[adventured]

GDPR - the core of it - is about privacy, it's an increment on prior laws in EU countries. It's also in part a response to the data hungry US tech companies, without question.

The 4% of worldwide revenue fine potential is exclusively targeted at the US tech giants. By my last count, the US has roughly 100 tech companies worth over $10 billion each (with trillions of dollars in worldwide revenue). Nobody taxes revenue, that's about the most moronic thing you can possibly do - unless you're doing it to try to harm / punish companies. Very few EU tech companies have meaningful worldwide revenue to tax.

[icebraining]

Of course they're trying to harm companies when they fine them. That's implicit in the term "fine".

They target revenue because otherwise companies will just use Hollywood accounting to declare they make 0% profit, they just pay huge licensing fees to some cayman island company.