Eventually Apple will pull out of Europe and I’ll be sitting back laughing my ass off.

I hope so too. Maybe if apple and google finally pull out, the EU will be forced to innovate again. I'm sick of only having two shades of poo to pick from.

EU regulations make it a nightmare to innovate there. While millions of people cheer on "sticking it to big tech," they don't notice how the EU has become a barren wasteland of technological innovation for the past two decades.

The only way to force the EU to innovate is for US tech to pull out entirely, thus disabling vast swaths of technological infrastructure and product the EU relies on and takes for granted. The absence of this technology will force the EU to recognize its importance, and thus the importance of crafting a regulatory environment that enables such benefits to come about.

Without the fundamental recognition of the value of technology - and without this recognition happening at the level of the citizenry - the EU will continue to technologically stagnate while passing more and more regulations designed to rent-seek from the US.

If Apple leaves, you only have one choice. Then you’ll know what a monopoly really is.

There used to be a saying, if you can’t beat them, join them.

The EU seems to have modified to read, if you can’t beat them, hammer them with legislation until you can.

If both google and apple pull out, who will be your monopolist? And what makes you think that they won't also get hammered with legislation?

And even if we assumed that this would be the case, maybe suffering under a "real monopoly" is _exactly_ what the EU needs to push them out of their local maxima. I hope they continue to hammer the ever living shit out of every company that abuses its position to exploit people and deny them their rights. Abusing copyright to prevent people from fixing their own property? Screw every single one of them.

I find it funny this comment is so low in the thread, while all the "Good EU for sticking it to big tech" is much higher up.

As a European, I find the tech situation in Europe (and UK) horrible - much lower salaries for tech workers, inconsistent and high taxation, no measurable innovation in tech since forever. At the same time EU wastes taxpayer money on "research" that is only slightly more advanced than a second year student's project, all in the name of promoting innovation.

Congratulations, now you understand how a timeline works.