If American companies don’t respect Europe regulation it’s time to Europe invest in dedicated software competing with office 365, social networks, even android/apple/windows os.
Throwing stone from a glass box eh? If I understand correctly, US is by far the largest services exporter to EU… should EU merely apply the same “tariffs” that US might impose on these goods, some healthy European alternatives would finally gain some ground..
Yay, jackpot! We taunted the monkey in the glass box into throwing the first stone.
The EU is just itching for any opportunity to get rid of US tech firms because they’re increasingly seen as sovereignty risks. And while the GDPR fines (that this likely refers to) appear huge on absolute terms, they are still low enough that US firms voluntarily decide to violate those laws and just pay the fines.
The US sees TikTok as a risk. For the EU, it’s Microsoft Office.
> The EU is just itching for any opportunity to get rid of US tech firms because they’re increasingly seen as sovereignty risks. And while the GDPR fines (that this likely refers to) appear huge on absolute terms, they are still low enough that US firms voluntarily decide to violate those laws and just pay the fines.
That is not even remotely close to the truth. The EU is not itching to get rid of Microsoft nor Windows nor Google. If these companies left tomorrow, the EU will have enormous problems replacing them if that is even possible in the first place.
The EU countries should have had a homegrown version of each US service up and running and on par with their US counterparts a decade ago, then the EU would have had leverage but as it stands, they have none.
Unless you think that every governmental office will switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning, in which case I have a bridge to sell you.
Not to mention that the entire EU's messaging needs are met via US companies. Let's see how long the EU can last without WhatsApp, IMessage and Facebook Messenger.
My guess is not long unless you want to use Telegram which was most likely backdoor-ed by the French government not long ago.
This is the problem with the EU as it stands, there is really no mea-culpa from the institutions for their inaction and getting caught with their pants down.
All of this was foreseeable and could have been avoided, yet here we are.
The E.U. making life difficult for U.S.-based monopolists, and the U.S. making life difficult for E.U.-based monopolists? For a net effect of life being difficult for all monopolists?
Well, that sounds like a wonderful idea!
I am all for it. Through this model, we might actually enjoy effective antitrust enforcement, and escape regulatory capture! Who would have thought that this day would ever come? Once again, it turns out I have been too cynical all my life.
"effective antitrust enforcement, and escape regulatory capture"
Give me an example where Antitrust was actually breaking any monopoly.
In the EU and the Microsoft antitrust case, the remedy was to give the best poison to the competitors (free software Samba in that case) in that case royalties over patents.
Antitrust don't work, fines are too low, remedies are not working, and the administration is biased and politicized.
> The E.U. making life difficult for U.S.-based monopolists, and the U.S. making life difficult for E.U.-based monopolists? For a net effect of life being difficult for all monopolists?
Its not only for monopolists. The first victims of regulatory moat-building are always small businesses and individuals.They cant pay the fines.
Once Europeans will not be distracted by American tech, they will be able to fully focus on the only truly European innovation - investing in real estate.
The EU can only fine US tech giants because it's good at suffocating its own European companies with some of its members states having one of the highest taxes and subject to the EU's regulations.
It's no wonder AI startups like Mistral (France) are so dependent on US VCs and the same is true with Lovable (Sweden) who were able to grow faster than Europe trying to strangle them.
Since there are rare startup home-runs that are from Europe, the EU instead needs find a way to impose fines on US big tech companies. They (EU) will certainly do the same with the Big AI companies very soon.
You're pretending like the fines target US companies. GDPR fines target malpractice and mishandling of data. The DMC seeks to break up artificial digital market monopolies. These apply to corporations operating in the EU, with no basis on where they operate from. Don't want to get punished for creating an uncompetitive monopoly? Don't create an uncompetitive monopoly.
Is this all simply spurred on by the recent fine against Musk/X? That wasn’t even about censorship but other issues. Not to mention the irony of threatening market access after throwing high tariffs on key allies while going soft on China.
The tariff talk was ostensibly because the EU exported more goods to the US than the US exported to EU.
The US exports far more digital services to the EU, though.
Understanding those things, it would seem a particularly unwise framing for the US government to focus on EU digital services exports.
LLMs are rapidly commoditizing software, and in particular making it far easier to handle the regulatory compliance and regional fragmentation that have traditionally held back software companies in the EU. Combine that with growing concerns about software trust, and the EU looks like an increasingly attractive bet for future software investment.
Ironic, then, that Europe seems slowest to adopt the very tool that could finally solve its fragmentation problem.
Two governments, two very different strategies to cripple themselves. The race is on.
Uh, you're planning to outsource regulatory compliance to an LLM? In the EU? Which has already banned the usage of "algorithms" that aren't "transparent" via the DMA? That isn't going to work.
As for cloning the US software industry with LLMs ... with which non-US LLMs, exactly? Mistral? The best LLMs for coding (which still can't handle many important tasks) are: Gemini, Claude, GPT. All non-EU models.
A major thing that holds us back and will continue to do so in B2B (coming from someone whose last startup failed): differences in language/customs/needs linked to the multitude of cultures in the region.
We hired someone that could sell in Italian, French, and Spanish. Her profile is fairly rare, given she had a good understanding of the customer. I can't believe our CEO let her go simply because of a 4-days at the office obsession…
LLMs can't really fix this. Even though she could speak Spanish, the culture and customer needs for Spain will be a little different than those for Italy. Traditions will be different. She's a wonderful human being, but imagine a customer in France not liking her “Belgian accent” and tanking a sale… She was really losing motivation because of that. The 2 other people on sales struggled more or less with the same issue.
All hail LLMs, if you want, but Europe's issues are not that easily fixed. We end up obsessing about the wrong stuff, as if compliance and regulation was the Big Problem, instead of a boogeyman that neoliberals love to hate.
US would like entire world to adapt American laws, values, norms, morals, life styles, mindset, ethics etc. Any deviation would, ofcourse, be uncomfortable.
Long term, it would be good for the EU if tech market access was restricted. The reason there aren't EU tech giants is because the US and EU are basically one market, so naturally, all tech giants end up being American. So it's not in the interest of the US to restrict market access in anyway and these tech giants know it.
I really don't mind sitting on a table and discussing things but having the biggest military power on the planet becoming suddenly hostile and pushy like this is really really fucked up.
A bit of a tangent here. I'm not a native English speaker but is it me or is this text badly written?
> The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers.
Persisted in a continuing course, saying the same thing twice.
> In stark contrast, EU service providers have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.
"Benefiting" is spelled with one t.
> If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means...
Again, restricting and limiting mean the same thing. Also, can you deter competitiveness?
Imperfect as they are, the EU has some of the best consumer data privacy protections in the world —GDPR. The US should emulate their model, not pressure the EU to degrade protections.
None of the service providers listed as European delivers B2C products or services as many American ones. Maybe only Spotify.
Few of these companies provide respectable IT/tech careers, every time it's brutal race to the bottom with nearshoring and outsourcing. Especially French and German ones where you have to speak French or German and have local postgraduate degree to step out from the software sweatshop in the basement.
As an EU citizen I don't mind if Americans take them down a notch.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 45.7 ms ] threadI mean, I know it's headquartered in Germany. But why is it targeted here? Is it because it was once American?
The EU is just itching for any opportunity to get rid of US tech firms because they’re increasingly seen as sovereignty risks. And while the GDPR fines (that this likely refers to) appear huge on absolute terms, they are still low enough that US firms voluntarily decide to violate those laws and just pay the fines.
The US sees TikTok as a risk. For the EU, it’s Microsoft Office.
That is not even remotely close to the truth. The EU is not itching to get rid of Microsoft nor Windows nor Google. If these companies left tomorrow, the EU will have enormous problems replacing them if that is even possible in the first place.
The EU countries should have had a homegrown version of each US service up and running and on par with their US counterparts a decade ago, then the EU would have had leverage but as it stands, they have none.
Unless you think that every governmental office will switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning, in which case I have a bridge to sell you.
Not to mention that the entire EU's messaging needs are met via US companies. Let's see how long the EU can last without WhatsApp, IMessage and Facebook Messenger.
My guess is not long unless you want to use Telegram which was most likely backdoor-ed by the French government not long ago.
This is the problem with the EU as it stands, there is really no mea-culpa from the institutions for their inaction and getting caught with their pants down.
All of this was foreseeable and could have been avoided, yet here we are.
Well, that sounds like a wonderful idea!
I am all for it. Through this model, we might actually enjoy effective antitrust enforcement, and escape regulatory capture! Who would have thought that this day would ever come? Once again, it turns out I have been too cynical all my life.
Give me an example where Antitrust was actually breaking any monopoly.
In the EU and the Microsoft antitrust case, the remedy was to give the best poison to the competitors (free software Samba in that case) in that case royalties over patents.
Antitrust don't work, fines are too low, remedies are not working, and the administration is biased and politicized.
Its not only for monopolists. The first victims of regulatory moat-building are always small businesses and individuals.They cant pay the fines.
It's no wonder AI startups like Mistral (France) are so dependent on US VCs and the same is true with Lovable (Sweden) who were able to grow faster than Europe trying to strangle them.
Since there are rare startup home-runs that are from Europe, the EU instead needs find a way to impose fines on US big tech companies. They (EU) will certainly do the same with the Big AI companies very soon.
Does that sound like fair competition?
The US exports far more digital services to the EU, though.
Understanding those things, it would seem a particularly unwise framing for the US government to focus on EU digital services exports.
LLMs are rapidly commoditizing software, and in particular making it far easier to handle the regulatory compliance and regional fragmentation that have traditionally held back software companies in the EU. Combine that with growing concerns about software trust, and the EU looks like an increasingly attractive bet for future software investment.
Ironic, then, that Europe seems slowest to adopt the very tool that could finally solve its fragmentation problem.
Two governments, two very different strategies to cripple themselves. The race is on.
Globalisation has made America the richest country on the planet. The real problem is that the money doesn't reach the "deplorable" population.
But that is an INTERNAL issue that could have easily be solved with voting for Bernie Sanders.
People vote against their own interests is a tale as old as democracy itself.
As for cloning the US software industry with LLMs ... with which non-US LLMs, exactly? Mistral? The best LLMs for coding (which still can't handle many important tasks) are: Gemini, Claude, GPT. All non-EU models.
We hired someone that could sell in Italian, French, and Spanish. Her profile is fairly rare, given she had a good understanding of the customer. I can't believe our CEO let her go simply because of a 4-days at the office obsession…
LLMs can't really fix this. Even though she could speak Spanish, the culture and customer needs for Spain will be a little different than those for Italy. Traditions will be different. She's a wonderful human being, but imagine a customer in France not liking her “Belgian accent” and tanking a sale… She was really losing motivation because of that. The 2 other people on sales struggled more or less with the same issue.
All hail LLMs, if you want, but Europe's issues are not that easily fixed. We end up obsessing about the wrong stuff, as if compliance and regulation was the Big Problem, instead of a boogeyman that neoliberals love to hate.
Can you elaborate on this one? Hopefully with some citations.
Otherwise, how can words like "discrimination" even be appropriate?
Ignoring that if the service is free, YOU are the product, is childlike
I really don't mind sitting on a table and discussing things but having the biggest military power on the planet becoming suddenly hostile and pushy like this is really really fucked up.
fu usa...
> The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers.
Persisted in a continuing course, saying the same thing twice.
> In stark contrast, EU service providers have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.
"Benefiting" is spelled with one t.
> If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means...
Again, restricting and limiting mean the same thing. Also, can you deter competitiveness?
Few of these companies provide respectable IT/tech careers, every time it's brutal race to the bottom with nearshoring and outsourcing. Especially French and German ones where you have to speak French or German and have local postgraduate degree to step out from the software sweatshop in the basement.
As an EU citizen I don't mind if Americans take them down a notch.