I think this substack is good, it makes a pretty clear case that US tech companies may not leave Europe any time soon, but they wield the power in the relationship much more so than the Europeans. Those regulators are overplaying their hands.
If, and that is a big if, American big tech decided to pull back from Europe, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being a good thing for the local market in anything but the short term.
It’s very hard to compete with them (even in the local US market). Their disappearance from a market as big as the EU would likely spark competition.
Less we also forget that US public sentiment is shifting. If anything, big tech needs to be careful.
The companies are not at fault here. The governments are at fault for dropping the ball on coming to an agreement. We’re on like the 5th round of this. Compliance is impossible.
Until the two governments fix this, US companies cannot operate in the EU without being at risk for pilfering from EU government.
And does US law really prevent them from handling EU customer data in a compliant way? Could you give a specific example?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
However, it does not prevent data at rest being stored in the EU. Only that if requested the american company has to exfiltrate it to the states.
https://www.edps.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publication/1...
From another blog post:
> I grew up in Europe (mostly Germany, Denmark, Switzerland). I had never even set foot outside the continent until I was 18, when I moved to the United States. I have lived here for 12 years now, with most of that in San Francisco.
You might understand that I read only Bio and LinkedIn, not your whole blog. Also again very very American thinking. Im just amused.
You guys can get with the program now, or you can wait for one of those tent camps to abruptly rise up and drag you out of your Plaid Tesla and beat you to death with your own iPhone.
The conclusion that the EU must stop fining American tech businesses does not follow from the evidence presented. I am willing to take them at their word that EU regulators are overly fixated on Meta and Google specifically... except here we are in a thread about Uber.
The principle that fines for bad behavior should be doled out to citizens is noble, but laughable. Is there any precedent for that anywhere in any developed nation state in the last 50 years? I'm not talking about damages in civil suit, I'm talking about proceeds from fines being directly redistributed to citizens.
Overall, I am very happy that, as an American, the EU is stepping up to govern and regulate American businesses, while the US federal government itself continues to extend its decade-long vacation from governing.