Except that not every country belongs to the EU. If you have customers globally, you'll still have to deal with conflicting requirements.
This is an example of why some local services are winning out against global competitors. Respect for and knowledge of their specific niche.
It seems all good for this specific policy because most of us agree with it globally. But data protectionism and/or extreme regional deviations/regulations in law will reduce the globalism everyone shares. Other options (such as educating the populace or encouraging competition) can be more effective than restrictions.
This is something to think about as the EU grows smaller, not larger. Even today, small companies with fewer EU users may stop and think about providing access at the cost of, e.g., building a portal for them to manage cookie settings.
I guess we'll see what happens with Brexit, but I would argue that the EU is growing in global importance and leadership. With the USA's recent NSA scandals, isolationist rhetoric, and backing out of international environmental agreements, I think we're going to see the EU increasingly set the tone for international trade.
I'm sure there will be plenty of tech firms that choose to serve only US customers (in the same way that there are Chinese-only and Russian-only companies today), but competing "globally" will mean following the EU's lead.
That's a different type of restriction than respecting user privacy because you can't apply the same approach everywhere. A company could easily extend the same rights to all their users. If your offering needs to violate user privacy to exist, maybe it shouldn't.
>Other options (such as educating the populace or encouraging competition) can be more effective than restrictions.
This appears disingenuous.
1. Competition: In your example above respecting user rights nets <0 ROI. There can be no competition here that respects user rights, so how would this help the situation? Conversely, restrictions will encourage competition by protecting less profitable and wealthy ventures from predatory global competition solely focused on maximizing profit.
2. Educating: You're seeking to shift responsibility from experts to laypeople, then blame the laypeople for their lack of education. It's like suggesting we should eliminate building codes then educate people on proper construction. Basically you are advocating for schools and high-rises that collapse.
What the EU is trying to do is make it so countries outside the EU only have to think of the EU as a single country. This is why theres a single market and single currency.