Comment by weddpros | Hacker News Reader

Comment by weddpros | Hacker News Reader

For a long time, countries agreed that free-trade was the best way to avoid another war. Europe was created as an economic region first, to avoid another war.

But today I'm afraid Europe suffers memory loss.

They're using coercion against another country (always the same one, the USA) for ideological reasons... which is the very definition of war.

The fact they're citing money as the reason only makes it more frightening. Prosperous countries avoid war and favor trade instead, if possible.

As a European citizen, I can witness the anti-american mindset: it's growing, nurtured by press and politicians. Don't think "it's not the USA, it's Google/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook": they actually cite the USA all day long until Google is a synonym for the USA in people's mind.

A quick check with the first article I can find in my Google newsfeed: in the french press, about Apple Music, the article starts with "Le géant américain de l'informatique Apple" (The american IT giant/behemoth Apple)

The internet is an amazing promoter of free-trade, so unsurprisingly it's the perfect target for Europe.

Please don't call it a conspiracy theory: it's not one, because I hope I'm wrong ;-)

Free trade unfortunately also leads to what is called a "branch plant economy" where policy decisions are made by foreigners with much less interest in your national or regional success.

Trade makes everyone better off, in general, but is risky, because policies can change. Free trade in particular gets even riskier as it means the populace has fewer levers of influence against the corporations. Canada is experiencing this with auto manufacturers - many Japanese and American (some German) companies build cars in Canada and Mexico for the broader North American market because of North American free trade and lower labour costs in both countries (the exchange rate, single payer health care in Canada, more reasonable unions, etc). But now so many jobs depend on these companies, the Regional Governments can't let them leave in economic downturns. So they subsidize. Is this all a net positive? Probably, but it's hard to know.

When you accept the upside of trade you need to accept the downsides - but most don't. "Let the free market choose" isn't an answer because we live in a Democracy, one feature of which is to prevent the market from getting what it wants when the people don't like it.

The USA dominates technology with only a few counter-examples in Europe (SAP, Amadeus, ASOS) - but LOTS in China. If the future is going to be these companies diversifying into every other market ("software is eating the world") you can bet there's justifiable anger at the U.S. (At beating them in a new area of knowledge and practice) and a desire to put up barriers while they get their shit together as China did.

This isn't war, it's competition. There's a big difference.

How many Europeans use Google? 90%. That's democracy: the people of Europe gets what it wants.

When Europe says "we'll fix what's wrong with Google", do they want to convert the last 10%?

If not, then it has nothing to do with the people.

You think democracy is what protects people against companies? How strange. If there's no demand for a lousy french dropbox-like service, and people use Dropbox instead, it's because the market will give people what they want: they chose Dropbox.

Now pass a "democratic" law to ban Dropbox because it's not hosted in France, and all we're left with is the opposite of democracy. No choice anymore, and the best product is gone. Who's winning? The french dropbox-like with its new state-guaranteed monopoly. The people has lost.

A french comic once said "So you're telling me the rich are bad, and the poor are good, and all these good people want to become the bad ones?"... I mean the french "dropbox-like" would love to be Dropbox. The french Uber like would love to be Uber. Exalead would love to be Google. But it's not the good vs. the evil.

It's just a matter of performance... until the law comes into play, in less than democratic ways, to cut competition.

No, that’s the thing: A lot of european small companies don’t care much about growth. That’s the exact thing.

And this mindset of "it works well enough" now meets with the US mindset of wasting resources, of eternal, aggressive growth, of pure capitalism.

Obviously, that doesn't work well.

> How many Europeans use Google? 90%. That's democracy: the people of Europe gets what it wants.

Regulations are not trying to fix "what is wrong with google". They are trying to keep the competition going, which ideally results in a better product for the consumers.

When dealing with privacy, they're definitely saying what's wrong. Right to be forgotten. Retribution of newspapers for headlines... That's not about competition. Not at all.

Also, Google is not a monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives (Yahoo/Bing/etc). Google is not even trying to buy them.

Well, regarding privacy, google is in the wrong! They are collecting all the data they possible can and then transfer them to the U.S. where Europeans do not enjoy any right to privacy (which is considered a basic human right here). This is just trying to make a foreign company comply with European laws. I do not see a problem here. If the process was totally transparent (where does the data go, who uses the data) European citizens could make an informed decision. But this is not the case. It is totally intransparent. Who knows what the data is used for? The EU has the duty to protect its citizens.

As for the retribution of newspaper headlines. This might be some form of protectionism.

Calling Bing and Yahoo an alternative to google honors them. Just try them both exclusively for one week and see if you would really call them that.

>Also, Google is not a monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives (Yahoo/Bing/etc). Google is not even trying to buy them.

Whether they are a monopoly (or not) is not really relevant. Monopolies aren't even prohibited per se.

But Google most certainly are in a dominant market position, and under EU competition law that means they must not abuse that dominant position.

"How many Europeans use Google? 90%. That's democracy: the people of Europe gets what it wants."

No, that's not democracy, that's a free market. There's a big difference: democracy is about electing representatives to pursue your preferred policy goals. These goals may or may not support personal or economic freedom. One might want to use a service on the free market and at the same time want their elected representatives to constrain its competitive strength to enable local competition. Mainly this should be done in the interest of consumers or it gets too distortionary. I'm not claiming Google harms consumers, I'm just saying that (for example) Google has massive negative implications on privacy which are concerning.

"Now pass a "democratic" law to ban Dropbox because it's not hosted in France, and all we're left with is the opposite of democracy. "

Actually, no. What you're left with is a democratically elected government that is closing their trade market somewhat in favor of other interests.

Note, nowhere did I suggest it was a good idea to ban a company from trading with a country. That would be a bad policy unless there was a very strong reason and popular support. Constraining behavior, on the other hand, might or might not be a bad policy. Hard to know.

"It's just a matter of performance... until the law comes into play, in less than democratic ways, to cut competition."

I agree the free market and free enterprise is all about performance and results, and the law doesn't care about such things. But that's why democracy exists - sometimes efficiency and performance is NOT what the populace wants. They want change and competition to be slowed by laws and regulations. People do not respond to change as quickly as the markets sometimes want them to.

All of this are just policy differences between laissez-faire free market and more socialist policies. They have their tradeoffs but are both legitimate (one is not more "democratic" than the other).

In my experience, the clashes of European companies with EU regulators just don't create as much press.

The most recent anti-trust/cartel activity is listed by the European Commission for Competition:

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm?fusea...

http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/cases/cases.html

Currently that covers: something about pay-TV in UK/Ireland, Qualcomm, a bunch of European cargo train operators, a pan-European retail food packaging cartel, something about a Bulgarian Energy Holding, German car heating and climate control vendors, Amazon, SkyTeam.

Of these, two are American (Qualcomm, Amazon), one has a US company involved (Delta Airlines as part of SkyTeam), everything else is EU internal.

That doesn't look like coercion against another country ("always the USA") to me.

I guess there are two reasons why the media is mostly covering the cases where US companies are involved:

First, the big tech companies are mostly American. Being big brings you on the radar of both regulators (everywhere) and the media covering the industry.

Second, EU tech media takes cues from US tech media. When the US media report on something (such as a potential problem for the international business of their local industry), EU tech media pick it up.

Up until today I haven't heard about the retail food packaging cartel, but with a €115M penalty that must have been a bigger issue. But why should HN (and related media) cover that? They're no household names, so it's also not covered in the general press. But I'm quite certain that the trade press of the retail food industry will cover this in great detail.

They're trying hard to make me believe you too.

But please note that it's not just anti-trust cases, but also privacy cases / right to be forgotten / partnerships with newspapers / etc...

When the NSA scandal was everywhere in the press, Orange (french telecom operator, former public company) said there was no need for the french administration to spy on them because they were already cooperating outside the judiciary system everyday. Yet the headlines were not about the French administration spying on its citizens, but about the NSA and the risks you take by using Facebook.

That's so pathetic. Now the French government has passed a law to make it easier to spy on its own citizens. And the UK is following not far behind.

You may have noticed that the US media was comparably silent about US agencies. German media is relatively silent on German involvement (but reported on the US and France).

That's just what the media needs to do to keep getting interviews with high ranking politicians.

I doubt that the approach is to try to hurt the US, but to limit the impact on domestic relations to public officials.

As for Facebook, that's one of the things that users _can_ do something about (however little the impact of such action is). If there were a French Facebook, the same could apply there as well - but besides Daily Motion (which is public by default), what is there in France where people could adapt their behavior?

Totally agree. And although there is indeed an anti-american mindset, American politicians speak pretty often about the loss of 'american' jobs too... It's just the common economic illiteracy. Trade protections don't benefit any party involved, they don't make economic sense and they never did.

There are plenty of reasons anti-American sentiment is growing in Europe and it goes much, much further than a few tech companies.

Considering they are not using any violence, I think this falls a bit short of the very definition of war.

Coercion is most often the perspective of violence. Why would Google pay fines then? Because violence will be applied to make it comply even if it's a foreign entity.

If you follow that logic then simply taxing American companies on their EU business dealings is a declaration of war.

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