If you look at EU policy as france and germany protecting their perceived interests by targeting US tech companies it starts making sense, I think a rule of thumb there is: "if it hurts google it should be law".
It does not. In a preliminary evaluation, there are 26 companies that would match the criterias, 11 are not americans, 4 of them (that's 1/6th) are even french companies to begin with.
• Vente de biens: Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Ebay, Google, Groupon, Rakuten, Schibsted, Wish, Zalando.
• Intermédiaire de services: Amadeus, Axel Springer, Booking, Expedia, Match.com, Randstad, Recruit, Sabre, Travelport Worldwide, Tripadvisor, Uber.
• Publicité en ligne: Amazon, Criteo, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Verizon.
The point is to catch up with something everyone else has figured out: that the value is in the users data. Investors have caught up to it and acted on it, so did VC, so did companies, so did everyone ... Except governments. If the data is what you extract your value from, then it should be normal that it is what you are taxed on.
Considering the rhetoric leading to this tax and the french government's many raids and failed investigations into US companies and their taxes it's difficult even with careful wording for the french government to deny the actual target of this tax in a WTO type setting.
And Criteo too, they're the forgotten Data-kraken of Europe. Just go watch their Marketing Material!
They have been playing the system using different tax evasion schemes. France makes a law to force them to pay their fair due.
It's targeting tech giants, not US companies. "Any digital company with revenue of more than €750m - of which at least €25m is generated in France"