Most people know that when interacting with a vendor on the Internet to purchase goods or use a service, the same vendor is harvesting personal data to use in further marketing to the same individual. A simple Google search of local real estate may lead to a flood of solicitations from real estate brokers.

While this is a common experience in the United States, members of the European Union (EU) view such activities as an uninvited invasion of their citizen’s privacy. There is also a notable bias in the EU against the largest and most dominant U.S.-owned Internet companies and search engines, including the fear of their misuse of the personal information of EU citizens.