Asking my EU friends, why do you let yourselves be bamboozled by the US tech companies when you’re totally capable of doing it yourselves?
Seriously. You don’t need Google. You just need a plan and a will to execute.
Seriously. You don’t need Google. You just need a plan and a will to execute.
My guess on what happened this time is, people were tasked to implement a way to verify age anonymously and this was the only feasible way to do it because of their constraints that don't allow them to do bigger stuff that China or USA will able to do through having the budget and enforcement power.
I know politics isn’t logical but if you keep drilling down the root cause, eventually you’ll hit bedrock.
EU needs to federalize but europeans are still too nationalistic for that to happen. Even Germany is too tiny to matter in the global stage but even small countries with population of a city in America will be like “we are special, we can take on USA and China because of our intrinsic characteristics. Even if we can’t we are definitely better than our neighbors”.
We have EU regulations, those are much tighter than in US, on practically every front. Labor, finance, environment, data, AI, you name it, we have it regulated. And then you have the country level regulations on top. That's right, EU sets the floor, not the ceiling.
Suppose you have a start up in Poland, you have managed to get funding and you are offering services in your country. You want to do that in Germany? Get ready for complying with new set of regulations. And you better hope that individual German states don't have something extra on top of those.
All of those regulations have purpose, it is possible that they were designed by well meaning people and bring some benefit. But their compound effect is catastrophic. It is not that you can't push trough, you can, just look at Kiwi or Mikrotik. But it's an uphill battle and your competition from overseas has it so much easier, that they can end up outgrowing you, and eventually buying you out.
Both the US, the EU, and the rest of the OECD began the process of aligning digital services taxation and regulation [0][1] under the Biden admin, as it was also a fig leaf tossed at the EU by the US to prevent a potential trade war with the EU [2] due to the IRA and CHIPS act.
The US has now removed itself from this OECD initiative, and most other major markets have begun to as well either due to US pressure or their own self interest. It also played a role in reducing Biden/Harris' chances in 2024, as much of the Obama era tech coalition shifted support and donations to the Trump-Vance campaign due to their support for repealing and fighting against digital services taxes globally.
The US also removed it's gloves when negotiating with the EU this admin compared to previous admins, so dangling the threat of retaliatory measures is not well received and can elicite a quasi-hard power response.
[0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/the-oecd-global-tax-deal-still-hangs-i...
[1] - https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/reallocation-of-ta...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/business/dealbook/biden-c...
Why? These are very closely intersecting things. It is very convenient for government to regulate and force monopolies to do what the government needs. And vice versa, strong regulation allows monopolies to avoid the emergence of new competitors. Win-win.
Everyone’s ready. The only reason US is wealthy is those subscription fees and vendor lock in we have.
There isn't really venture capital like that in Europe. Your business has to bootstrap. There are big businesses that could fund big ideas but they are big because they do one thing well - a company like Airbus isn't going to branch out and build an AWS.
Anyway, if a government tried to make a European smartphone design, it would be treated as any other government supply contract, resulting in a terrible design-by-committee. So in the end, all politicians are willing to do is wait around and say "someone should do something".
It's actually a little better than that. One thing they can do, and have done, is make funds available for individuals and small groups who want to have a go themselves. Notably NLnet funds a lot of projects. They're all small projects though so they're not really capable of displacing megacorps in the free market. Stuff like MNT hardware remains niche hacker stuff.
Google rolls into town and wants to spend half a billion euro on a datacenter? Sure thing. They'll say that it'll boost the local economy while being built - by creating a couple of thousand jobs for the contractors that are going to build and maintain it, and then some onsite jobs for the next decade or two, creating a couple of hundred jobs for techs / engineers.
And as long as they keep playing ball with google, projects like that will pop up once in a while. If you're difficult, there's also a risk of the rich tech companies taking their business some other place.
With that said, I've recently noticed more voices for building our own stuff - as there's a real risk that US tech companies will simply comply if pushed enough, say, by a POTUS that's out for blood and wants to hurt certain foreign users. Ban/lock out certain users from gaining access to software, turn off their infrastructure, etc. who knows.
But, alas, there just isn't the same willingness to pour in capital on the important things. For private investors it doesn't make much sense, unless they have a bulletproof contract with domestic users willing buy their service - and using state funds isn't too popular, either.
Truth be told, any of the big tech businesses can undercut any competition, and probably build better and faster. If anything, it could be the case for tariffs - outsourcing critical infrastructure will leave you very exposed. If European countries all over the board started to abandon US tech companies, they'd cry to Trump, who in turn would probably start a trade-war.
You are right to be worried. US companies under this administration can’t be trusted to follow the law. Why should they, when our commander in chief isn’t and has a panel of judges who let him do whatever. Just the other day he suggested Obama be investigated for treason. So yeah, we’re toxic, and you all should seriously quarantine yourselves.
Why would you say all personal finance advisors from Europ advise their clients to invest at least 50% in the US? The aggressive ones suggest 70-90%. 53% of The Norwegian sovereign fund is invested in the US, 24% in Europe and 23% the rest of the world. Their biggest investments are in Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Broadcom, etc, as one would expect.
Why don't European investors move their investments from US index and into European companies and businesses? Norway alone has ~1 trillion Euros invested in the US. Surely they can move it to invest in European tech, no? that can make a couple of European AWSs.
The best way to get more euros over time appears to be to exchange them for US dollars, invest in US stock markets over time, and eventually exchange them back for euros. So rational investors will do that. It will work as long as the American regime doesn't collapse its currency due to overprinting, in which case all those euro investors will lose all their money.
An individual investor doesn't care about improving the economy of their country at all. They only care which investment will make the money today. And the investment market is just a collection of investors. Never make the mistake of thinking investment markets are rational economic planners - that's the fallacy of composition.
European governments may want to prevent this situation, but they're all pretty locked into the free-market regime, so there's not a huge amount they can do. They can't just give out free money, either, since there's a lot more state-backed financial crime and corruption over there, due to having enemy countries in close proximity.
You also can't just say, "Here's a few hundred billion in public support to create alternatives to U.S. tech giants", because the U.S. would argue that it's unfair state aid and retaliate.
There isn't enough private capital in the EU with the risk tolerance required to take on such a challenge independently.
We also lack a reserve currency like the USD, so we can't print $2 trillion a year, much of which ultimately flows into the U.S. stock market and further boosts U.S. tech companies, making competition even harder.
EU markets are already fully penetrated by U.S. behemoths that can either withstand or acquire any privately funded competitor, thanks to their massive cash flows and valuations.
For all these reasons, the outlook isn't very promising.
Indeed, it's a very sad story. I'm afraid the EU is in a coma, so waking up is not a given.
Another is economical - with tech (absolute) free-market would for sure benefit the biggest player. I don't believe in absolute free-market economy anyway (and we don't have it), and I think EU (and other countries) should protect their (tech) businesses. For example EU can start with above mentioned service tax, Trump started with tariffs anyway.
Side note - Russia had very strong domestic tech for a long time, and one of the reasons I believe was the fact it's a big market mixed with different language. I don't think dictatorship played as big of a role.
The EU has some of the brightest minds in the world. You can do this.
That can be improved by making traditional investments (real estate, land) less attractive while making investments into businesses more attractive. You just need to change tax incentives by removing capital gain tax and introducing real estate/land value tax (or raising it). Removing red tape would help as well and then making the common market really common.
As it is there is very little incentive to invest in companies here.
That's unrealistic. Majority of people in the EU own property and/or land, and no one wants to pay even more taxes on it. In my EU country, the majority of politicians own more than two apartments. I don't see them working against their own interests.
That's why nothing every changes. Ever increasing taxes on productivity to benefit the real estate/land owners is how EU operates. No wonder we have fewer and fewer children and there isn't many people willing to found new businesses.
It's a death spiral which will end with the youth rebelling or going extinct. The latter being more probable looking at current fertility rates.
American companies like Google [0][1], Amazon [2][7], and Microsoft [3][4][5][6] have spent billions in FDI and hiring, thus building strong relationships with EU states like Ireland, Romania, Poland, Finland, Sweden, and others, but French and German competitors haven't (or don't exist depending on the service or SLA).
This means a significant portion of EU member states have an incentive to maintain the relationship, because the alternative means significant capital outflows. A Polish legislator doesn't have to answer to French voters, so they will incentivize the relationship with BigTech. Thus, these nations will lobby tooth and nail against destroying the relationship.
It's the same reason Hungary courts Chinese FDI [8] and enhancing the Sino-Chinese relationship as leverage against the EU pushing too hard [9].
[0] - https://www.gov.pl/web/primeminister/google-invests-billions...
[1] - https://www.gov.ie/ga/an-roinn-fiontar-turas%C3%B3ireachta-a...
[2] - https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/job-creation-and-investment/...
[3] - https://centraleuropeantimes.com/microsoft-google-invest-big...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/nordics-efficient-energy-...
[5] - https://www.idaireland.com/latest-news/press-release/an-taoi...
[6] - https://www.government.se/articles/2024/06/prime-minister-to...
[7] - https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/industries/cloud-technology-emp...
[8] - https://hungarytoday.hu/hungary-seeks-to-stay-leading-europe...
[9] - https://theloop.ecpr.eu/hungary-and-the-future-of-europe/
The post WWII doctrine of US that's applied in Europe is strengthening the bigger businesses. Those businesses use US tech since investing in an actual European tech sector is expensive. Especially after all the first players took critical positions.
The time to invest in that sector was in the 80s and 90s. Europe had a different relationship with the US and it was trying to encite small ex-Soviet states to join, so they can exploit the cheap labor. So nobody actually invested in local tech sector.
It is now an uphill battle that'll cost more than the original investment. Only countries with strong independence urge like France is willing to fight it. Most of the EU countries are not.
Struggling to think of corporate produced software that doesn’t suck. iOS Safari is ok, I guess.
In America the least bad stuff eventually rises to the top. In Europe it feels like it's all just one shared pit.
The reason is because Americans buy the other tech firms, so its not because they don't make non-bad tech its because USA just monopolizes it via very aggressive acquisitions.
> and the one that was a bit better than terrible was bought by a US company
But here you say EU can make great software? Just that USA then buys it. So we should just ban USA from buying our great software companies, is that what you are saying?
I can do most anything online, haven’t had to physically visit an gov office for years, outside voting and getting a new passport photo. And everything just works.
Edit: and before anyone points out that we’re not in EU, yes - but we’re in the EEA.