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No, I don’t think so. I don’t think they would ever abandon the EU market. I was thinking more along the lines of a “malicious compliance” approach, where they would make it more difficult for us to access certain services.

Please note that I am not against fining and fighting Google and other big tech companies. Sorry if my comments make it seem like I am.

We can’t afford to start a real war with them because they control far too much of our technology. Yes, we could threaten to block their access to our markets but what if they don’t change their behaviour? Do we go through with it? Some of their services are critical to our daily lives and just one day without a few of them and entire systems would collapse.

EDIT: Big tech corporations like Google are more powerful than governments. While they are not invulnerable to sanctions, we may lose as much or more than they do if we take drastic action without viable alternatives.

The EU can fine them for things like this but it won’t make much difference. To provoke long term change, we need a way to block them from our countries and that’s impossible.