The goal is to regulate adtech. But the effect is to impose regulatory costs on every company that wants to have a discussion forum on their website. (And the upcoming copyright bill is even worse.)
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...
The cost of business going up isn't necessarily a bad thing, if we're getting something valuable in return (IMO we are). The question is whether or not the increased cost is prohibitive, and you have not provided any evidence to suggest that's the case.
The thousands of companies that just block EU citizens rather than comply seems to suggest that they feel the cost is prohibitive.
As for more direct hard evidence I believe this would fall into the "unseen" category in Bastiat's That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen and is, in effect, calling on someone to prove a negative.
They block EU because they deem compliance not worth the effort (now), usually because they get more than enough from their US markets. This doesn't mean the costs are prohibitive. Thousands more companies didn't block EU citizens. Some companies (notably news sites) even started to offer a superior product to EU citizens (e.g. plaintext news).
Also, even with those blocking EU or shutting down, nothing of importance is lost. These companies have competitors that are less abusive, who do fine.
I would much rather have adtech and those businesses. I think most people feel the same way, because they continue to use those businesses.
The model where Google provides a service and users pay for it is more efficient and more societally healthy than the model where Google provides a free service, a million companies pay to place ads on it, and pass the cost of their AdWords budget onto users who get a 'free' service.
It is a model where consumers get better products, and where millions of creative minds aren't wasted making web pages uglier (or ruining cities with billboards, for that matter). It is a model where competition is also a little easier, because an alternative search engine can undercut Google's prices and carve itself a starting market niche, even if their service is not quite as good as the established competitor; instead of the current model where first you need to be better than Google in every way, and then you have to fight the network effect.
I have no clue how to get to world to switch to this model. It will require that elusive white whale, an online payment mechanic that is truly as frictionless as cash. And it will almost certainly require legislation rather than mere market pressure, because people can see their monthly Google bill but cannot see the vast costs of the marketing industry which they pay for every day.
That's cool and all, but people can't pay for it. These fees would add up quickly and you'd basically never go beyond your few webpages that you're paying for, because everything else costs money.
I probably would never have cared about the internet or anything related to computers, if websites had required people to pay. That would not have been an option for me or most people I knew growing up.