> Particularly when most books that were scanned never, ever showed up on Google books.

If one looks at the history of Google Books one can see that they started with big ambitions, but hit copyright in quite intensive ways. That also changed their approach to other projects. Clearing all rights internationally isn't easy.

OTOH, succeeding at self-driving cars has the potential to save lives by the thousands.

And if they succeed to much they can monopolize transportation and thus mobility. Not a power I want to have in a private company. Especially not in a company from outside my country's jurisdiction. Where I can't have an impact via democratic law making process.

> Especially not in a company from outside my country's jurisdiction. Where I can't have an impact via democratic law making process.

This is false. EU governments have already placed significant restrictions and fines upon US tech companies in the past. There is no reason to believe that they won't be able to again.

Those fines are the perfect representation of the lack of control EU has over US tech giants. They are essentially opaque and impossible to inflence through normal regulatory and political channels so the only options are the big guns. You can be sure Google is not going to heavily invest in the EU tech sector under such adversarial set-up. There's a subtle blackmail here: we push the envelope as far as it goes and the EU can choose to submit or risk technological backwardness.

It's a great situation for the US economy but a very bad strategical position for Europe.