Google Is Not An American Company

Unless President Trump has finally adopted the royal first-person plural and owns a significant amount of Google stock, it is hard to know what the president meant when he complained on Thursday that the European Union has slapped a $5 billion fine on “one of our great companies.”

Because whatever else it may be, Google is not an American company.

“Google” is, more than anything else, a logo and a marketing label; it is also a subsidiary of a holding company called XXVI, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a corporation that is also an umbrella for a number of other venture capital and research entities. For another two years, until the deadline imposed by an Irish court expires in 2020, Google or Alphabet or the Money Machine or whatever you want to call it will continue to steal from the rest of us by means of two accounting schemes known as the “Irish Double” and the “Dutch Sandwich.”