It's their hubris that lead to this. For some reasons companies always seem to believe that they have an upper hand over even the most powerful governmental structure.

The very powerful people at the helm of Apple, Google and friends seem to forget that on the other side of the table there are powerful people as well and that those are quite similar to themselves.

I believe a large contributing factors were the public appearances (or lack thereof) of Tech Execs in front of government bodies (think Zuckerberg in the Senate) where it became clear that they think themselves above the rules of mere mortal man.

They committed the capital offence publicly "ridiculing" powerful politicians (and by proxy the people who elected them) all over the world and that is something that won't fly in the long term.

Come on Mark, suck in your ego, grovel a bit and agree to some semi-token compromises to keep the money train going.

And for the love of god spend some real money in Europe and pay your taxes if you want political leverage.

Apparently that was too much of an ask and now that the eyes of the public and regulators are on Big Tech they will be taken down a notch to "just" being profitable companies.