I think a lot of people fail to grasp just how deep rooted many of these companies are. Hypothetically let’s take it a step beyond google and Facebook and say there was a bigger spat between the EU and US tech in general and the EU said shutdown all US tech companies operations in the EU.

Many on these threads would think well then we’d just use another search provider, they couldn’t shop on Amazon, Facebook wouldn’t work and etc. In reality though if these companies shutdown in the EU then large swaths of the internet would simply break as there is a lot of infrastructure they provide. Cloud providers, DNS and internet traffic going across these companies alone would cause huge issues and many business likely couldn’t operate without what these US companies provide. And it goes beyond just “the internet doesn’t work quite right” and reaches into everyday life as payments processing could be disrupted, supply chains might not work as suppliers in the chain can’t operate correctly, and many other knock on effects.

I’m all for the privacy protections and limits the EU is pushing because it’s definitely a push in the right direction but let’s not pretend that these companies are powerless. Should everyone be moving to limit these powers? Obviously but right now they hold a lot of cards in our modern life.