> As the author showed the volume of business and revenue in Germany is tiny, there may be not worth the effort for Shopify to do it. It may be the correct business decision.

The issue is with European regulations. The lawsuit was in Germany because that’s how legal systems work around here, but the sticking points are very likely to be present in national laws across the EU. So, ultimately it won’t be about the German market, but about the EU.

Each EU country does seem to have a different approach to the GDPR though. Germany's one is known for being particularly hard line, whereas the UK (not in EU but still follows GDPR) is known for being more pragmatic.

I don't know how that affects lawsuits though. I'm guessing if you have any customers in Germany, then someone could take you to court in Germany, but I'm not sure...

This affects the entire EU. I try to hammer it into people's heads here in NL. Using US-based cloud services if you touch PII is a huge risk as they're all getting like crazed addicts fighting over their next high PII-high.

It's the way the EU can protect their own tech industry.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Protection through indirect tariffs?

I believe that's misleading, because while not many sellers are located in Germany, this affects any Shopify shop who sells to customers anywhere in the EU. So I'd estimate roughly 30% of their revenue might be affected.

But of course, Shopify can just push this responsibility onto their customers, meaning the shop owners. That's what they currently do.