The start-up in the Berlin garage is hampered in its ability to make money via advertising vs the US-based Google (or Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon).

Unless the plan is to go straight to the US market, to domicile there and to hire employees there to get started, as it's a radically more lucrative advertising market than the EU, in part thanks to GDPR.

The US market still largely has a comparatively laissez-faire approach to advertising, personal information and privacy. In the US you can still build a tech juggernaut in the way Google and Facebook did, by way of rather invasive advertising practices. You can't do that in the EU today, zero chance. In the US market you can jump-start a company that way, and if you have to later on you can look at dialing back or changing your exact business model. You don't have that option in the EU, you're far more heavily restricted, it cuts off your ability to liberally utilize a gigantic advertising market in the way US companies can. It provides US start-ups a big advantage. You set up in the US, grow into the huge US market, then use your resources to go into Europe and comply with their various requirements (along with paying their slap-on-the-wrist fines inevitably).