Overview
- A YouGov survey published on Friday showed about 66% of respondents believe companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, SpaceX and OpenAI have too much influence in Germany.
- Respondents flagged specific worries: 63% cited growing dependence on the United States, 59% pointed to monopolistic market structures, 55% named data protection and privacy risks, and 53% worried algorithms shape public debate.
- Concern varies sharply by politics and demography, with 85% of Green voters, 77% of Left voters and higher shares of older and highly educated people saying influence is excessive while AfD and FDP supporters are less uniformly critical.
- Greens, the SPD and the Linkspartei have called for stronger support for regulators, the creation of domestic cloud alternatives and a digital tax on large tech firms to curb market power.
- The poll feeds into a wider EU debate on how to enforce digital markets and services rules, and could increase pressure for stricter oversight, new taxes on data-driven revenues and public investment in European cloud infrastructure.