[User23]

The most interesting part to me is that Germany is attempting to tax worldwide income. The USA does this of course, although there are tax treaties that can reduce US taxes on some foreign earnings. The USA can get away with this because most companies simply can’t exit the US so there will be assets to seize and so on. On the other hand Amazon or Google or even Apple could just nope out of Germany and preserve their rest of world income.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

I think Amazon and Apple noping out of Germany and EU would be a huge opportunity for new businesses to get a foothold. It would be great to get some competition back in the marketplace.

[dmitrygr]

I keep hearing “this is an huge opportunity” on every such discussion, and I keep wondering if people who say this are delusional or just clueless. You are NOT going to just magically get a new mobile os and a hardware maker from this. That is the sort of thing that needs billions in capital and a decade of work. Nobody will invest that, cause with Apple gone, the politicians who “took our iPhones away from us - their constituents” will be gone soon, and then so will the law. Thus there won’t BE a decade to develop a euroPhone and euroPhoneOS. And people who’d invest billions know all this. And won’t waste the billions…

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Maybe. It could just mean that other players adapt to the new laws and eat their lunch because even if the profits made with the new laws may become less on a percentage basis, there is still a sh*t-ton of money on the table.

Also, I'd still rather this than the policy of 'let the big corporations do whatever they want and don't pass laws they don't like'.

[User23]

It might clarify things if you think about how it's operationally a form of severe protectionism.

[megasteel32]

it isn't just Germany, it's all of the EU who are supposed to pass their own laws by the end of the year

[smotched]

They cant nope out of the entire EU though.