The European Parliament has called for the dismemberment of Google, the French want “les Gafa,” as they call Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, reined in, EU regulators are under pressure to get tough with the Americans. And the leaders of Silicon Valley’s non-tax-paying, privacy-invading, dominant tech firms, to use EU descriptives, are surprised. They shouldn’t be.

Regulatory and competition policy is not created independent of the values of the countries in which commerce takes place. And those values in Europe are far different from the American values that spawned and drive Google, Amazon, Uber, and other disrupters, as they like to be known. Throw in the success-bred arrogance and insularity of our American companies, their unfamiliarity with bureaucracies their lobbyists cannot influence quite as much they can America’s politicians and regulators, the incentive their law firms have to fight to the last billable hour, and Silicon Valley may find future success in foreign markets more difficult to come by than need be the case.