeks to pay it $1.42 billion fines. Amazon was one of the least affected companies, clocking in just above $57 million. However, it is highly unlikely that Jeff Bezos lost any sleep, as one day of income would completely erase the penalty.
According to Jurgita Miseviciute, head of public policy at Proton, it is time for regulators to start speaking “the language of the big tech companies.”
She said: “You don’t prevent a bank robbery by arming guards with a spring. We need to create an environment where technology companies, regardless of where they are founded, can thrive and not be held back by the biggest players in the market. And strong competition legislation – enforcement – may be crucial for this. Fines may not be enough; big tech companies must end their anti-competitive practices.”
In 2024, Big Tech companies faced penalties almost every time for violating their customers’ privacy or for antitrust practices.
For example, Google received the largest fine of this year ($2.5 billion) in Europe in October abuse its market dominance in favor of its own shopping recommendations in Google Search. The company could use its free cash flow to pay this huge fine in full in about two weeks.
The smallest fine the company received was $2,000, issued by South Korea for collecting user data without their consent. It would take Google just seven seconds to pay this off.
According to Miseviciute, privacy and competition are two sides of the same coin: taking advantage of people’s most valuable asset – their personal data – by offering ‘free’ services in return.
She said: “This exploitative business model benefits no one but Big Tech and undermines both privacy and choice. But why should they care about a fine for misdeeds that is the equivalent of a parking ticket to you or me?”
With the fines for Big Tech still tantamount to a small drop in Big Tech’s cash flow, Proton is now urging lawmakers around the world to hold Big Tech accountable and ensure a fair and competitive digital marketplace for all .