When you're a huge company trying to do business in the US (or any country, for that matter) you have to think very, very carefully before you make an enemy of the government. Google could refuse to go along with this stuff and find itself the subject of a big, expensive anti-trust probe.

Not just temper tantrums. This has been happening since the patriot act. Even during Obama’s term where there were obviously no temper tantrums - telco’s were strong armed into sharing call data with the government.

So while the current presidents language is more colorful and entertaining the policy is at least a couple of decades old.

Or a tax action where the government sues them for for billions by ruling assumptions Google made are incorrect.

That's my point, though. The levers the government has to move businesses are endless.

I think it could easily be argued that the reverse is true. Even Donald Trump would think twice about taking on Google. He might bluster about them on Truth Social, sure, but America is a corporatocracy and I'd put my money on Google.

Yes, I know there are examples where he is trying to screw with big corps like Anthropic. But Anthropic is not Google.

I don't think that's true at all. Google would lose billions going head-to-head with Trump and he knows it.