> The EU is structurally difficult to effectively, ah, lobby Also the EU doesn't have almost any any successful consumer tech companies (and the entire sector

> The EU is structurally difficult to effectively, ah, lobby Also the EU doesn't have almost any any successful consumer tech companies (and the entire sector itself is small and has little real influence). On the brightside this leaves a lot of leeway to pass laws that protect consumers, regulate and limit monopolies etc. There won't be any domestic economical/political impact if MS, Google, Apple make a bit less money from ads, services and other stuff. So politicians have no reason to care about them. The few billions in occasional fines might not be a big deal on the whole but it's still extra revenue (and the EU budget isn't really that huge). e.g. the ~1.5 billion Google antitrust fine is almost 1% of EU's yearly budget. GDPR also provides a constant trickle of revenue (https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/) of course it's still pennies compared to the economic benefits of having a few successful tech megacorpos in Europe would have but I guess better than nothing.