Saving some money short term, losing a whole bunch long term.

Same reason moms play solitaire on their phones. Just something they know to pass the time, no need for anything fancy or new.

Devils advocate here: it’s their webservice right? They determine who can access it.

If there were legislation that would force them to make it interoperable that would be one thing. But you can’t just demand access to their infrastructure.

This is fine imo. If you don’t want to comply, don’t. You just don’t get to extract EU data