I think it's interesting that more antitrust lawsuits seem to be brought and won against big SV companies recently in Europe. Is it just recently because because bureaucracy takes its' time, or is it because nowadays there is more political will to act against American companies since EU-American relations worsened since Trump came into office?
Yeah, I don't think Trump had anything to do with Microsoft's IE and WMP judgements, or the Google right to be forgotten thing in France. The EU has always taken a strong stance of corporate overreach.
I think it's more that there just is more interest in the EU in acting on behalf of their citizens, than there is in the US. Much of the US prides itself on being "Business Friendly", and the counterpart to that is not being as responsive to citizens or employees.
Another way to look at it is that some US tech companies think they can treat laws as an inconvenience to brush aside. In the USA corporate capture of regulators and political lobbying have reached the levels whereby they are unable to tackle these behemoths, however the EU is still operating as an efficient law enforcer? And maybe the EU does lack an illegal data collecting advertiser disguised as address book, but that is not the only kind of technical innovation possible.
