> Why did you change your name from Buy European Made to Go European?
> We changed our name to better reflect our evolving mission and values. "Go European" encompasses a broader range of initiatives and activities that support European culture, tourism, and services, beyond just promoting European-made products.
If you are advocating for European products, I would expect you to use Plausible or similar products instead of Google Analytics. This would allow you to avoid displaying the cookie banner.
That says nothing useful. The legislation refuses to be specific and you have to know what all the relevant ICO decisions are, which is why compliance is so frustratingly vague.
The law is written to prevent loopholes and exploits -- an extremely hard task, given the number of people willing to break it for even the slightest profits. The sheer number of these "false exits", that, then need to be covered, makes making reading and interpreting the law a hard endeavor. And a very precise one. It could be easier by some fraction, but never anywhere near easy.
There are competing incentives. Governments/politicians want to make it easy for companies to comply in order to encourage economic investment, and also to gain goodwill among their voters. Legal institutions want to make things appear as complicated and uncertain as possible so that they make more money selling lawyers.
The end result is that you get mixed messages, depending on where the information ultimately came from.
I personally don't know how hard it actually is to comply with GDPR, but I know that it has to be easier than it's made out to be.
That’s cynical and edgy, but misses the mark. There are several reasons why rules tend to be more specific about the outcomes than the ways to get there.
This decreases the attack surface for loopholes. What is desirable is the end result, not the technical details.
The law is actually clearer because the intent is clearly spelt out. The point of the law is to protect privacy, not cover every screen with cookies banners.
This leaves room for different implementations and flexibility (yay, competition).
It makes the law more resilient, because it does not need to be re-engineered every time anything happens. 10 years from now, even if cookies and banners have completely vanished, the core of the law will still be relevant.
This is why debates about the spirit and the letter of laws translate poorly across the Atlantic. Different places have different approaches.
I completely agree with your points. However, my admittedly snarky comment was regarding the idea that simply searching for a term across a document is how one decides legal validity, with no regard to alternate jargon, definitions, and of course, as you point out outcomes.
Article 6
Lawfulness of processing
1. Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies:
(a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;
(b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract;
Point (a) covers purposes that require cookie-banner. Point (b) covers login or shopping cart cookies, as these are necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party.
Also relevant to cookies, ePrivacy directive Article 5 (3):
Member States shall ensure that the use of electronic communications networks to store information or to gain access to information stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned is provided with clear and comprehensive information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia about the purposes of the processing, and is offered the right to refuse such processing by the data controller. This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out or facilitating the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order to provide an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user.
Could you be more specific? As far as I know, they have bunch of features like funnels, goals, revenue attributions etc.: https://plausible.io/docs/top-referrers
When doing paid marketing you need to track users as hard as you can otherwise you have no clue which ads work and which don’t, what are profit margins etc.
With GA, google uses cookies, fingerprinting and all other possible options to track correct attribution from various channels.
So even with ad blockers you can get a pretty accurate picture. It is also tightly integrated with google ads.
Plausible can tell you what users do inside your app. But honestly this is so basic you can pretty much build same functionality with a few sql queries.
> This would allow you to avoid displaying the cookie banner.
That isn't actually true (or at least is only allowed in the "it's a small enough violation of the law that the enforcers have bigger fish to fry" sense).
Cookie banners are required to gather informed consent, which is relevant for two EU legislations: the ePD, which requires it to access or store _any_ data from terminal equipment, and the GDPR which requires it for personally identifiable data. Most people only consider the latter, but the former is a much bigger hurdle to pass.
Despite Plausible's claim of not requiring cookie banners, their processing still accesses data from the terminal equipment. That was made very explicitly clear in a 2023 guideline from the EDPB[1].
The one saving grace for Plausible is that the ePD is a Directive, so the actual implementation into law differs by Member country. The claim might be true for some EU countries, but certainly isn't for all.
I've written a longer analysis of this in the context of Plausible for anyone interested[2] (although it might be worth skipping the first section, to get to the meat of the issue).
The user can always sue Plausible for lying about their product to get their damages back. In the end, the user of these services is responsible for maintaining the privacy of their customers/visitors.
I'm not a lawyer but Company using Plausible gets fined, but then they can sue Plausible. most likely.
But GDPR enforcement is more like 'you need to fix this, if you don't you get the fine' - if you are actually helpful and do your duty to improve the process the fine is usually reduced.
I would like to turn this comment into a gold plaque and point to it any time an HN commenter repeats the “EU privacy regs and GDPR are actually super simple!” narrative.
As someone living in Europe who watches the EUs best and brightest mostly go to work in consulting firms because the only growth industry in the EU is “companies spending money on regulatory compliance,” it pains my soul.
I think you're posting a strawman here. ePD is known to be bad (though for different reasons depending on who you ask), GDPR on the other hand _is_ easy to understand and follow.
Understanding the GDPR is quite easy, but following it can be quite hard if you're intending to violate people's privacy. If you read the GDPR because you want to enable the full Google Analytics suite without users even knowing, the GDPR will read like an absolute nightmare.
Except it isn't. I too thought this was the case. Please talk to a lawyer sometime for a more nuanced take (I begrudgingly have).
The funniest part about GDPR is that currently any organization that uses pretty much any US tech is in violation of the latest rulings, including much of the EU government itself running on Microsoft tech.
If you've just been consuming journalist or internet comment narratives on this topic you have no idea.
oh I know. And considering the CLOUD act that's how it should be. Maybe I shouldn't have written "easy to follow" since stuff like backups can get tricky and DSARs can be a pain on the receiving side, but it is certainly easy to understand. I do hope that GDPR does add a wedge for getting less dependent on US companies that obviously do not care about privacy at all.
But please also share the more nuanced take on the GDPR of your lawyer. You can't go around making claims like that without substantiating them ;).
folks mess "cookie banner" with "consent banner". many people do conflate them, but in some jurisdictions (e.g., the EU under GDPR), a "cookie banner" typically includes a consent mechanism.
if you're tracking users for analytics using cookies, fingerprinting, or any other method that identifies them (even probabilistically), you generally need explicit consent under GDPR and similar privacy laws. The key point is that it's not just about cookies; any persistent tracking requires consent.
> The key point is that it's not just about cookies; any persistent tracking requires consent.
The law mandates that you inform the user if you are setting any type of cookies. So its necessary to have a banner even if you don't need to get consent. You could inform the user in other ways, but cookie banners are easier.
This is such a shame, we should be looking to source and produce things globally and find better ways to improve the logistics and efficiency world-wide. Why would the EU take such a protective stance which only enforces isolation and increases cost?
Edit: Thanks for the responses, I am still looking for a signal that tells my post is sarcasm multiplied by cynicism.
That doesn't really work as long as you have legislation like the CLOUD Act, which means EU-based businesses have to think twice about using any US providers, especially if they handle sensitive customer data and also since the DPF is on the way out.
Only because the US refuses to properly protect consumer privacy and seemingly can no longer be trusted at all. If Trump forces Microsoft to turn off Office 365 for example for the EU, or blocks AWS, GCP or Azure from doing business with the EU then European businesses are screwed. We’ve now realized these risks are potentially real and European countries are scrambling to look for alternatives (and realizing that they don’t really exist).
Considering the PCLOB has lost some of its members, it's questionable whether the DPF can continue to exist in its current form. If it does go out the window, then Trump won't need to tell AWS/GCP to stop doing business with the EU, since European companies wouldn't legally be allowed to transfer data to US companies anyway.
I expect the EU commission will take a _very_ long time to actually act on this tho. Maybe we'll see Schrems III first.
Apparently unreliable partner just means “not being taken advantage of”. If stopping a waste of American taxpayer money results in this reaction, it’s clear the countries looking to decouple were never really partners of the US.
If you want to go theoretical one would argue that this effort is precisely what you ask for: one link in the global chain has become inefficient and this page is the result of the system routing around it.
Why? Because it's reacting to the current US trade policies.
The EU is realizing that one of their major trade partner, who they trusted with critically important goods and services, might pull the rug under their feet.
Not to mention that the EU in itself is already a huge achievement in terms of free trade agreements between EU countries.
Yes, and ideally we would have no wars, either. But because of fucking psychos like Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping and many more, we do. Therefore, unfortunately, it makes sense for EU to decrease their economic dependence on outside players like the US and China.
I think it's important that we _do_ also include China in this. It's not just that Trump has demonstrated that the US is unreliable. We have also seen (again) that sociopaths in charge of authoritarian regimes can do things that are perfectly capable of acting against their own economic interests for political, cultural, religious reasons.
Depending on global interconnectedness of markets has not and will not save us. We need to divest and disconnect from all economies which are not reliable liberal democracies which broadly share our values.
I would include in this Hungary: We should be giving serious thought to how to kick them out of the EU.
So Romania should be kicked out as well? They’re denying ballot access to a candidate that has broad popular support. Is that democracy when the people can’t vote for a candidate of their choice?
Possibly. I'm ignorant of Romanian politics. But the idea that EU should strengthen policing of democratic norms and sanction members who don't conform to them is important.
In this case, no I don't think Romania should be kicked out. Restrictions on party membership are complicated, but it seems here the courts have applied Romania's electoral law. We are going to have to be smart to avoid situations like this in other EU countries, where Russian, Chinese or US money are used to support non-democrats.
But we have huge economic dependence which could also be used. We need to wean ourself off the Chinese supply chain. This will take decades, but the lesson here is that it will be used against us in future.
Europe is big enough as an internal market to sustain a good quality of life for the majority of the population — even if our 1% are disadvantaged relative to those in US, Russia. We have the capital and resources to defend ourselves too. We can open outward to Canada, Australia, democratic parts of Asia, Africa. But we need to avoid any dependence on powerful authoritarian regimes like China, India, the US, Indonesia etc.
I understand that but what's nagging at me is this: I think civilisation is about building dependence really.
Civilisation is organising in larger and larger groups - everyone becoming more dependent on each other and having laws and so on to resolve problems instead of fighting.
.....so somehow, for the sake of making Star Trek and all those wonderful science fiction stories possible.....we have to get that dependence back somehow. I'm joking but not joking. Some Americans are reasoable and somehow, for the world to survive, we have to find some way to help reasonable people all over the world to work together. So we can reach the science fiction future.
That sounds great. I'm just not sure it's compatible with current nation states.
As a first step we could perhaps agree that individual people could come and live in Europe and participate in our democracy?
I think physical presence is actually quite a good precondition for participation. At least people physically present have some skin in the game.
With a transition period, I'm not sure I'd have a big problem cutting many other links with non-democratic countries. I agree with your ideals but all evidence is that trading and communication links and other sources of interdependence will be abused. We need to have policies which respond to that.
> I understand that but what's nagging at me is this: I think civilisation is about building dependence really.
As it looks now, there might be a limit on the scale of global collaboration. There's nothing that says that the trend of global depenence and collaboration will continue (in fact, it is reversing now).
Right now directories like this are getting popular mostly because they offer alternative to US products. Pretty sure Europeans would be happy to use a Canadian alternative to a US service.
But not alternatives to Chinese products? China’s human rights, environment, currency manipulation, tariffs, IP theft — some people seemingly unify as anti-Trump, but ignore China?
This tells me the resistance isn’t principled at all, but simply grandstanding.
The situation with China hasn't fundamentally changed in the last two months. People operate under the assumption of some kind of stability in this relationship. The West imports and exports products from/to China, with some restrictions: critical infrastructure like antennas cannot be built by Huawei in many countries, for instance. People in the West wouldn't use a Chinese email provider, etc. Today China is not an ally, but not an enemy either; rather a partner. There is no reason to expect a change in behaviour right now. It doesn't mean that the West agrees with everything that China does, of course.
Now regarding the US, it has fundamentally changed in the last two months. From the US government threatening to invade allied countries to actively destabilising them through people close to Trump downright making nazi salutes. On top of threatening militarily, the US is attacking its ex-allies economically with tariffs. The people in power in the US are explicitly talking about destroying Europe, and the US is now becoming an ally of Russia (which again makes it look like an enemy to the West).
Two months ago, people were operating under the assumption that the US was an ally. Now it's a partner that is going down the slope of becoming an enemy. Go ask if Canadians or Europeans feel threatened by China right now. Ask the same question about the US.
So yes: people are more scared of the US right now, and the US look more like enemies than China right now.
> This tells me the resistance isn’t principled at all, but simply grandstanding.
TL;DR: It is obviously resistance, against the US becoming an enemy. There are two obvious reasons for finding alternative to US products:
1. If it hurts the US economy (and therefore the US citizen), the hope is that maybe they will realise that Trump is not helping them and push for stopping this madness. The US won't get back to beeing trusted allies anytime soon (that ship has sailed), but they could stop from becoming enemies of the West.
2. National security: the US cannot be trusted, so it is very urgent for the West to turn to alternatives and run away from the US as fast as they possibly can.
Yep it isn’t principled at all. This is just making clear that Canadians and Europeans are willing to openly support a communist dictatorship. I guess that sort of aligns with the trend in these countries away from Democratic values like free speech. But it is still disappointing.
Are you seriously asking why? If you've paid any attention to the news in the past few weeks, you couldn't have missed the daily efforts by Trump and his cabinet to isolate the USA from its allies. In the past, European countries have trusted that the common values shared by the Western countries will ensure mutual cooperation now and in the future. Now this thinking has proven naive, as Trump has threatened Europe with, e.g., shutting down technological services if it's in his interest to do so. It doesn't seem to matter whether Europe pays for these services or not. Therefore, it's paramount for Europe to not vendor-lock themselves in American companies, as they can't be trusted anymore. It's sad and shocking, but Europe has been backed into the corner with this one.
Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but it's not part of the EU. It was originally part of the EU (back when it was the EEC) but voted to leave in a referendum in 1982, officially exiting in 1985. Today, Greenland has a special status called Overseas Country and Territory (OCT), meaning it has trade deals with the EU, but EU rules don't directly apply there.
It's to discourage the US from escalating the tariff war, which in the end always hurt consumers. People in the US are already paying that insane choice, but I don't hold my breath waiting for GOP voters to reconsider their choice: propaganda is a powerful weapon, and we're struggling against it also over here.
That's why I mentioned the escalation. We already had tariffs against China to protect internal market and bring prices on par to have fair competition, just like the US already had, but Trump wanted to go full berserk, and here are the results.
As part of the European reorientation I avoid products and services from Hungary and Slovakia. I also avoid one specific Swedish company, Spotify, for promoting and funding the misinformation spewing American podcastbros who were partially responsible for the rise of Trump 2.0.
First, taking you at face value: it's not clear we did that yet.
Second, this is ridiculous. Trusting an until-this-point-mostly-trustworthy ally is not spineless (although I guess it might be naive).
All modern business is built on trust, since Americans are keen on throwing that out the door now, every EU business is going to re-evaluate who to trust.
What is trust to you? It looks a lot like Europe is getting upset that American taxpayers do not want to waste money on a conflict that is going nowhere, that is not America’s concern.
> American taxpayers do not want to waste money on a conflict that is going nowhere, that is not America’s concern.
By wasting money you mean selling weapons and giving away old military equipment that it more expensive to destroy than to ship away?
Also, the conflict is in America's concern since the United States has pledged to guarantee Ukraine's security in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. A pledge is a pledge, no matter if you like it or not.
Where were all those upset taxpayers when iraq and afghanistan happened? Or were those examples of super successful wars?
But to your point, as a random European resident, it's not upsetting that the US is pulling back, it's upsetting that it's pulling back with so little regard for anything else. If this was the only thing, fine, i wouldn't agree but it's your call, but look at all the other stuff happening at the same time in your foreign policy and ask yourself why all those "wasteful" things existed in the first place.
Your ignorance of history and willingness to buy Russian propaganda is sad.
Europe downplayed investment in military capacity because this was seen and agreed as the best way to reduce the risk of WWIII.
Europe also realized that building things is better than destroying things. Is it spineless to do this? Question to you, mavdi, did you volunteer to serve in the armed forces? If not, do you view yourself as spineless for this decision?
“Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.”
i actually didn't realise Scaleway is a real European alternative to AWS/GCP/Azure. They seems to be covering the most common use case for AWS managed services.
Great to see a directory like this starting to include physical products. I'd be interested in having some extra datapoints to help with decision making:
- How much of the product/company's supply chain is in EU (to get an idea of just how European the product is, is it made here or abroad)
- Some way to show if the company is paying "fair" tax in EU (or are profits shifted abroad)
These are difficult datapoints to get, but I wonder if there can be some sort of "community notes" where this data can be crowd sourced and updated on the directory.
It might be worth noting that this is not specific to the EU, it's the whole of Europe. So for example it includes companies from Norway, Switerzland and the UK.
So asking how much tax is paid or how much supply chain is in the EU doesn't necissarily make sense here.
Im not particularly fussy if it's EU or European.
The idea is more to get insight if it's just a dropshipper/reseller type of business, or involved in regional manufacturing.
The idea is whether the company has some loophole where the profits are registered in some offshore island in order to avoid taxes, as well as how big part of the product is actually made in europe as opposed as in X non-european country. I have seen a lot of products advertised as being products of the native country when they are actually rebranded chinese products or whatever (I have no issue with chinese products, but if the point is to know which products are european products this is important information).
In this case, "in the EU" is a shorthand for "in the single market", "in the customs union", or "in the EEA (plus Switzerland)".
High-level discussions rarely go down to this level of detail, and from the point of view of the consumers it is not very relevant. What matters is coupling with the US or China, and the relevant regulations.
Thank you for including the UK, we are still part of Europe!
Added my company (https://mailpace.com) - I’m looking forward to a resurgence of innovation in European tech companies, the talent and education here is amazing, we just need to improve our investment and start treating tech with as much respect as we give to law, finance and other “prestigious” career paths here
Let's get Russian disinformation and influence out of Europe and heal the European relationships. Cannot wait to see Farage begging for food in the subway.
I know that it's not in the cards (yet), but I hope the UK and the EU can be a single market again (even if the UK does not rejoin the EU). Let's make our market as large and attractive as possible! We love the UK and you are part of the European family :hugs:.
Whilst a good idea, no politician is going to try and do it under the fear of reigniting the Brexit argument which ends up dominating politics in the country.
Yeah, that's why I don't think it's in the cards yet. On the other hand, things are very fluid now. Things that were unthinkable two months ago (e.g. Germany ending the 'debt brake') are happening now.
>Germany ending the 'debt brake') are happening now.
Now what exactly they're goanna do with the extra debt is the question.
More debt to fund innovation, infrastructure, defense, education and healthcare is welcome, but if it's just more debt to fund welfare and pensions, like Southern Europe, then nothing will improve.
They will change the paragraphs only wrt infrastructure, defense (and possibly climate things to get the votes of the greens). Meaning that the debt brake will still exist for all other things, basically. (but yes: creative bookkeeping will become easier ;))
The US did disarm somewhat after the Cold War, but kept a lot in place for pork-barrel reasons and then the absolutely huge waste of money that was the War On Terror.
People believed the "end of history" narratives about Russia, and even that it would become like the rest of the ex-communist states, a normal part of liberal Europe. That should have changed after 2014, but by then the grip of the financial crisis was preventing any increases in state spending.
Most people who voted for Brexit were mostly concerned about free movement of people, not goods. I doubt a free trade agreement would upset them too much.
If the EU would accept a FTA without free movement of people is another matter.
> If the EU would accept a FTA without free movement of people is another matter.
Absolutely not. This was made clear repeatedly. What became clear in the UK was that we'd rather lose market access in order to appease people with an irrational hatred of our fellow Europeans.
If people think trade and movement boundaries are good, why don't we have internal ones? Why should Mancunians be allowed to take up scarce housing in London?
EU: "The free movement of goods is one of the four fundamental economic freedoms laid down in the EU founding treaties, the other three being the free movement of capital, services and people."
The EU would welcome the UK being closer aligned to the EU, trade-wise. But the UK cannot be in the single market without all four freedoms. Which the UK still rules out.
If only it was so simple, there are of course many conflicting interests in Europe, with certain countries who are more export oriented for instance benefiting from a weak Euro and others from a stronger Euro etc.
A single one on paper but a heavily divided one in practice where every country wants to be king or at least backstab everyone else to get what it wants.
I sometimes wish we could abolish our nations and replace the current treaties with a voluntary merge of all participating countries, making everyone simply citizens, throwing out all national law books and replacing it with a single Continental one.
Won't happen without a war - so hopefully not within my lifetime, but playing make believe is fun sometimes.
How would a war in Europe unite people under one leadership? See the regions that have been ceded and annexed post WW1 and post WW2, they still have beef with the new host countries bickering about regional autonomy. You can conquer land, but conquering people is a lot more difficult.
Well I never argued for or against a single market, the commentator said it was rational and sensible. That's a way too simple clarification, there are many conflicting interests in the EU for it just to be sensible.
There are. But the good thing is that all these countries get to sit around a table and talk, when there are such disagreements. And things get (mostly) sorted out in a civilised way.
Not sure if you are been to the EU. There is not table where they talk, they just compromis and ignore along the way and then the commission decides everything behind closed doors, which might be your table
EFTA membership is a non-starter. It's not good for the UK, and it's not good for the other EFTA members. Also, EFTA is part of the Schengen area. But not the customs union.
Totally agree! The UK will always be part of Europe culturally, no matter what political changes happen. Only Fools and Horses is such a classic - I think every European country has their own version of Del Boy trying to make it big with crazy schemes! Those cultural connections don't just disappear because of politics.
Containers IaaS, plus managed Postgres. So far I’ve only found UK hosts that do VPS, VMs, or bare metal- the abstraction above this is (heroku, fly.io etc.) makes Ops 10x easier for smaller companies
Civo.io have had both for many years and for Katapult.io these are coming in April. Both are british companies, if you need referring feel free to shout.
Thanks for these recommendations - both of these look like the sort of thing I've been looking for and failing to find for several weeks. And @albertgoeswoof - pretty sure we'll be gradually moving a lot of clients over to you soon too.
Perfect timing. I've been working on a little side project which is getting close to actually being done. Being able to use at least one non-US company for it will be great.
America loves investing in risky ventures, and startups love money so they go to fish where the fish are.
If Europe would invest into local startups instead of propping up the real estate bubble, they wouldn't sell themselves to the US for money. Our downfall is by our own design here.
Governments don't create startups but they can 100% create the right legal, monetary and tax incentives to steer private capital and workers towards them, but as long as they are steered towards protecting the interests of gentrified land owners and those of 100-year-old companies, nothing will ever change and we'll just stare at how US and Chinese companies are overtaking us.
Rich people can invest relatively small amounts in hundreds, if not thousands of startups through preferentially treated retirement funds and pay no (or little) tax on the ones that make it big.
This is what has made it so easy to secure funding in the US.
Should Europe do the same? There's definitely an ethical dilemma in making the rich, richer for the sake of innovation.
>There's definitely an ethical dilemma in making the rich, richer for the sake of innovation.
What do you mean? The European rich have always been getting richer via inheritance regardless of innovation. That's a monetary and legal policy hack that's been in place for decades/centuries here which is how the richest families are centuries old.
Investing in innovation instead would be a much needed breath of fresh air and give current generation of youth some skin in the game instead of a defetist mentality that there's no point in working hard because the zero sum game is rigged. So I don't get your point.
- In Europe, getting funding is literally like pulling teeth. Just to get a measly hundred thousands of € in funding you're expected to provide a comprehensive business plan, financials, etc. that would rival M&A due diligence other places. In Silicon Valley you can get more funding by simply meeting the right angel investor, and providing a good pitch - done deal.
- In Europe, the end goal for many startups is to be acquired by some megacorp or market leader, for something like €10m-€50m. In the US you can multiply that number by 10 or 100, or in general have ambitions of developing the startup into a unicorn.
That was at least how things used to be. US has a long, long history of (risk willing) VC investments - while European countries have been lagging far behind.
Good VC cultures have developed in some European countries for the past 10-15 years, and startups have become more ambitious, but unfortunately there's still a culture of nickel and diming startups. And the places that rob you, will fund you maybe a month or two worth of capital.
EDIT: Should be said, that I'm also from Europe. And as someone else have pointed out in this thread, Europeans hate risk.
Isn't funding at that extreme level pretty much localized to a few areas in the US, like Silicon Valley/Bay Area, Portland/Seattle area, New York and maybe Colorado. It is probably easier than in the EU, but I don't think may start ups in Alabama are getting crazy funding.
As for getting acquired, that's the same in the US. Either you goal is total dominance on your own or getting acquired by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle or Salesforce.
You do have a point, start ups doesn't have access to the same level of uncritical funding. The SV model also isn't ideal, but it should be possible to find somewhere in the middle.
For a while there, funding in US was as simple as putting the right keywords into your proposal, and sending it to the right treasury office, getting it practically auto-approved. I hope they will align closer to the sensible European practices in the future.
I say this as proud European: the problem isn't just VC culture, it's European culture. In Europe there's an extreme risk aversion to trying things that have nonzero risk of failing.
I know a tiny bit about this regarding the UK but no other country in Europe:
My mental shortcut has always been "The US never inherited debtor's prison." Historically in the UK at least, getting into a situation where your debts can't be honored was utterly ruinous (this has improved IIUC). In the US, there are strict upper bounds on how much sway creditors can have over you. One could imagine this would result in a chillier credit market when creditors have fewer protections, but ironically, this makes it easier to get credit in the US because creditors don't have another option. Interest on a successful venture is still the quickest path to making one's money grow, so even knowing the debtor could walk away and the worst that would happen is "bankruptcy followed by a judge telling you you get pennies on the dollar of your investment", people still put up the money.
The most obvious example of how failure to pay debt in the US isn't personally ruinous is probably that our current President has filed bankruptcy six times.
(Note: I am speaking broadly and about non-medical debt. Medical debt in the US is ruinous for several significant reasons. But that's generally a non-overlapping concern to most tech-company funding).
> - In Europe, getting funding is literally like pulling teeth.
Because Europe was not able to print unlimited Euros to flood its economy with free cash like how the US was able to do it thanks to the reserve currency status of the dollar. But no worries - now that dollar's monopoly is ending, the American investment landscape is also coming down back to Earth. US startups and companies wont be able to burn endless amounts of shareholder/investor money to out-compete and kill all competitors anymore. That should allow all regions in the world to be able to compete.
> That was at least how things used to be. US has a long, long history of (risk willing) VC investments - while European countries have been lagging far behind
> Europeans hate risk
Right, that's because Europe did not have zirp-enabled free cash. You can dump millions on all kinds of ideas including dumb ones when you have free cash and still see 1% of them make it big even if 99% of them fail. But when you don't have free cash, you have to be careful.
So finding investment wasn't a problem or issue of the European culture or business landscape. The US being able to burn cash on even dumb ideas thanks to zirp made it appear like it was a problem.
zero-interest-rate-policy-enabled, i.e. it's a reference back to the prior paragraph. But I don't think the US government's money-printing tells the full story. There's been just as much "cash" created by stock market overvaluations and un-backed securities.
> There's been just as much "cash" created by stock market overvaluations and un-backed securities.
Yes, though they originate from the free-cash printing. Both through the central bank (Federal Reserve) and private banks that were allowed to do fractional reserve lending, the US infused immense cash into its economy, which led to all the phenomena you mentioned. Because in countries that cant have zirp, such overvaluations of stocks and securities are scarce. Indeed, the derivatives market took a life of its own and created derivatives of derivatives backed by derivatives that were loosely tied to real-world assets and that also contributed to the bloat. But the real deal was always the zirp.
I'm sure Europe is less nice, but also it's hard to even try. e.g: when you get accepted into YC you immediately go to Delaware, and even if the whole company is still in europe, it's no longer an european one :/
Unfortunately that’s the case because large US-based companies can leverage their existing global sales / marketing / governance setup to rationalize very high exit valuations. In the EU we don’t have the large software shops that can do that. So for an EU based startup - it’s exit to a US-based company or go all the way to an IPO / profitability.
While I do find it an interesting exercise to reflect over my own choices of products and services and consider how I could divest myself from relying on ones provided by US companies (and I do agree Europe is too reliant on the US in some regards), it is a bit sad to see how quickly things are spiraling here. People really love to have a clear enemy...
If you walk into a European supermarket, fashion store or MediaMarkt there is very little coming from the US.
The giant container ships are coming from the East not the West.
>Chips made with Dutch chip fabrication technology
Using american EUV light sources....this train of who makes what in the supply chain can go on forever, the point is who's making the highest margins from the end product and it's not ASML nor ARM but Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.
Hence my point that while EU has some IP, its value is dwarfed by the IP the US makes. Just look at market cap of US vs European tech sector. It's not even a competition. ASML can't offset that. I think Apple has enough cash in the bank to buy ASML if they wanted to.
The profits aren't the point. The questions that Europeans are asking themselves as shown in the featured article is how far away they are from independence from an untrustworthy trading partner.
Sure. My microwave from 1988 is about the only thing made in the US in my home (interstingly an Electrolux). However, every purchase I make is with a Visa card. Most services I use are American. And as I'm typing this... anyone know a European alternative to SwiftKey? :P
> anyone know a European alternative to SwiftKey? :P
Sadly, SwiftKey is/was actually a UK company that was acquired by Microsoft. Most successful European tech start-ups seem to end up being acquired by one of the American tech giants. Perhaps this is will be ending now.
When the actions you would take if you were acting entirely out of self interest and the actions that are the most ethical align with each other, then it's okay to take those actions, which is the case here and that's fine. I just mean that the primary reason shouldn't be self interest.
Well, it's not really to have a clear enemy. It's an effort to avoid having one.
The day the US drops the Cloud Act would be the death of all European CSPs. Until then, cloud offerings not subject to it will thrive, and the US will be seen as hostile.
And for all other subjects, it's a simple matter of not putting all of your eggs in the same basket. Having privileged trade partners is a good thing, but it becomes a bad one when it's a partner (singular). Today, the US has full power on Europe's tech landscape, which is concerning, even if it's a friend country.
Oh, and I say a "friend country", but given the latest announcements where the US Govt. clearly targets Europe and wants to sanction it (e.g. tariffs on French exports), the friend is turning around.
TL;DR today Europe does not see the US as an enemy. But it does everything for it to never happen, and this include reducing the dependency on the US.
You don't need an enemy for this sort of campaign to make sense. It should be common sense to prefer local products, and even more so to avoid extreme dependencies like the one most of the West has on American tech companies.
In my view, we (Europe) have long been acting foolishly by passively sitting in the back seat and allowing the US to drive for us, thereby creating a radical dependency. This wouldn't be healthy even if the US were the most loyal ally. What Trump's antics are doing is trigger a return to what should have always been the norm.
In Canada, there's a big push for buying Canadian given the Trump trade war, and especially avoiding products from the US. A kitchen store I went into over the weekend had little red maple leaf stamps on the price tags of Canadian products and the provincial liquor store in Ontario has pulled US products from shelves (though that's more of a marketing stunt by the populist Premier). Many Canadian-owned businesses have added logos at the top of their webpages (I noticed Canada Computers and Memory Express over the last few days, as I was browsing for graphics cards).
I suppose a big ticket item like a car is much easier to boycott than 50 small items from the grocery where trying to search through the ownership tree for every conglomerate would use up the rest of my sanity
The good news (at least for the EU, don't know about non-EU European countries) is that groceries are only a blip on the radar when it comes to imports (of course, energy is used for groceries, but that applies both to European and US products) [1]:
[1] Of course, there are US conglomerates that produce in the Europe. But a good chunk (at least here) is Unilever, Nestle, etc., which are all European.
Looking at labels is hardly a test of your sanity. In Canada right now a majority of the population is regularly checking and avoiding anything made in the USA.
I was recently in Malaysia and they've boycotted certain American brands over the Israel-Palestine war. For example, KFC has given up and was shutdown everywhere. So boycotts can work.
Maccas seemed to be doing just fine though, take from that what you will
Such a shame to see Gitlab go for gold in America rather than staying with its European basis. While Codeberg is absolutely fine in itself, I think Gitlab is a much better offering for many companies.
Today I learned that DeepL was German. It's hands down the best Japanese to English translator (according to my Japanese coworkers) and I was surprised how many used it in office. (never used it myself as a trilingual)
What I like about DeepL is that it tries to translate colloquially. For popular metaphors or sayings, Google does okay but it’s not perfect, especially if you don’t provide the entire sentence as context. DeepL does better with recognizing fragments imo.
For anything time critical Amazon Prime is a godsend.
1) Anything PC related I can get shipped to me tomorrow. There is one local computer store and they just repair laptops and phones with absolute rip off prices (£70 for a HDMI cable). Before Amazon it took days to get an order shipped from one of the big PC suppliers in the UK, Payment used to an absolute PITA frequently card gets rejected on dubious grounds. I've had a PSUs die before, I can get one shipped to me tomorrow.
2) I am working on an old car at the moment as a hobby. Working on old vehicles you will find many small bodges or you won't realise until 50% of the way into it you need a replacement part. Almost everyone uses the postal service and the delivery time is 3-5 days or they charge you £15 for next day delivery (which is often more than the price of the part). So any job can be stopped by a missing part and I have to wait 3 days to get a replacement part or be ripped off. I have literally no alternative than to use these suppliers much of the time and it is a major source of frustration because it will take me an extra week to do a job.
I have several options within walking distance that sells HDMI cables for same price as Amazon, and I can trust that they sell a cable that works according to spec.
Amazon uses a 3rd party to deliver here, and their short delivery times is really only available in larger cities if the item is in that particular warehouse. Since they use 3rd party to deliver I can buy from other stores and also have next day delivery, not like delivery times were bad before though. Have several package locker services available as well, next day delivery is common but depends on how far it has to travel.
Can Amazon be better for some niche stuff? Probably, but its unlikely to be in the warehouse close to me anyway. I'd rather wait an extra day than exfiltrate barely taxed money to the US if I can help it.
> I have several options within walking distance that sells HDMI cables for same price as Amazon, and I can trust that they sell a cable that works according to spec.
1) I used to example of the HDMI cable to show how much of a ripoff that shop was. I use Amazon to buy all manner of PC equipment. Alternatives in the UK have poor delivery times, stock or payment is a faff.
2) I don't have any options in walking distance at all and I don't buy the cheap cables from Amazon.
Not all of us live in a city. I live in a countryside town and options are severely limited. The only shop near me is a Nisa General, a Chinese Takeaway and a Hardware Store that has some old guy talking about the Freemasons all the time.
> Amazon uses a 3rd party to deliver here, and their short delivery times is really only available in larger cities if the item is in that particular warehouse. Since they use 3rd party to deliver I can buy from other stores and also have next day delivery, not like delivery times were bad before though. Have several package locker services available as well, next day delivery is common but depends on how far it has to travel.
Good for you this isn't everywhere. I don't have this option. The nearest PC parts supplier is in Manchester which is over an 1 hour drive and closes before I finish work. The other PC parts supplier is 1 hour 30 minutes away in Stoke-on-Trent.
They rip you off on next day delivery (it doesn't cost that much more as I post stuff regularly myself) or they just don't offer it.
> Can Amazon be better for some niche stuff? Probably, but its unlikely to be in the warehouse close to me anyway. I'd rather wait an extra day than exfiltrate barely taxed money to the US if I can help it.
No Amazon isn't good for niche stuff (this stuff I am ordering for my car isn't that niche either). I have no other option for many car parts to either go to Ebay or I have to go to a official parts seller. The main issue as stated is delivery times are slow because most of the guys that are part suppliers are guys in their 60s.
Waiting an extra day isn't an option sometimes. You did notice where I specifically said where I need things quickly right?
> Can get next day delivery to locker even outside the bigger metros here.
Good for you. I don't have that option. You were asking (somewhat rhetorically) why people would want to use a megacorp like Amazon. The alternatives in the UK are either no better than Amazon or objectively worse.
Also the North of Europe is generally much better than the Eastern and Southern Europe for e-commerce. I have lived Southern Europe and they were at least about 10-15 years behind the UK offerings when I lived there. After speaking to some people in Eastern Europe, I understand that they are in similar situation.
> Guess you'll be surprised when Amazon starts gouging you.
The only company that hasn't gouged me so far is Amazon. If they do, I will stop using them.
The modern computer was invented in Britain, we have ARM, designers of the most popular chip architecture in the world and make things like Raspberry Pi. We've got the ability but not the ambition. The attitude of "we'll design the chips, others can do the scary bit of building them"/"we'll publish the paper and others can monetize it"/"We'll make a fun little toy for research, but we'll let the americans make the commercial version" attitude is absolutely endemic here.
Toting Adidas, Puma, Jack & Jones, Decathlon etc. as "European-meade" is laughable when everyone knows their clothes are actually manufactured in third-world low-labor-protection countries.
Heck, I can make a safe bet that the vast majority of the companies listed here sell items at least partially made outside of Europe.
I think the most critical missing piece is GPUs right now. As AI becomes more and more crucial, GPU/AI hardware design and manufacturing will become a matter of sovereignty and unfortunately, can't find any EU alternative
- "We are a group of individuals from across Europe who connected via the subreddit r/BuyfromEU."
Then, why do you promote a list of European Reddit "alternatives" such as "Lemmy", you say people are supposed to use instead?
This is the laziest form of internet activism there is: lecture people what you believe they're supposed to be doing in ways you don't yourself do, and can't be inconvenienced to try.
(Bonus points for building this boycott website on top of Amazon Cloudfront, Cloudflare, and Google Analytics).
Nobody seriously claims that Europe should be self-sufficient in everything and isolated from the rest of the world. It’s ok to simultaneously 1) try to make things better, and 2) still talk to Americans or use American products (same for China). Discussing alternatives does not imply burning bridges.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 315 ms ] thread> Why did you change your name from Buy European Made to Go European?
> We changed our name to better reflect our evolving mission and values. "Go European" encompasses a broader range of initiatives and activities that support European culture, tourism, and services, beyond just promoting European-made products.
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The end result is that you get mixed messages, depending on where the information ultimately came from.
I personally don't know how hard it actually is to comply with GDPR, but I know that it has to be easier than it's made out to be.
This decreases the attack surface for loopholes. What is desirable is the end result, not the technical details.
The law is actually clearer because the intent is clearly spelt out. The point of the law is to protect privacy, not cover every screen with cookies banners.
This leaves room for different implementations and flexibility (yay, competition).
It makes the law more resilient, because it does not need to be re-engineered every time anything happens. 10 years from now, even if cookies and banners have completely vanished, the core of the law will still be relevant.
This is why debates about the spirit and the letter of laws translate poorly across the Atlantic. Different places have different approaches.
These are trying times.
Member States shall ensure that the use of electronic communications networks to store information or to gain access to information stored in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned is provided with clear and comprehensive information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC, inter alia about the purposes of the processing, and is offered the right to refuse such processing by the data controller. This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out or facilitating the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order to provide an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...
https://european-alternatives.eu/category/web-analytics-serv...
With GA, google uses cookies, fingerprinting and all other possible options to track correct attribution from various channels.
So even with ad blockers you can get a pretty accurate picture. It is also tightly integrated with google ads.
Plausible can tell you what users do inside your app. But honestly this is so basic you can pretty much build same functionality with a few sql queries.
That isn't actually true (or at least is only allowed in the "it's a small enough violation of the law that the enforcers have bigger fish to fry" sense).
Cookie banners are required to gather informed consent, which is relevant for two EU legislations: the ePD, which requires it to access or store _any_ data from terminal equipment, and the GDPR which requires it for personally identifiable data. Most people only consider the latter, but the former is a much bigger hurdle to pass.
Despite Plausible's claim of not requiring cookie banners, their processing still accesses data from the terminal equipment. That was made very explicitly clear in a 2023 guideline from the EDPB[1].
The one saving grace for Plausible is that the ePD is a Directive, so the actual implementation into law differs by Member country. The claim might be true for some EU countries, but certainly isn't for all.
I've written a longer analysis of this in the context of Plausible for anyone interested[2] (although it might be worth skipping the first section, to get to the meat of the issue).
[1] https://www.edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/guid... [2] https://jfagerberg.me/blog/2022-06-09-analytics-cookie-compl...
Since Plausible is selling a product that clearly claims this, who is on the hook in case a user of Plausible gets a fine?
But GDPR enforcement is more like 'you need to fix this, if you don't you get the fine' - if you are actually helpful and do your duty to improve the process the fine is usually reduced.
As someone living in Europe who watches the EUs best and brightest mostly go to work in consulting firms because the only growth industry in the EU is “companies spending money on regulatory compliance,” it pains my soul.
The funniest part about GDPR is that currently any organization that uses pretty much any US tech is in violation of the latest rulings, including much of the EU government itself running on Microsoft tech.
If you've just been consuming journalist or internet comment narratives on this topic you have no idea.
But please also share the more nuanced take on the GDPR of your lawyer. You can't go around making claims like that without substantiating them ;).
if you're tracking users for analytics using cookies, fingerprinting, or any other method that identifies them (even probabilistically), you generally need explicit consent under GDPR and similar privacy laws. The key point is that it's not just about cookies; any persistent tracking requires consent.
The law mandates that you inform the user if you are setting any type of cookies. So its necessary to have a banner even if you don't need to get consent. You could inform the user in other ways, but cookie banners are easier.
Edit: Thanks for the responses, I am still looking for a signal that tells my post is sarcasm multiplied by cynicism.
I expect the EU commission will take a _very_ long time to actually act on this tho. Maybe we'll see Schrems III first.
You can argue the rights and wrongs if you want but all that matters is the US cannot be trusted.
The EU is realizing that one of their major trade partner, who they trusted with critically important goods and services, might pull the rug under their feet.
Not to mention that the EU in itself is already a huge achievement in terms of free trade agreements between EU countries.
Depending on global interconnectedness of markets has not and will not save us. We need to divest and disconnect from all economies which are not reliable liberal democracies which broadly share our values.
I would include in this Hungary: We should be giving serious thought to how to kick them out of the EU.
In this case, no I don't think Romania should be kicked out. Restrictions on party membership are complicated, but it seems here the courts have applied Romania's electoral law. We are going to have to be smart to avoid situations like this in other EU countries, where Russian, Chinese or US money are used to support non-democrats.
Europe is big enough as an internal market to sustain a good quality of life for the majority of the population — even if our 1% are disadvantaged relative to those in US, Russia. We have the capital and resources to defend ourselves too. We can open outward to Canada, Australia, democratic parts of Asia, Africa. But we need to avoid any dependence on powerful authoritarian regimes like China, India, the US, Indonesia etc.
Civilisation is organising in larger and larger groups - everyone becoming more dependent on each other and having laws and so on to resolve problems instead of fighting.
.....so somehow, for the sake of making Star Trek and all those wonderful science fiction stories possible.....we have to get that dependence back somehow. I'm joking but not joking. Some Americans are reasoable and somehow, for the world to survive, we have to find some way to help reasonable people all over the world to work together. So we can reach the science fiction future.
As a first step we could perhaps agree that individual people could come and live in Europe and participate in our democracy?
I think physical presence is actually quite a good precondition for participation. At least people physically present have some skin in the game.
With a transition period, I'm not sure I'd have a big problem cutting many other links with non-democratic countries. I agree with your ideals but all evidence is that trading and communication links and other sources of interdependence will be abused. We need to have policies which respond to that.
As it looks now, there might be a limit on the scale of global collaboration. There's nothing that says that the trend of global depenence and collaboration will continue (in fact, it is reversing now).
Furthermore, Canada should apply for EU or EEA membership.
Close, but not quite the same. (e.g. free movement of labor would be cool)
This tells me the resistance isn’t principled at all, but simply grandstanding.
The situation with China hasn't fundamentally changed in the last two months. People operate under the assumption of some kind of stability in this relationship. The West imports and exports products from/to China, with some restrictions: critical infrastructure like antennas cannot be built by Huawei in many countries, for instance. People in the West wouldn't use a Chinese email provider, etc. Today China is not an ally, but not an enemy either; rather a partner. There is no reason to expect a change in behaviour right now. It doesn't mean that the West agrees with everything that China does, of course.
Now regarding the US, it has fundamentally changed in the last two months. From the US government threatening to invade allied countries to actively destabilising them through people close to Trump downright making nazi salutes. On top of threatening militarily, the US is attacking its ex-allies economically with tariffs. The people in power in the US are explicitly talking about destroying Europe, and the US is now becoming an ally of Russia (which again makes it look like an enemy to the West).
Two months ago, people were operating under the assumption that the US was an ally. Now it's a partner that is going down the slope of becoming an enemy. Go ask if Canadians or Europeans feel threatened by China right now. Ask the same question about the US.
So yes: people are more scared of the US right now, and the US look more like enemies than China right now.
> This tells me the resistance isn’t principled at all, but simply grandstanding.
TL;DR: It is obviously resistance, against the US becoming an enemy. There are two obvious reasons for finding alternative to US products:
1. If it hurts the US economy (and therefore the US citizen), the hope is that maybe they will realise that Trump is not helping them and push for stopping this madness. The US won't get back to beeing trusted allies anytime soon (that ship has sailed), but they could stop from becoming enemies of the West.
2. National security: the US cannot be trusted, so it is very urgent for the West to turn to alternatives and run away from the US as fast as they possibly can.
He even threatened to invade a country that is part of the EU
For digital products and services there is also European Alternatives: https://european-alternatives.eu/
As part of the European reorientation I avoid products and services from Hungary and Slovakia. I also avoid one specific Swedish company, Spotify, for promoting and funding the misinformation spewing American podcastbros who were partially responsible for the rise of Trump 2.0.
What has happened in the US could happen to us and we must prevent that while we hope that more sensible people eventually prevail there.
Which means, no longer trusting American.
By wasting money you mean selling weapons and giving away old military equipment that it more expensive to destroy than to ship away?
Also, the conflict is in America's concern since the United States has pledged to guarantee Ukraine's security in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. A pledge is a pledge, no matter if you like it or not.
But to your point, as a random European resident, it's not upsetting that the US is pulling back, it's upsetting that it's pulling back with so little regard for anything else. If this was the only thing, fine, i wouldn't agree but it's your call, but look at all the other stuff happening at the same time in your foreign policy and ask yourself why all those "wasteful" things existed in the first place.
Europe downplayed investment in military capacity because this was seen and agreed as the best way to reduce the risk of WWIII.
Europe also realized that building things is better than destroying things. Is it spineless to do this? Question to you, mavdi, did you volunteer to serve in the armed forces? If not, do you view yourself as spineless for this decision?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Quite telling, this would be an ideal case for Scaleway/OVH/anyone else.
- How much of the product/company's supply chain is in EU (to get an idea of just how European the product is, is it made here or abroad)
- Some way to show if the company is paying "fair" tax in EU (or are profits shifted abroad)
These are difficult datapoints to get, but I wonder if there can be some sort of "community notes" where this data can be crowd sourced and updated on the directory.
So asking how much tax is paid or how much supply chain is in the EU doesn't necissarily make sense here.
The idea is whether the company has some loophole where the profits are registered in some offshore island in order to avoid taxes, as well as how big part of the product is actually made in europe as opposed as in X non-european country. I have seen a lot of products advertised as being products of the native country when they are actually rebranded chinese products or whatever (I have no issue with chinese products, but if the point is to know which products are european products this is important information).
High-level discussions rarely go down to this level of detail, and from the point of view of the consumers it is not very relevant. What matters is coupling with the US or China, and the relevant regulations.
No it isn’t because the UK is not in the EEA or the single market.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area
Added my company (https://mailpace.com) - I’m looking forward to a resurgence of innovation in European tech companies, the talent and education here is amazing, we just need to improve our investment and start treating tech with as much respect as we give to law, finance and other “prestigious” career paths here
Always.
hug
Now what exactly they're goanna do with the extra debt is the question.
More debt to fund innovation, infrastructure, defense, education and healthcare is welcome, but if it's just more debt to fund welfare and pensions, like Southern Europe, then nothing will improve.
People believed the "end of history" narratives about Russia, and even that it would become like the rest of the ex-communist states, a normal part of liberal Europe. That should have changed after 2014, but by then the grip of the financial crisis was preventing any increases in state spending.
If the EU would accept a FTA without free movement of people is another matter.
Absolutely not. This was made clear repeatedly. What became clear in the UK was that we'd rather lose market access in order to appease people with an irrational hatred of our fellow Europeans.
If people think trade and movement boundaries are good, why don't we have internal ones? Why should Mancunians be allowed to take up scarce housing in London?
EU: "The free movement of goods is one of the four fundamental economic freedoms laid down in the EU founding treaties, the other three being the free movement of capital, services and people."
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/free-mov...
> "The single market seeks to guarantee the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people, known collectively as the "four freedoms" "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_single_market
The EU would welcome the UK being closer aligned to the EU, trade-wise. But the UK cannot be in the single market without all four freedoms. Which the UK still rules out.
That would be the rational and sensible solution. This may be why it’s unlikely to happen. I would be happy to be wrong.
Won't happen without a war - so hopefully not within my lifetime, but playing make believe is fun sometimes.
It also includes context about ongoing emergency EU security meetings and the Trump administration.
No single market, no freedom of movement, unfortunately.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
We're all living in Only fools and horses anyways.
Unfortunately we haven't seen enough demand in the UK to set up a UK only infra (nor are there any UK cloud providers that would work for us?)
A UK firm would be perfect as a brit, but just not-US is great.
Also it seems to be missing some techs company: pigment, aircall, contentsquare (but not sure if it's a mistake)
If Europe would invest into local startups instead of propping up the real estate bubble, they wouldn't sell themselves to the US for money. Our downfall is by our own design here.
Governments don't create startups but they can 100% create the right legal, monetary and tax incentives to steer private capital and workers towards them, but as long as they are steered towards protecting the interests of gentrified land owners and those of 100-year-old companies, nothing will ever change and we'll just stare at how US and Chinese companies are overtaking us.
Rich people can invest relatively small amounts in hundreds, if not thousands of startups through preferentially treated retirement funds and pay no (or little) tax on the ones that make it big.
This is what has made it so easy to secure funding in the US.
Should Europe do the same? There's definitely an ethical dilemma in making the rich, richer for the sake of innovation.
What do you mean? The European rich have always been getting richer via inheritance regardless of innovation. That's a monetary and legal policy hack that's been in place for decades/centuries here which is how the richest families are centuries old.
Investing in innovation instead would be a much needed breath of fresh air and give current generation of youth some skin in the game instead of a defetist mentality that there's no point in working hard because the zero sum game is rigged. So I don't get your point.
- In Europe, getting funding is literally like pulling teeth. Just to get a measly hundred thousands of € in funding you're expected to provide a comprehensive business plan, financials, etc. that would rival M&A due diligence other places. In Silicon Valley you can get more funding by simply meeting the right angel investor, and providing a good pitch - done deal.
- In Europe, the end goal for many startups is to be acquired by some megacorp or market leader, for something like €10m-€50m. In the US you can multiply that number by 10 or 100, or in general have ambitions of developing the startup into a unicorn.
That was at least how things used to be. US has a long, long history of (risk willing) VC investments - while European countries have been lagging far behind.
Good VC cultures have developed in some European countries for the past 10-15 years, and startups have become more ambitious, but unfortunately there's still a culture of nickel and diming startups. And the places that rob you, will fund you maybe a month or two worth of capital.
EDIT: Should be said, that I'm also from Europe. And as someone else have pointed out in this thread, Europeans hate risk.
As for getting acquired, that's the same in the US. Either you goal is total dominance on your own or getting acquired by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle or Salesforce.
You do have a point, start ups doesn't have access to the same level of uncritical funding. The SV model also isn't ideal, but it should be possible to find somewhere in the middle.
I say this as proud European: the problem isn't just VC culture, it's European culture. In Europe there's an extreme risk aversion to trying things that have nonzero risk of failing.
My mental shortcut has always been "The US never inherited debtor's prison." Historically in the UK at least, getting into a situation where your debts can't be honored was utterly ruinous (this has improved IIUC). In the US, there are strict upper bounds on how much sway creditors can have over you. One could imagine this would result in a chillier credit market when creditors have fewer protections, but ironically, this makes it easier to get credit in the US because creditors don't have another option. Interest on a successful venture is still the quickest path to making one's money grow, so even knowing the debtor could walk away and the worst that would happen is "bankruptcy followed by a judge telling you you get pennies on the dollar of your investment", people still put up the money.
The most obvious example of how failure to pay debt in the US isn't personally ruinous is probably that our current President has filed bankruptcy six times.
(Note: I am speaking broadly and about non-medical debt. Medical debt in the US is ruinous for several significant reasons. But that's generally a non-overlapping concern to most tech-company funding).
Because Europe was not able to print unlimited Euros to flood its economy with free cash like how the US was able to do it thanks to the reserve currency status of the dollar. But no worries - now that dollar's monopoly is ending, the American investment landscape is also coming down back to Earth. US startups and companies wont be able to burn endless amounts of shareholder/investor money to out-compete and kill all competitors anymore. That should allow all regions in the world to be able to compete.
> That was at least how things used to be. US has a long, long history of (risk willing) VC investments - while European countries have been lagging far behind > Europeans hate risk
Right, that's because Europe did not have zirp-enabled free cash. You can dump millions on all kinds of ideas including dumb ones when you have free cash and still see 1% of them make it big even if 99% of them fail. But when you don't have free cash, you have to be careful.
So finding investment wasn't a problem or issue of the European culture or business landscape. The US being able to burn cash on even dumb ideas thanks to zirp made it appear like it was a problem.
Yes, though they originate from the free-cash printing. Both through the central bank (Federal Reserve) and private banks that were allowed to do fractional reserve lending, the US infused immense cash into its economy, which led to all the phenomena you mentioned. Because in countries that cant have zirp, such overvaluations of stocks and securities are scarce. Indeed, the derivatives market took a life of its own and created derivatives of derivatives backed by derivatives that were loosely tied to real-world assets and that also contributed to the bloat. But the real deal was always the zirp.
Those Europeans who are not at home with that culture move to America. It's been like this for hundreds of years.
The US makes the biggest margins from valuable IP and software services, not from mass produced widgets coming in shipping containers.
The software situation is grim but maybe open source somewhat ameliorates that...
Using american EUV light sources....this train of who makes what in the supply chain can go on forever, the point is who's making the highest margins from the end product and it's not ASML nor ARM but Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.
Hence my point that while EU has some IP, its value is dwarfed by the IP the US makes. Just look at market cap of US vs European tech sector. It's not even a competition. ASML can't offset that. I think Apple has enough cash in the bank to buy ASML if they wanted to.
Sadly, SwiftKey is/was actually a UK company that was acquired by Microsoft. Most successful European tech start-ups seem to end up being acquired by one of the American tech giants. Perhaps this is will be ending now.
The day the US drops the Cloud Act would be the death of all European CSPs. Until then, cloud offerings not subject to it will thrive, and the US will be seen as hostile.
And for all other subjects, it's a simple matter of not putting all of your eggs in the same basket. Having privileged trade partners is a good thing, but it becomes a bad one when it's a partner (singular). Today, the US has full power on Europe's tech landscape, which is concerning, even if it's a friend country.
Oh, and I say a "friend country", but given the latest announcements where the US Govt. clearly targets Europe and wants to sanction it (e.g. tariffs on French exports), the friend is turning around.
TL;DR today Europe does not see the US as an enemy. But it does everything for it to never happen, and this include reducing the dependency on the US.
In my view, we (Europe) have long been acting foolishly by passively sitting in the back seat and allowing the US to drive for us, thereby creating a radical dependency. This wouldn't be healthy even if the US were the most loyal ally. What Trump's antics are doing is trigger a return to what should have always been the norm.
{hug emoji}
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
We do 'import' a lot of services from the US:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
[1] Of course, there are US conglomerates that produce in the Europe. But a good chunk (at least here) is Unilever, Nestle, etc., which are all European.
(btw: codeberg is the European alternative to Github)
1) Anything PC related I can get shipped to me tomorrow. There is one local computer store and they just repair laptops and phones with absolute rip off prices (£70 for a HDMI cable). Before Amazon it took days to get an order shipped from one of the big PC suppliers in the UK, Payment used to an absolute PITA frequently card gets rejected on dubious grounds. I've had a PSUs die before, I can get one shipped to me tomorrow.
2) I am working on an old car at the moment as a hobby. Working on old vehicles you will find many small bodges or you won't realise until 50% of the way into it you need a replacement part. Almost everyone uses the postal service and the delivery time is 3-5 days or they charge you £15 for next day delivery (which is often more than the price of the part). So any job can be stopped by a missing part and I have to wait 3 days to get a replacement part or be ripped off. I have literally no alternative than to use these suppliers much of the time and it is a major source of frustration because it will take me an extra week to do a job.
That is the USP of Amazon Prime.
Amazon uses a 3rd party to deliver here, and their short delivery times is really only available in larger cities if the item is in that particular warehouse. Since they use 3rd party to deliver I can buy from other stores and also have next day delivery, not like delivery times were bad before though. Have several package locker services available as well, next day delivery is common but depends on how far it has to travel.
Can Amazon be better for some niche stuff? Probably, but its unlikely to be in the warehouse close to me anyway. I'd rather wait an extra day than exfiltrate barely taxed money to the US if I can help it.
1) I used to example of the HDMI cable to show how much of a ripoff that shop was. I use Amazon to buy all manner of PC equipment. Alternatives in the UK have poor delivery times, stock or payment is a faff.
2) I don't have any options in walking distance at all and I don't buy the cheap cables from Amazon.
Not all of us live in a city. I live in a countryside town and options are severely limited. The only shop near me is a Nisa General, a Chinese Takeaway and a Hardware Store that has some old guy talking about the Freemasons all the time.
> Amazon uses a 3rd party to deliver here, and their short delivery times is really only available in larger cities if the item is in that particular warehouse. Since they use 3rd party to deliver I can buy from other stores and also have next day delivery, not like delivery times were bad before though. Have several package locker services available as well, next day delivery is common but depends on how far it has to travel.
Good for you this isn't everywhere. I don't have this option. The nearest PC parts supplier is in Manchester which is over an 1 hour drive and closes before I finish work. The other PC parts supplier is 1 hour 30 minutes away in Stoke-on-Trent.
They rip you off on next day delivery (it doesn't cost that much more as I post stuff regularly myself) or they just don't offer it.
> Can Amazon be better for some niche stuff? Probably, but its unlikely to be in the warehouse close to me anyway. I'd rather wait an extra day than exfiltrate barely taxed money to the US if I can help it.
No Amazon isn't good for niche stuff (this stuff I am ordering for my car isn't that niche either). I have no other option for many car parts to either go to Ebay or I have to go to a official parts seller. The main issue as stated is delivery times are slow because most of the guys that are part suppliers are guys in their 60s.
Waiting an extra day isn't an option sometimes. You did notice where I specifically said where I need things quickly right?
Guess you'll be surprised when Amazon starts gouging you.
Good for you. I don't have that option. You were asking (somewhat rhetorically) why people would want to use a megacorp like Amazon. The alternatives in the UK are either no better than Amazon or objectively worse.
Also the North of Europe is generally much better than the Eastern and Southern Europe for e-commerce. I have lived Southern Europe and they were at least about 10-15 years behind the UK offerings when I lived there. After speaking to some people in Eastern Europe, I understand that they are in similar situation.
> Guess you'll be surprised when Amazon starts gouging you.
The only company that hasn't gouged me so far is Amazon. If they do, I will stop using them.
I'm OK with that.
Second is funny as current war in Ukraine proves that super-advanced tanks are that important anymore.
Europe has two issues that are real
1. In reality it doesn't exist (if understood as a single political entity).
2. European Union, and especially Germany, was handicapped by stupid fiscal policy.
Heck, I can make a safe bet that the vast majority of the companies listed here sell items at least partially made outside of Europe.
Then, why do you promote a list of European Reddit "alternatives" such as "Lemmy", you say people are supposed to use instead?
This is the laziest form of internet activism there is: lecture people what you believe they're supposed to be doing in ways you don't yourself do, and can't be inconvenienced to try.
(Bonus points for building this boycott website on top of Amazon Cloudfront, Cloudflare, and Google Analytics).
I am just going to leave this here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...