While this is true, it is too easy. The privacy angle lives in the minds of Europeans, while US people seem to care a lot less.

> The privacy angle lives in the minds of Europeans

without data, it’s hard to make this argument. what we know for sure is that bureaucrats fully support the privacy angle. but from my anecdotal real life experience almost no one cares (another argument that without data cannot be generalised).

The "bureaucrats" are elected officials so if people weren't in favour of it, they would stop electing MEPs that vote in favour of it.

That’s a naïve view of how politics and elections work.

When has any democracy worked even remotely like that? There are countless issues politicians must take a position on, you won't agree with all of them. So you prioritize. Or you just vote party line, which is by far what most people do.

US people certainly care about their privacy however there aren't any strong institutions left in the US anymore (outside of the Military) and the political system in the US give a choice between two corporate-owned parties.

Agree it is both but it is very palatable in the local population to implement rules to shutout foreign competition. Easy political points.

No need to be overly cynical, the privacy aspects are popular and a good enough reason by themselves to have these regulations.

Yeah, not letting startups use any kind of US companies is a great way to protect your tech industry. Right now, there's a trend towards hosting on the edge—cloudflare workers, deno deploy, fly.io–european companies can't use any of this. And as far as I know, there are no european alternatives.

I never said it was a smart idea but if you don't understand technology (i.e. majority of politicians/public) it might seem like a great protectionist idea. The simple idea the politicians believe is protect our privacy by forcing big tech companies to change for our benefit -- if they don't our own population will build the technology. Win win in their eyes.

Protection through indirect tariffs?

The thing is - it isn't. Where is the EU-based top tier cloud player? One to compete with Google/Microsoft/Amazon?

There is a huge EU project which in theory is trying to build those competitors - Gaia-X - but as is typical with such projects the results have been poor. Looks to me like a lot of the money was wasted on "blockchain" scam projects.

The thing is - there is real significant potential in the EU for some of the existing large colocation/VPS provides to become just that only the EU's own implementation has failed.

Disagree. Privacy is a human right. It protects people's mental and economic wellbeing. Further, it can save millions of lives. Or, if you prefer, lack of privacy can lead to millions of deaths.