Those that are successful usually end up bought by one of the American behemoths. So what to do? An EU golden share, or Swiss style takeover restrictions?

For startups and those not yet successful, attitudes to failure, finance and VC tend to be very different in Europe than in the US, which I think is far more significant to success than the EU.

It is the EU's job to do both, but neither is done to the exclusion of the other. We are lucky to have such a privacy-focused federal body which can bring about change effectively. I'm thrilled at the passing of GDPR, for example.

the result of the GDPR was to increase Google's European ad market share[1]

and the massively increased compliance costs will ensure that no domestic small competitor will ever be able to challenge their position

that's some effective change

[1]: https://www.politico.eu/article/gdpr-facebook-google-privacy...

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Innovation and healthy competition in adtech space is a problem; the industry needs to die, not grow.

... What?

Mass surveillance for the the purpose of more targeted ads are bad for society.

Cool.

The point was that his comment was a non-sequitor. The EU strengthening Google's monopoly position will not make advertising go away.

No, but it will slow the innovation in that space, which I consider to be a positive development. It's on-topic, because slowing innovation is why people are complaining about Google's position being strengthened.

(Also, my perhaps naive hope is that the better the Google's market share here, the more damage will be caused by EU regulating the space.)

His point it seems, was that strengthening Googles position (by making it harder for competitors to comply) was a price worth paying for stronger privacy protection afforded by the GDPR legislation.