Do you imagine the EU would force every ISP to block Google web search, Gmail, etc? Beyond being technically difficult I do not believe the EU currently has the power to create a Great Firewall of Europe like that.
However, i suspect if google left europe, another competitor to google (ala, bing?) would immediately swoop in and take all the business. Google would suddenly find itself losing 1/3 or even half of their revenue!
A similar analogy would be like the US blocking their citizens from traveling to North Korea. But then having direct flights from LA to Pyongyang and expecting North Korea to enforce the ban of US citizens at their customs. It’s not their responsibility..
They "could" block all import of Android based smart phones if they wished (based on noncompliance with trade rules of course).
In all liklihood they'd slap a levy on these imports which would either raise their price making alternatives more interesting to the market. Android devices are dominant in the cost sensitive segment.
Alternatively the manufacturers could push this back on to google or it might provide additional commercial impetus to develop a viable alternative.
That's the beauty of one of the largest economies in the world singing in harmony from the same hymn-sheet. When the collective foot is stamped it echoes around the world.
But Android is much more popular than Apple phones in some EU countries (not all) mostly because it's a lot cheaper. So either a lot of Europeans would have to fork out a lot more than they wanted to for a phone, or decide they couldn't afford a smartphone at all and go back to feature phones.
This is why you admit the EU would never do this.
When the collective foot is stamped it echoes around the world.
Very Orwellian imagery you have there. It wouldn't really echo around the world. Google wouldn't give a crap. Android was created mostly to stop Apple from gaining a monopoly and holding them over a barrel with respect to services (go read up on the origins of the project). It has wildly succeeded in that mission already. If the EU selectively taxes its own people whenever they buy an Android smartphone, this would not only hurt the EU's own popularity significantly (people love their cheap smartphones), but it wouldn't harm Google much or at all because Apple un-clenched a lot since Jobs died and iOS is a more open platform than it used to be, albeit, still nowhere near as open as Android. The rest of the world is sufficient to keep Apple in check anyway.
