[dangsmum]

"they have a legal option not todo do business in europe"

Do you see any way to do that other than to prevent eu businesses buying ads from google?

Because i think that might have a few severe unintented consequences for businesses in the eu, and have exactly zero impact on google.

[latch]

Not sure I understand. You're saying EU business' not allowed to buy ads on Google would have "exactly zero impact on google" ??

[dangsmum]

google would still charge the same to display an ad exactly the same number of people will see google ads exactly the same number of people will click on an ad

The only thing that would change is companies outside of the eu will burn through their ad budgets faster.

plus a whole (not quite so new) industry would emerge outside the eu bypassing the regulations. such as happened in China.

[lovich]

Corporations have a lot of power over countries right now, but does the world you live in ignore everything countries can do to companies who ignore their laws? They can attempt to block everything Google while they build their own local services, ala China. Google is also a US company and while their software might be hard to prevent getting into the EU, they can start leveling sanctions against physical US goods if the US won't do anything to reign Google in. I dont think any of this is likely to happen, but political entities on the scale of the US, China, the EU, etc have options to bend companies to their will

[dangsmum]

i think you are confounding corporations as physical, "real" organisations in the real world, and cyberspace, which has no nationality by design and where the old world order is not welcome.

The old world order would very much like to believe they have dominion over cyberspace, but they do not and should not.

[lovich]

Cyberspace is not some metaphysical entity that exists in the ether. Every website, every connection, is being run on physical hardware. I'm not arguing that cutting off access to something on the internet would be easy or even feasible, and it would hurt any coubtry that tried to, but it is entirely possible

[dangsmum]

every website is a law unto only itself, every connection breaks the "physical" limits of national borders. the cat is out of the bag and the old powers that be have no power to keep their human slaves on the farm.

https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

[ionised]

You think Google no longer being able to do business in a market so large (~500 million people?) that it eclipses the US by a comfortable margin will have no impact on them?

That would damage Google a lot more than it would damage the EU nations.

[dangsmum]

google will still be able to sell those 500mil eye balls with or without putting the money back into the eu.

Those eyeballs will still be worth the same.

it will make as much difference to google use as the us copyright fine made to sci hub.

"you are the product"

[ryan-allen]

It'd also open the market to a new competitor when people in the EU (and elsewhere) realised that they can't find local ads on Google.