I don't know if the destruction of many industries in the EU--including manufacturing--can be called an annoyance.

All the EU bureaucrats can do is regulate, that's why it's so difficult to do business in the EU and that's why there is so little innovation over here. If Microsoft and Apple were started in the EU they would've been shut down within a week because you can't operate from a garage.

I guess that every once in a while this might have a positive outcome for consumers, a broken clock is right twice a day.

I'm sure Microsoft and Apple could have been able to afford a cheap office given their parents' generous financing.

And, regarding the original topic, we wouldn't have many of these privacy issues if the US had not strategically failed to regulate its obnoxious tech monopolies

I don't see how that's relevant? Regulation might have limited some innovation in tech, but gdpr does not affect any of the dying industries. That's more from competition with china, companies with too much interest in giving payouts to shareholders than to innovate, and US financial industry buying most of the best players