That's not a realistic decision for companies to make in the face of actually aggressive regulators, because regulators will simply levy the relatively smaller

That's not a realistic decision for companies to make in the face of actually aggressive regulators, because regulators will simply levy the relatively smaller fines every day the company remains in violation (which EU regulators have threatened/done to US tech companies). Instead of making that decision, Google just stopped operating services (Google News) in countries that tried to aggressively control how they did business. You're right though, that it is always a relatively pure cost/benefit calculation for the company.