content: They have annual revenue of about $75 billion. So that's a hair over 2 weeks revenue for them. This is really a major problem with huge companies. For whatever reason we don't arrest people for corporate level white collar offenses, but fines are completely useless as a punitive measure. Assuming Google was engaged in genuine anti-trust activity, did it increase their revenues by more or less than 5%? If the answer is more, then even with this record fine - it was immediately profitable for them to break the law even considering just a year's revenue. If we look at their revenue over more than just a year then if said anti-trust increased their profits by basically anything, even a fraction of a percent, then it's going to end up being hugely profitable even after the fine. And this is regularly the case. The big names in consumer electronics - Toshiba, LG, Samsung, Sony, etc have been busted countless times in anti-trust cases and they don't really care since it's printing money even after the fines. And of course they won't pay $3 billion. They'll tie it up in the courts and have an army of lawyers working to reduced, challenge, and further marginalize what punitive value is there.