At the same time they were telling HMRC (the British tax authority) that IP rights, etc. were incredibly valuable and a significant cost of doing business (in the form of payments back to the mothership), and that's why they made very little profit in the UK and didn't need to pay much tax.
That mentions the digital services tax; I remember some of HN being quite angry that "Europe" was trying to get a share of the immense wealth extracted from it by American multinationals.
The actual value is in the brand, siloed data, lockin, network effect, etc.
China solved that by banning most western services and building their own, and many of the results are better than the west, yet the same network effects stop those services expanding.
These are all fairly strong arguments for regulator's to step in because the market clearly is no longer working to direct the profit towards the best products.