Until now, the rise and of tech companies has been determined by the double-edged blad of innovation. Someone makes something new that works better, gets big, and then someone else makes something newer and displaces them. Repeat cycle over and over. It's why in tech, we specialize in the art and business of innovation.
What we don't know how to do is navigate murky political waters. We're really, really bad at it. Can you imagine another $10BN company even letting this kind of bill happen, that would kill their largest market if it passed?
Airbnb isn't alone. Uber hired Obama's campaign manager because they realized they're biggest existential threat is a political one too. But see their ongoing lawsuits and outright bans in other countries – they haven't figured how to solve the political question either.
Meanwhile, car companies with a lower market cap, like GM, could figure out how to get a bailout from the government – right after it bailed out another huge industry, banks.
Those guys are just better at it. They have been for a long time. They get things like "don't optimize to something that solves problems. Optimize optics." Or that real deals get done behind closed doors, because you can control what happens there. That by the time it becomes a public debate, you've already lost the game.
We in tech have a disgust for politics. Rightfully so. It's useless at best and harmful more often. It doesn't follow the clear, hard and fast rules that the rest of tech does. But if we don't hold our nose and figure out how to play the game, or better yet, reinvent it, we'll get outplayed on the biggest board of them all.