Certainly when it comes to this sort of filing, they’re supposed to fulfill a purely administrative function. This the court order.

“With certain exceptions” = A blanket ban, except for anything that isn’t the thing I’m trying to single out.

My understanding is that some tech companies overcompensate, not because they’re afraid of running afoul of EU regulation, but as a means of pushing back against EU regulation that threatens to undermine their profits. That’s often the play when companies like Facebook warn that they’ll have to stop offering news in EU countries if a particular regulation passes. I have no doubt that regulation has constricted Google results in some ways (Right to Be Forgotten, for example), but I wonder if part of the disparity isn’t voluntary on Google’s part, as a means of applying political pressure in a system that’s less amenable to direct political lobbying than the US.

The argument that Trump is being unfairly singled out for conduct of which every president or presidential candidate is guilty has a long pedigree. I remember talking to my dad about Nixon ages ago. He knew Nixon was guilty, but he grew up in a region of the nation where people had largely supported Nixon, and were reluctant to face up to the fact that they had backed an especially corrupt candidate. My dad paraphrased their attitude as, “He didn’t do anything that all those other politicians don’t also do.”

At a certain point, “All politicians are the same” is just a justification for voting transactionally: You put up with a corrosive level of corruption in return for the handful of policies that matter most to you.