[adventured]

Particularly with a 20%+ growth rate and their pile of cash. An annual $5 billion EU envy tax is already meaningless. The EU can't stop the US tech machine from continuing to expand, it's already too late. While they focus on fines and hold a defensive posture, the US companies are consuming the planet ex China.

[pineaux]

It's still very possible for nations to block out companies. China does it with great succes and as a result they have created their own safe hatchery for applications and hardware to grow strong before jumping into the global market, which is just 6x bigger anyway...

[zaarn]

The EU will def not sit idly by and hand out 4 billion € fines if it doesn't hurt, the current one was only about 40% of the legal maximum they could have handed out (ie, about 10 billion €), and if Google doesn't play ball they'll get out the big toys.