The 10 Biggest Fines Paid by Tech Companies

Technology has become the main source of relaxation and entertainment in our lives. Our favorite companies, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and the like, are virtually steering the course of our civilization, so far, for the better—but in the process, they've done their fair share of dirty deeds in the name of profit. You thought getting detention for copying your friend's homework was bad? Try being ordered to pay more than a billion dollars for allegedly copying another company's design. When the stakes are large, so are the penalties. Here is our list of the biggest fines forked over by tech companies.

In 2012, The Wall Street Journal investigated claims that Google had bypassed the security settings for Apple's Safari browser, which violated an agreement it had in place with the Federal Trade Commission from the previous year. The FTC said that for a number of months from 2011 and 2012, Google used an ad tracking cookie it placed on the devices of Safari users who clicked on sites in Google's advertising network. Because of Safari's default settings on Macs, iPads, and iPhones, Google had implied that Safari users would be automatically opted out of the tracking-but that didn't happen. Google was slapped with a $22.5 million fine. Don't go feeling too sorry for them: that year Google made close to $40 billion.

In January 2010, Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Inc., was handed a one-two punch when he was charged with failing to disclose important materials to Dell investors. This earned him a clean $4 million fine from the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC). The cherry-on-top was the $100 million fine the SEC then placed on the company to settle Michael's lapse in judgement.

Patent holding company VirnetX claimed that Microsoft used two of its patents in Windows and Office products, and successfully sued Gates and Co. for $200 million in 2010. The jury originally awarded them with $105 million, but VirnetX pushed on and got another $95 million out of it. Don't worry, you'll be hearing about VirnetX again soon.

Well, that was fast. While VirnetX originally sought $900 million from Apple in 2012, the Texas jury awarded them $368 million for the company's claim that Apple infringed on a number of their patents which VirnetX says are used in many of Apple's services, such as FaceTime.

This one was a doosey: Google agreed to pay $500 million for displaying advertisements from Canadian online pharmacies. The online pharmacies in question targeted Americans with the sole purpose of coercing them to buy presciption drugs without a prescription. The $500 million fine was derived from the total amount Google made from selling these ad spots and the amount the Canadian pharmacies made selling to Americans.

The European Union (EU) fined Microsoft $731 million in early 2013 after the company broke a legally binding agreement it made back in 2009 to ensure customers would have a chance to choose whatever web browser their heart desired as soon as they booted up a Windows PC-but Microsoft instead set the default to Internet Explorer. Seriously. That's what happened. Microsoft was fined for just having Internet Explorer set as the default on European Windows computers. Biscuits and tea with a side of Firefox, anyone?

We're currently in the eye of the storm of this battle. The courts ruled that Samsung infringed upon Apple's patents for virtually all of its devices, beginning with its Galaxy S phones. Samsung's evidence for the case was denied, and it was ordered to pay $1.05 billion to Apple. But just earlier this March, both companies were ordered back to court, with a judge slashing about $450 million from the original amount Samsung had to pay. So this one is still up in the air, folks.

The trigger happy EU hit Microsoft with a cool $1.26 billion fine for failing to comply with an antitrust ruling from 2004. The case was first opened in 1998 by Sun Microsystems when they alleged Microsoft refused to give out information that its servers needed to work with Windows. It took almost three years for Microsoft to finally comply with the EU's orders, but it charged "unreasonably high charges" for its information until then.

The EU fined Intel $1.45 billion due to violations of European antitrust rules. The EU said that Intel illegally used hidden rebates to squeeze rival AMD out of the CPU market, and paid computer makers and retailers to postpone, cancel, or avoid AMD products altogether. They claimed this harmed millions of European customers by deliberately keeping competitors out of the computer chip market. It's strictly business, baby.

Philips, LG, and Panasonic were three of six companies to be jointly hit with this gigantic fine for particpating in a scheme to fix prices and divide up markets for TV and computer monitor tubes in Europe. From 1996 to 2006, these companies devised their plan in exotic cities like Paris, Rome, and Amsterdam in "green meetings," named so because they usually ended with a game of golf. Life in the one-percent, my friends.