For Apple, $500 million fine is small change

Apple could be fined €500 million by the EU for preventing iPhone users seeing cheaper ways of streaming music than via the Apple app store. At first glance this looks like another example of European regulators flexing their muscles and delivering well-aimed blows where other regulators fear to flex. There's something to this. The EU's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has been in the job 10 years and is the closest thing on the planet to a regulator Silicon Valley fears. But that's still not very close. €500 million is chump change when you have more than $160 billion cash on hand, as Apple did in the last quarter of last year. If the EU wants to change behaviour rather than just establish fines as a modest price of doing business in the bloc, it needs to fine Big Tech bigger. It might also want to get tough on leaks. The FT got the scoop on the €500 million and in doing so gave Apple's lawyers a useful heads-up. The fine's not actually going to be announced until next month.