It very much depends on what the component is. You couldn't, for example, compile a GPL library into your code, but you could dynamically load it. You also couldn't incorporate a client or server component into the code but you could call it externally.
One of the things I realized pretty quickly with GPL, was that it's great as a hobbyist to be able to see the source code, and that has led to a lot of free "products" (is something that is free, really a product? I keep thinking how companies have reduced expenses by 90% using open source software, and that's because they don't pay the person who put all of their time into it). That said, the other side of the argument is "why am I trying to use free software in my product to begin with". Well, because the libraries have become so sophisticated that I would need to spend half my life re-writing the library, just so I can write a program that delivers something to actual customers. Therefore for me, GPL isn't really useful. I don't want to give away my secret sauce, but I also don't want to spend years re-developing a library that is already in wide spread use. After all, I am competing with the free products as well. My opinion, if you want to learn how something works, it's great. However, if you want to use any components in proprietary software, or anything that really matters, you have to ask yourself, do you want to ever make any money off that software, or are you just doing it for the fun of it, for yourself (e.g. Hobbyist). (emphasis on the "really matters"), do you want to earn a few bucks, nobody would notice. But just wait until you have something big, and you can't make anything off it because you used one component that was GPL.
One example, I've recently started a project that I intend to take full-on to market. So I am developing it for SQL Server, because the MYSQL drivers are GPL and I'm not losing my future fortune to that, nor am I going to spend the next 2 years re-writing MYSQL drivers.
Edit: I found a link, I know the title says LGPL but read the next paragraph carefully for my point:
Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library
The GNU Project has two principal licenses to use for libraries. One is the GNU Lesser GPL; the other is the ordinary GNU GPL. The choice of license makes a big difference: using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs.
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