The offices of Uber and Google have been raided by police.
Amazon, Apple and Google have all faced antitrust scrutiny as well as scrutiny over tax avoidance tactics.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other prominent services are now required to crack down on hate speech “quickly and efficiently.” And Google is required to delete personal information appearing in its search results upon request.
In recent years, the clash between European regulators and the self-styled “disruptors” of Silicon Valley has escalated, potentially threatening the relentless growth of the billion-dollar giants.
While U.S. regulators (and consumers) have occasionally pushed back on the tech industry’s handling of taxes, privacy and local laws that upstarts like Airbnb and Uber consider to be outdated, European regulators tend to take a harder line to make sure all companies play by the same rules.
“There might be some cultural differences that have an impact on the way we see innovations,” Nathalie Vandystadt, a spokesperson for the European Commission, said in an interview this week on Mashable‘s Biz Please podcast, which you can listen to below or download on iTunes or Stitcher.
But she adds: “We are working to avoid any overregulation.”
Europe’s crackdown on U.S. tech companies has caught some big and small businesses off guard, according to Mark MacGann, a senior board advisor at Uber and its former head of public policy in Europe as well as a regulatory advisor to European startups.
“You didn’t have in Europe the culture that accepted risk-taking, that almost encouraged it and you didn’t have the access to capital,” MacGann said on the podcast. “That’s why a lot of companies started in Silicon Valley where you had all of those criteria, and then those companies came over to Europe and didn’t expect the ferocious opposition that you have in some countries.”
Uber, which actually traces its origin story to Europe (Paris, to be specific), initially tried to beat regulators there by running the same playbook it used in the US.
“It was sort of launch and get consumers to recognize the benefit and hope the politicians follow suit. That’s the approach that worked very well in the United States,” MacGann says.
“That didn’t quite work [in Europe],” he says. “These are different political cultures, very conservative. Now Uber is partnering with governments, partnering with cities.”
Unsurprisingly given his position, MacGann is confident Uber will survive and thrive in Europe, but he worries about the impact overregulation on the continent could have on younger startups.
“It’s the climate for innovation and entrepreneurship that I’m most preoccupied about,” he says.
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