> Where they do or don't have an office isn't that important: it's about who they're doing business with. It's important because it frames the lawsuit. If the

> Where they do or don't have an office isn't that important: it's about who they're doing business with. It's important because it frames the lawsuit. If the company has a large presence in the country and is employing thousands of high-earning tax payers and leasing expensive offices, then the governments are not likely to bring frivolous fines against the company for no reason. On the other hand, if the company is making money and not paying anything back into their economy, the government has nothing to lose by attempting to extort them. > And it's really very simple: "obey the law or sod off". If you think that's too much bother then that's completely fair – no hard feelings. Just don't do business then. It's completely arbitrary in a lot of these cases. India fining Google $161m for smartphone market dominance and demanding specific remedies like not installing Google Chrome, YouTube, and Google Maps? How the hell was Google supposed to anticipate that? Almost all of these in the table are like this. France fining Microsoft $64m (!) because their advertising cookie opt-out flow was not deemed clear enough? It's not that the flow didn't exist, mind you, it's that the button wasn't on the same page as the "accept cookies" button. Where in French or EU law does that exact requirement exist?