Re:EU hits Google with second antitrust charge
by pjc50 on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @11:35AM
(#11535194)
In the short term there would be a lot of VPN access as people tried to deal with the chaos of having to transition away from gmail. I'd be very surprised if they just turned it off one day without warning, but if they did that would burn a lot of customer goodwill and provoke a class action from all their datacenter customers.
In the medium term? Having a social network with no Europeans on it kills G+ fairly rapidly, or it becomes a minority thing like Orkut. Likewise AppEngine is hobbled if it won't talk to Europe. People will undoubtedly continue to use and buy their Android phones (many of which are not bought from google but third parties) unless Google actively bricks them.
Remote-bricking all European Android devices is the nuclear option. Google is sued for billions. Google executives can no longer set foot in the EU without being arrested. International trade war starts. Google is declared an "unlawful combatant" and their HQ is bombed by DGSE.
In the medium term? Having a social network with no Europeans on it kills G+ fairly rapidly, or it becomes a minority thing like Orkut. Likewise AppEngine is hobbled if it won't talk to Europe. People will undoubtedly continue to use and buy their Android phones (many of which are not bought from google but third parties) unless Google actively bricks them.
Remote-bricking all European Android devices is the nuclear option. Google is sued for billions. Google executives can no longer set foot in the EU without being arrested. International trade war starts. Google is declared an "unlawful combatant" and their HQ is bombed by DGSE.