[fairpx]

It would be great if all these new regulations only applied to companies of X size. Scrappy startups with no access to good lawyers and understanding of these regulations are more likely to suffer vs the big guys who were the cause of all of these changes in the first place.

[greglindahl]

I'm an advisor to several startup European search engines which are likely to be annihilated by the combination of these changes and the GDPR.

[dane-pgp]

Now that you mention it, how are Google themselves deemed to be compliant with the GDPR? If I put up a blog containing my name and email address, and that ends up in a Google search result for my name, have I consented to this use of my personal data just because my blog is on the public web?

The infamous "right to be forgotten" (and the robots.txt standard) gives me an ability to opt-out of some uses of the data on my blog, but I thought that the GDPR is more stringent about requiring opt-in rather than opt-out.

[salvar]

Can you go into more detail about the GDPR effect? How will they be annihilated by that? Are they collecting more user data than users are aware of, and anticipate that if they told users explicitly what they're doing the business would be annihilated?

[pjc50]

Who would start a new search engine in this day and age? You'd need some really unique features which Google can't duplicate, and the only one which seems to have made it is DDG with their privacy promise.

[rqs]

No no no, bad idea. Because then those big companies will just 'hire' small companies to do their dirty job.

I think the problem here is some of the rules in GDPR is too overkill. Those rules need to be weakened/simplified a little to allowing companies in EU and actually everywhere to flourish without worrying too much about whether or not they will accidentally violates it.