This is a perfect example of the kind of legal processes we have now.
The EU and Germany in particular have decades of privacy regulation and core values behind them. These core values won't change. Regulation for the past decades has ignored that tech routinely violates these values, and it's catching up now. Rules won't be as dramatic as in the past, but will differ widely from the us.
In this context, it's legally important to account for entrepreneurial freedom (guaranteed by the constitution), but if there's an overriding reason to protect consumers, then it is entirely irrelevant how long companies have been doing this, how many do this and in what other countries they do it.
To sum up, the law sometimes bites late, but it bites hard, and arguments surrounding competitiveness, business culture or internet culture are legally completely irrelevant.