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US tech giants haven't worried about competition coming from Europe for awhile now. They worry about competition coming from either within the country or China.



The two biggest problems US tech giants have, are fines-as-taxation from the EU and France increasingly pushing for the idea of a restricted competition zone for the EU (a poor attempt at how China incubated its own tech giants by walling everything off). Germany is dramatically more globalist economically (an export giant), so most of the EU's regressive insular ideas will come from France in their style of protectionism.

A distant third problem are US regulators, which are slowly moving forward with targeting the tech giants (which now has both sides of the political machine looking at them, for different reasons). The giants no doubt feel like they can massage that situation better, as it's their home turf. They're invasive aliens as far as the EU is concerned.


What about foreign companies operating in europe...wouldn't they have to comply? Or does this only apply to companies with headquarters in Europe?


Honest question: What happens if a Russian or Chinese search engine doesn't comply?

How would the EU block them? This is especially important if the Russian or Chinese entity has no locus or presence in Europe.

(for instance, would you be able to get around it using a different DNS, or by using a VPN?)


They'll just block payments to those sites. You know, from the advertisers - the actual customers of the platform. No one cares what people use for free. This is about money.


Russian Yandex is incorporated in Netherlands, which is a founding member of the EU.




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