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Comment by dmitrygr | Hacker News Reader

Eventually we shall reach a point where

    EV(deal with EU's bullshit) < EV(tell EU fuck off)

Then, EU will enter the new dark ages. Most of the tech products and services that we consider necessary for modern life are products of USA. The more EU keeps trying to grab more and more money from these USA companies via fines and fees carefully engineered to only ensnare USA companies, the sooner this will be.

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I doubt any of them would. See how Meta bends itself backwards even though as a web service it would be the easiest to turn the lights off. And even if, are there no reasonable other alternatives? Plus even USA companies would love to jump on such a huge market vacuum.

Not sure how accurate these stats are -- https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/ but in 2023 Europe was about 25% of its overall revenue (america was about 50%).

I think investors would be pretty unhappy if their revenue went down by 25%.

Aren't they disallowed from turning the lights off? Whenever a country tells Meta/Google that they have to pay for news results, and then they say "we just won't index/include news anymore", they seem to get into even more trouble.

That's a lot less feasible for a physical device seller. It's much easier to block importation of a physical device than it is to have country-wide/continent-wide firewalls.

I don’t agree with your comment. I see 2 scenario based on your assumptions: 1 - The companies are making way too much money in the EU and are willing to go through “fines and fees carefully engineered” (which by the way are called laws and regulations). I take for example the case of China where laws and regulations are more tricky and we see Apple or Microsoft thriving there. 2 - Let’s say that the companies are saying “fuck this shit” and actually leave EU. Then I go back to the example of China where you have local players emerging (Bilibili, Baidu, Weibo or Wechat etc…) to bridge the gap and meet the need.

Overall, I support these regulations, I believe that Apple reached a size and a central position in the life of too many people, at some point it needs to be controlled, coerced (or dismantled) to make sure that it doesn’t spin out of control. Same applies for the other companies targeted by the DMA, their size is just too big to allow smaller players to emerge.

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