Pluralistic: How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump) (27 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump): Grant me the courage to change the things I can.

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How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump) (permalink)

The "Serenity Prayer" (Serenity to accept things I can't change/Courage to change the things I can/Wisdom to know the difference) is usually cited as pop psychology or addiction recovery advice, but I think there's a place for it in policymaking.

Take the EU's fight against US Big Tech. During the Biden years, the EU's tech policy matured into something serious and ambitious, culminating in the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA), a pair of big, muscular policies that would curb Big Tech's most abusive conduct. The EU's ambition didn't occur in a vacuum: it was part of a global wave of antitrust fervor whose top agenda item was reining in tech:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting

In this fight, the EU had important partners all over the world. For example, South Korea and Japan used the facts uncovered through EU enforcement action against Google and Apple to pursue similar cases:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

But the EU's most important partner in its fight against American Big Tech was America. Biden's trustbusters – Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra, Jonathan Kanter, Tim Wu, et al – were every bit as serious about Big Tech power as anyone in the EU. After all, the American public are always the first victims of any new tech scam, and America is the only country with a large, affluent population who lack modern, comprehensive consumer privacy protection, making Americans highly prized prey for tech companies:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuckerstreisand/#zdgaf

With America and the EU on the same side of the tech fight, the world had a fighting chance. Tech knew this, which is why Big Tech backed Trump hard during the 2024 election and aggressively curried his favor after he won. From the tech barons who paid $1m each to sit behind Trump on the inaugural dais to the millions tech companies donated to Trump's Epstein Ballroom at the White House, tech has made it clear that it supports anything Trump wants to do, provided he shields Big Tech from any attempt to limit their ability to spy on and steal from Americans and the world.

Even before he took office, Trump made it clear how he would reward tech's loyalty: weeks before the inauguration, Trump went to Davos and threatened the EU with reprisals if they enforced the DSA or DMA against his tech companies:

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/23/trumps-not-happy-with-how-eu-regulators-have-treated-us-tech-giants/

Trump wasted no time leaning on US trading partners on behalf of Big Tech. He bullied Canadian PM Mark Carney into dropping his plan to tax US tech companies. Big Tech uses a variety of tax-cheating gambits to evade taxation around the world, making it impossible for (tax-paying) domestic companies to compete:

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/06/canada-rescinds-digital-services-tax-to-advance-broader-trade-negotiations-with-the-united-states.html

Trump also got UK PM Keir Starmer to drop his plan to tax tech:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/starmer-offered-big-us-tech-firms-tax-cuts-in-return-for-lower-trump-tariffs

And he got the EU to roll back its plan to regulate AI:

https://fortune.com/2025/11/07/eu-ai-act-weaken-regulation-delay-big-tech-trump-government/

None of the governments that caved to Trump got anything in return. As I've written:

Give Trump everything he asks for and he'll demand more. Deny Trump anything and he'll demand more. Sign a contract with Trump and he'll break it. Send Trump an invoice and he'll stiff you. For Trump, "the art of the deal" can be summed up in one word: renege.

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/22/table-flipper/#graveyard-of-indispensable-nations

Case in point: after the EU surrendered to Trump on AI regulation, Trump...