What would happen if American tech giants turned off the lights?

Countries around the world have been cracking down on US based tech companies for a variety of reasons, 

but what would happen if US companies began to fight back?

It seems like there have been dozens of stories recently about US companies facing sanctions, criticisms, 

lawsuits, legislation and threats of losing contracts in countries around the world.

Microsoft faced (and lost) a famous antitrust lawsuit in Europe a few years ago. Then it was announced that 

the EU is thinking about taking Google to court on similar charges, this time based on the supposition that 

Google made deals with smartphone manufacturers to bundle Google’s Android apps on their phones, 

locking out competitor’s apps. We’ve all heard about the EU’s other fight with Google over the ‘right to be 

forgotten’ mess that some officials claim was all Google’s doing in the first place.

Russia just announced that they want to see all the source code for iOS devices before they can be 

approved for sale in that country. China has blasted Microsoft and Apple for supposed security issues. 

Germany banned one US based phone manufacturer based on similar supposed security issues. And more 

than one European country is in the process of drafting legislation requiring any US company that gathers 

customer information store that information in local data banks.

Some of these issues have arisen due to the leaks about the NSA’s wholesale snooping around the world 

and many countries have become leery of any US tech firm. In some cases they are probably right.

But in other cases it seems to be more about money and power (where have we heard that before?) If a 

country can force US tech firms out and replace them with local alternatives then that country stands to make money. If one court or another finds a US firm guilty of antitrust or other violations then they can collect 

substantial fines. And for years now every government on the planet has been trying to figure out how to grab some of those monumental profits generated by the Internet.

I also think some of these attacks on US firms are because foreign powers have seen companies like 

Microsoft, Google and Apple quietly acquiesce to demands and they perceive this as a sign of weakness. 

Now, with a few strokes of the pen they can force US companies to jump through hoops and they are taking 

advantage of that.

My question, however is what would happen if Google, Microsoft, Apple and others one day said to an EU 

court “You know what? If you don’t like the way we do business here, then we’ll just stop doing business 

here. Starting tomorrow we will be shutting down Google search and Bing across all Europe and Great Brittan and all Google products will no longer work except in the U.S.. And we also respectfully ask everyone in the EU to uninstall Windows and any MS Office products (since they are after all simply licensed versions).

"And we will no longer sell you any computers, laptops, tablets, phones or devices with an Intel or ARM 

processor inside. Cloud services from U.S. based companies will no longer be available to EU countries. 

Oh, and by the way, we want you to remove Android and iOS from all your smartphones too. Go ahead 

and invent your own operating systems, software, processors, cloud infrastructure and search engines. It 

should only take you twenty or thirty years – assuming you don’t slip into another dark ages.”

If US tech companies really wanted to they could essentially shut down the world. Turn out the lights, the 

party is over.