> IMHO it requires conscious choices by European citizens to choose more carefully which online services they dedicate their time and money to. Or expect unintended consequences.

You mean, European citizens "need to" expect to, and pay for, basic internet services like search, mail, ... and, let's be honest, pay for worse services than are available free.

Imho proton is about the best available, it's just mail and office, and it's 5 euros per month for just mail and basic office, essentially Google's free tier.

Obviously, this will never happen. So either the government makes such services, and makes them well enough to seriously compete or implements a "great firewall of Europe" Chinese/Russian style and forces the change.

Instead, governments are introducing dependency after dependency on FANG companies. Is there any place left in the EU where you can even do your taxes without identifying through Google/Android or Apple/IOS on Chinese made hardware? Any at all? How about all of Europe? There was a row in the Netherlands about efforts to force homeless people to pay for cell phones ... and the government is refusing to back down. It's just incredible.

Even if the EU kicked out the FANGs with a "great firewall of EU", to force people to pay, it would decimate the gig economy and show that EU unemployment, especially among young people, is really double or perhaps even more the figure it appears to be. Plus I don't think it would work. Too many people would choose to simply stop interacting with the government under such a situation. And while the government can deal with 1 or 1000 people not doing their taxes, they cannot hope to deal with 10% not doing their taxes.

The only solution is that all European governments force themselves to ONLY work through "sovereign" channels not dependent on American companies. Right now they are all doing the opposite, and in fact not just encouraging EU citizens to give their information to FANGs, but actively forcing them to do so.

And you're right. This can only end in disaster. But it's slightly cheaper now. And the disaster is tomorrow.

Didn't Charlie Munger say "you young people ... tomorrow's politicians will make you wish Trump had eternal life"? If it's not Trump, sooner or later someone will blow up relations with the EU, and even within the EU, on either side.

Ain't nobody dedicating their money to anything.

That's exactly why these enormous tech giants are privacy nightmares. How many people complaining about Google have used their services extensively for decades now, and never have once given a cent to Google? Probably over 90%.

People were offended when Google launched YouTube Premium because it encroached on their right to "free" everything from Google. Even today people still chain themselves to the hill of "I will never give youtube a penny", despite them probably using a couple percentage points of their entire waking life on google products.

Europe is in a tough, if not impossible spot, of having (relatively) heavy privacy protections, while also having a population that is largely offended by the idea of having to pay for something that "has always been free!".

Maybe they can launch a taxpayer funded EuroTube and EuroGram.

It’s possible the only hope is a painful one: a major market crash caused by greed and excessive consolidation, the kind of crash that would trigger a 21st century new deal.