At the end of the 2000s, the shape of the Internet started to change. A few companies, the so-called “big tech,” exploited innovations like smartphones and the cloud to build globally dominant positions in multiple niches. They quickly became immense; they are now larger, richer, and more powerful than most countries. They exploit network effects and sheer financial power to prevent any challenge; they thrive on what has been called “surveillance capitalism,” depriving Internet users of privacy, choice, and control. As all these companies are based in the United States, their success has prompted a state of dependence on foreign resources in Europe and most other parts of the world. The Internet was initially based on the principle of interoperability, fostering competition by adopting open, modular standards; big tech companies denied this principle and built their services as walled gardens, making it very hard for end-users and third parties to do without them and fragmenting the Internet. Their extensive lobbying power stifled the attempts to rein them in through regulation. The “laissez-faire” attitudes and multi-stakeholder governance failed to contain their dominance. Only after a decade, political attitudes began to evolve.