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We need to wake the fuck up in the EU and start aggressively building European-based competitors to US tech companies that actually respect user privacy. A good

We need to wake the fuck up in the EU and start aggressively building European-based competitors to US tech companies that actually respect user privacy. A good area to start would be in the data storage industry, and perhaps social media too. Obviously, non Silicon Valley based startups face certain challenges[1], but we should at least try. It would arguably benefit US consumers also, if they could choose products that are designed to compete on privacy, a good example being Switzerland-based ProtonMail[2] (ok, non-EU but still). I wasn't aware of Privacy Shield before now, but after reading a little bit about it[3], it reads like something that only gives a fig leaf of protection to EU citizens. [1] http://paulgraham.com/america.html http://paulgraham.com/america.html [2] https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ [3] http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/document/citizens-guide_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/document/citizen...

Taek 10y ago
> We need to wake the fuck up in the EU and start aggressively building European-based competitors to US tech companies that actually respect user privacy. A good area to start would be in the data storage industry We are US based, but provably private cloud storage is the thesis of our company. All data is encrypted on the client machine, the keys stay on the client machine, and then the encrypted data is remotely stored across about 50 providers (using erasure coding, the actual redundancy overhead is relatively small) to minimize the impact that any single provider or even any single continent of providers can have on your data's accessibility or uptime. It's also 100% open source. https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia
- BuuQu9hu 10y ago
  How does your offering compare to hosted Tahoe-LAFS providers like Least Authority [1] or Matador Cloud [2]? Tahoe-LAFS also encrypts client-side and uses erasure coding to improve availability; however, it is also based on capability theory, which means that one can both prove Tahoe-LAFS' security guarantees in isolation, but also use Tahoe-LAFS as a building block for more complex capability-based systems. [1] https://leastauthority.com/ https://leastauthority.com/ [2] https://matador.cloud/ https://matador.cloud/
hubert123 10y ago
But the EU has much less qualms about restricting and violating the freedom of their citizens. We have no free speech like the US. Massive data collection laws are passed without any large backlash regularly. I still support aggressive competition from the EU simply because the EU needs to stand on its own legs but don't pretend that it's for privacy of its citizens. I guess maybe if you explain it in a roundabout way, it is for our privacy.. privacy from US institutions, well that counts for something too, sure.
- sschueller 10y ago
  In the US violating freedoms may appear to be illegal but in the end peoples' freedoms are constantly violated and no one is held accountable. From large illegal meta data collection to secret Prisons and indefinite detention. [1] Until the supreme court gets to uphold the constitution many years pass and many peoples' lives will have been ruined in the meantime. [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-law https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-d...
  - hubert123 10y ago
    Yes, I am well aware which is why I specifically only mentioned the public outcry as a metric.
- endisukaj 10y ago
  > We have no free speech like the US What?
  - akjainaj 10y ago
    Saying things like that the "holocaust" never happened, or preaching against homosexuality (straight from the Holy Bible), is illegal in the EU. http://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/al-mohler/criminalizing-christianity-swedens-hate-speech-law-1277601.html http://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/al-mohler/crimi...
    - 10y ago
Svip 10y ago
My hope - perhaps naïvely so - is that President Trump will be the kick in our complacency that we so desperately need. Even if for all the wrong reasons. Both in the US and the EU.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I .. feel the same. Which conflicts me a lot because he's despicable in many dimensions. But he'll act as the wall(sic) we'll hit to react. He's driven and polarizing, even in the worst sense of the term.. that's still "coherent energy". ps: that said, I can't wait for the U.S to kick him out.. he seems unfit to do anything.
  - reddytowns 10y ago
    I think he's awesome for those very same reasons
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      awesome ? you value selfish antagonism if it ends up as a (potentially) global positive outcome ?
      - ttrmw 10y ago
        I personally feel the risk in this instance is too high, but as a rule, yes.
        agumonkey 10y ago
        As an engineer I've learned to appreciate counter intuitive strategies and laws but as you said... the desired outcomes seem unlikely here.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Just a note, that's not how you use (sic) It's usually used when quoting an original statement that's doubtful or knowingly incorrect I don't know which term would be more appropriate to use, probably "pun intended"
draven 10y ago
I'm privacy-conscious, but know of a lot of people outside the tech industry who aren't. I'd welcome products which respect my privacy but I don't think this would be enough a difference to make people or companies choose them over established players. Having strong privacy regulations in the EU could create a market for this kind of products.
- patrickk 10y ago
  > Having strong privacy regulations in the EU could create a market for this kind of products. In some ways, the EU does have stronger data protection for it's citizens than the US. See for example the case where the ECJ ruled that the 'Safe Harbour' agreement was invalid because an Austrian law student[1][2] filed multiple complaints against Facebook's Dublin-based branch, essentially alleging that Facebook is a backdoor for US dragnet collection of EU citizens' (and others') data, which ultimately rendered the Safe Harbour invalid according to the ECJ. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/max-schrems-took-facebook-to-court-europe_us_5615249ce4b0cf9984d7be0b http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/max-schrems-took-faceboo... http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > In some ways, the EU does have stronger data protection for it's citizens than the US. The EU has stronger data protection for its citizens in all ways I can think of, in what ways does the US have stronger data protection?
    - patrickk 10y ago
      I phrased it like that as I am not an expert on US privacy laws. But yes, certainly everything I've read over the past few years seems to indicate that the EU is way ahead of the US when it comes to protecting user privacy.
justusw 10y ago
Full Ack. Not only do we need privacy respecting data storage and social media, but a EU privacy friendly search engine will be a step in the right direction as well.
- quickConclusion 10y ago
  > Full Ack. Intentional spoonerism?
baq 10y ago
> We need to wake the fuck up in the EU ...and stop trying to dismantle it from the inside because money and too much regulation. it's in chinese, russian and US interests for the EU countries to negotiate independently, but certainly not in europe's interest at large.
- riprowan 10y ago
  In fact, at this moment, a united Europe may represent the last significant hope for Western liberal democracy. Past Europe, the superpowers are USA, Russia, China...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mike-cardwell 10y ago
    So, super powers aren't working out for the people they govern, so the solution is to create another super power? Centralising political power might not actually be the best thing for "the people". Might be good for GDP though, which I guess is more important? </s>
    - kuschku 10y ago
      So, who is rather able to defend privacy rights when the Chinese or American megacorporations come? Iceland, with its 300'000 citizen? Or the EU, with 500'000'000 citizen, a GDP of 17 trillion? The only way to police corporations is by having a state that is more powerful than them. And with corporations going multinational, superpowers are necessary.
  - orbifold 10y ago
    Except in many ways the EU was conceived by US planners to eliminate popular control and provide a negotiating partner for the US that could be dealt with as a whole. The EU is far less democratic and more friendly to corporations and neo-liberalism than ~50% of the national parties in Europe, which often contain a significant democratic-socialist block.
csydas 10y ago
> A good area to start would be in the data storage industry, and perhaps social media too. Obviously, non Silicon Valley based startups face certain challenges[1], but we should at least try. I'm an outsider looking in, but at least in regards to data storage and other provider services, I get to work with tons of independent providers across the EU every day. My experience is that there seems to be far more acceptance for all sorts of cloud and storage providers within the EU than I do with my North American clients, who tend to be seeking support primarily for their infrastructure that just supports their company, as opposed to providing a service to others. I think there's a lot of good happening in this space and where such services can compete with the big three (Google, Amazon, Microsoft) is with having accessible and knowledgable engineers available. They're never going to compete on price, but service will just overall float most of these companies to the top of the list for customers looking for a place to rest their data. So I think the will and the infrastructure is there - more than any point in modern history is it possible for an earnest start up to get a solid clientele, and having local options are important for reasons just like this - rapidly changing political climates shouldn't be able to have a strong impact on your users like this. There has to be some ability for a failover when the stroke of a pen suddenly makes holding data at one GPS coordinate illegal.
- drvdevd 10y ago
  This is an inspiring point of view for those of us who would like to do business internationally as well I think. Personally, I'm stuck on the idea that the Internet is capable of helping citizens transcend national barriers (and timezones) to live more meaningful lives not strictly defined by the pens of politicians.
- patrickk 10y ago
  Interesting. Can you give some examples of companies doing good work? I have a particular interest in this space.
  - csydas 10y ago
    I'd love to get into specifics, but will more just give a general description for confidentiality reasons. In general, I see a lot of cloud service providers across the EU - think of the marketing materials you've likely gotten from Microsoft, Amazon, or Google about moving from on-prem infrastructure to all cloud and that's basically what these companies are doing, just on a much smaller scale. As far as I can tell, they compete on servie; as I opened with, none of them can beat the big 3's pricing, but there seems to be a huge market in just having a competent DBA that they can call up and talk to when necessary. The companies also seem to provide a legally compliant service with EU data retention policies. Others tend to take more of cloud storage position or cloud backup solution for businesses with on-prem set ups looking to have a DR site handled by someone else. The best I can really describe it as is that all of the infrastructure that the US locks up in Azure, AWS, and cloud.google gets distributed across smaller providers who can be generic "get small business' DB up and running somewhere safe) or can get super specific and deal with stuff like NHS patient data management and storage. > This is an inspiring point of view for those of us who would like to do business internationally as well I think. Personally, I'm stuck on the idea that the Internet is capable of helping citizens transcend national barriers (and timezones) to live more meaningful lives not strictly defined by the pens of politicians. There's a headache of international law to pay attention to with these things, but there's also a really rewarding amount of work if you're willing to take on the initial task. I've only been with my current work about half a year, but without exaggeration I've had the chance to see a few thousand different set-ups and it's quite remarkable how much you can do with a little time and knowledge.
meanduck 10y ago
But EC's recent unpridictable behaviour[1] only gives negative hopes. [1] https://www.itic.org/news-events/techwonk-blog/arguing-against-deeply-troubling-european-commission-tax-actions-us-implores-the-europeans-to-return-to-multilateral-tax-conversation https://www.itic.org/news-events/techwonk-blog/arguing-again...
greenhatman 10y ago
That, and/or open source decentralized solutions, where possible.
spdy 10y ago
Then we need to change the way people are able to raise money on ideas only. We dont have a Google/Facebook etc. because no one is willing to upfront the costs. That's why we dont have a Silicon Valley in the EU. Its a mentality problem inside the investor space to only put money into "safer" bets not moon-shots.
jusq2 10y ago
EU porn tech does beat US porn tech in many metrics. I have always wondered why, when the rest of their tech sector is way behind.
- unsoundInput 10y ago
  I imagine that the industry is under comparatively little scrutiny by regulators and the public, and can therefore be as fast-moving and rule-bending[0] as the top SV startups. This combined with less (at least perceived) prudence in Europe might give them the edge over their competition. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855554
  - jusq2 10y ago
    Makes sense. Even in areas where they do match up tech-wise Auto, Nokia, Airbus/Ariane etc maybe they need a Elon Musk type to do some ass kicking.
ugos 10y ago
100% agree. Funny how when I was 16 my dream was to leave EU as soon as I can to go work at Google, FB, etc... and live the 'American dream'. USA represented progress and innovation to me. Now with Snowden revelations, Obama's expansion of mass surveillance, etc... USA has become the exact opposite to me, they embody a future I don't want to live in. The worst part is that some EU countries start to become like them because they still think like when I was 16, "USA is progress" => "so we have to do like them" and that's how for eg France adopted "Loi sur le renseignement" which allows gov to do like what NSA's doing. Now all that I want is finish my CS master and start working for Protonmail,Signal,Tor,Mozilla,Linux,... or whatever company/app/foundation that is trying to protect us. The thing I'm afraid of is that EU will keep getting weaker in terms of privacy & rights like France because of the "terrorists will kill your children if you don't give us your data" propaganda. I hope EU will understand that even outside the ethical & moral issues having strong laws on privacy is the only way we can compete with USA tech because it's the only thing we have they don't
- jeeva 10y ago
  Semi-similar: when I was younger, I really wanted to move to the states and work in SV or similar. Sadly, I hadn't researched labour-laws in the US (or healthcare, or... well, many things). Seems like a bad deal, now - though a few of my friends have moved out there, I don't particularly envy them.
- Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
  I'm a bit of a special case--I'm an American military brat. I was born in the US but lived overseas before I could form a memory until I was a teenager. I, too, had dreams of America being a beacon of progress and freedom. It was my nominal homeland but one I'd never experienced. I was proud of it and loved that other nations looked up to us. But now that dream is dead. We're perfecting the surveillance state I was told would be impossible. Now I look at Europe, and while I disagree with a great deal of its economic policies, I wonder if the grass just might be greener on the other side.
  - justaman 10y ago
CalRobert 10y ago
Privacy in data storage might end up requiring owning your hardware in the long run, regardless of your location. One company doing interesting work in this field is protonet, founded in Germany - https://protonet.com/company/about-us/ https://protonet.com/company/about-us/. I'm not sure why it seems harder for companies to take off in the EU. It does seem like funding is harder to come by here, but to be honest it seems like it ought to be _easier_ to start here than in the US. If I fail in most EU countries, I'm not worried about dying in a gutter like I am if I fail in the US.
- tankenmate 10y ago
  The problem in Europe for start ups is rarely the supply side, it's the buy side; large EU companies don't buy start ups at the rate that large US companies do. This restricts the volume of exits, and therefore restricts the available funding; organisations that fund VCs normally get their money back in 5 to 10 years, but with less exits that means that VCs don't raise as often (which over averages means collectively they don't raise as much) because they don't get back as often.
kybernetyk 10y ago
>We need to wake the fuck up in the EU and start aggressively building European-based competitors Good luck with that. Europe doesn't provide the environment (neither culturally nor financially) needed for these types of companies to arise. And if you want 'state planned' tech companies: What happened to the EU funded Google-killer again? If Europe doesn't reform itself and makes it less punishing for people to start, grow, fail, start again businesses then Europe will be left behind. And tbh. I don't believe Europe can reform. Because the problems are so deeply entrenched in European societies that it would take a herculean effort to change things. Something no one is willing to do. So all we have left is old money industry. But that won't keep up as alive for ever...
- airesQ 10y ago
  I really abhor this recent escalation, and hope this will be a transient phenomenon. But if things came to the worse, the EU would just have to emulate China. China seems to manage just fine without Google, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. Make life difficult for foreign competitors, and let the internal market take care of the rest. No need for a top down approach. The thing is that most internet companies are big due to network effects, not because the underlying technology is hard to replicate. Ban Facebook in the EU, and we would have a new version in a few months. Ditto for Twitter. Google is a bit more challenging, but it would be possible to get a 'goodish' clone going in a short while. (The same would not be the case for Intel, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Altera, etc... These companies do have something that is hard to replicate, and goes beyond network effects).
- patrickk 10y ago
  > Good luck with that. Europe doesn't provide the environment (neither culturally nor financially) needed for these types of companies to arise. I think a large part of the success of US tech companies is the large size of the domestic market[1], which means startups can reach new customers much more easily to who speak the same language, use the same currency and so on. For example, if you want to do business in let's say the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, you have to deal with the British pound, the Euro, the Swedish Krona, the Danish Krone and the Norwegian Krone, and have staff who can speak English, German, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. Not to mention the different laws and customs in each country. There are less exit opportunities partially because (for example) a German company flush with cash is less likely to be aware of some Swedish company that is growing like a rocket and would make a good acquisition target (made up example). Whereas in the US, many professionals are likely reading the same news and tech sources, will speak the same language as the company they are looking at acquiring and use the same currency. Not to mention if a startup captures 1% of the market in Sweden or wherever, it's a much smaller userbase than 1% of the US market. [1] Point number 8 in PG's excellent essay on the topic: http://paulgraham.com/america.html http://paulgraham.com/america.html (I would argue that points 8 and 9 are most relevant.)
sir-alien 10y ago
There are many good tech startups and industries in the U.K. that would be able to do such things but with us leaving the EU it seems we might be heading down the same path and be banned from storing EU data. The Snoopers Charter when we leave the EU already makes us incompatible with EU law and is already considered illegal too. Its no wonder that the 1984 novel is flying of the shelves now. ;-P
MicroBerto 10y ago
> start aggressively building European-based competitors to US tech companies that actually respect user privacy Won't happen when all of Europe keeps raising taxes and the US lowers theirs. Most creators like to keep their rewards and distribute it at their discretion, not have over half of it stolen from them by force.
pdimitar 10y ago
Just chiming in to point at the fact that Bulgaria is out of the picture. The police here are very used to just casually walk in (even without an uniform) in your office and just say "let's have a look at your servers". If you resist, they might violently force you. You might eventually win in court but by that time your servers will be somebody's cousin gaming machines for 2 years at least. It seems the only way to win around here is to emphasize the economical benefits of independent and strong privacy-oriented commercial organizations. That however would probably involve bribing politicians to "agree" with you. Yeah, I know. I let desperation creep inside of me but when you see everybody around you being OK with outrageous violations of basic human rights, that tends to happen. :(

Taek 10y ago

> We need to wake the fuck up in the EU and start aggressively building European-based competitors to US tech companies that actually respect user privacy. A good area to start would be in the data storage industry We are US based, but provably private cloud storage is the thesis of our company. All data is encrypted on the client machine, the keys stay on the client machine, and then the encrypted data is remotely stored across about 50 providers (using erasure coding, the actual redundancy overhead is relatively small) to minimize the impact that any single provider or even any single continent of providers can have on your data's accessibility or uptime. It's also 100% open source. https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia

BuuQu9hu 10y ago
How does your offering compare to hosted Tahoe-LAFS providers like Least Authority [1] or Matador Cloud [2]? Tahoe-LAFS also encrypts client-side and uses erasure coding to improve availability; however, it is also based on capability theory, which means that one can both prove Tahoe-LAFS' security guarantees in isolation, but also use Tahoe-LAFS as a building block for more complex capability-based systems. [1] https://leastauthority.com/ https://leastauthority.com/ [2] https://matador.cloud/ https://matador.cloud/

hubert123 10y ago

But the EU has much less qualms about restricting and violating the freedom of their citizens. We have no free speech like the US. Massive data collection laws are passed without any large backlash regularly. I still support aggressive competition from the EU simply because the EU needs to stand on its own legs but don't pretend that it's for privacy of its citizens. I guess maybe if you explain it in a roundabout way, it is for our privacy.. privacy from US institutions, well that counts for something too, sure.

sschueller 10y ago
In the US violating freedoms may appear to be illegal but in the end peoples' freedoms are constantly violated and no one is held accountable. From large illegal meta data collection to secret Prisons and indefinite detention. [1] Until the supreme court gets to uphold the constitution many years pass and many peoples' lives will have been ruined in the meantime. [1] https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-law https://www.aclu.org/news/president-obama-signs-indefinite-d...
- hubert123 10y ago
  Yes, I am well aware which is why I specifically only mentioned the public outcry as a metric.
endisukaj 10y ago
> We have no free speech like the US What?
- akjainaj 10y ago
  Saying things like that the "holocaust" never happened, or preaching against homosexuality (straight from the Holy Bible), is illegal in the EU. http://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/al-mohler/criminalizing-christianity-swedens-hate-speech-law-1277601.html http://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/al-mohler/crimi...
  - 10y ago

Svip 10y ago

My hope - perhaps naïvely so - is that President Trump will be the kick in our complacency that we so desperately need. Even if for all the wrong reasons. Both in the US and the EU.

agumonkey 10y ago
I .. feel the same. Which conflicts me a lot because he's despicable in many dimensions. But he'll act as the wall(sic) we'll hit to react. He's driven and polarizing, even in the worst sense of the term.. that's still "coherent energy". ps: that said, I can't wait for the U.S to kick him out.. he seems unfit to do anything.
- reddytowns 10y ago
  I think he's awesome for those very same reasons
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    awesome ? you value selfish antagonism if it ends up as a (potentially) global positive outcome ?
    - ttrmw 10y ago
      I personally feel the risk in this instance is too high, but as a rule, yes.
      - agumonkey 10y ago
        As an engineer I've learned to appreciate counter intuitive strategies and laws but as you said... the desired outcomes seem unlikely here.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Just a note, that's not how you use (sic) It's usually used when quoting an original statement that's doubtful or knowingly incorrect I don't know which term would be more appropriate to use, probably "pun intended"

draven 10y ago

I'm privacy-conscious, but know of a lot of people outside the tech industry who aren't. I'd welcome products which respect my privacy but I don't think this would be enough a difference to make people or companies choose them over established players. Having strong privacy regulations in the EU could create a market for this kind of products.

patrickk 10y ago
> Having strong privacy regulations in the EU could create a market for this kind of products. In some ways, the EU does have stronger data protection for it's citizens than the US. See for example the case where the ECJ ruled that the 'Safe Harbour' agreement was invalid because an Austrian law student[1][2] filed multiple complaints against Facebook's Dublin-based branch, essentially alleging that Facebook is a backdoor for US dragnet collection of EU citizens' (and others') data, which ultimately rendered the Safe Harbour invalid according to the ECJ. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/max-schrems-took-facebook-to-court-europe_us_5615249ce4b0cf9984d7be0b http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/max-schrems-took-faceboo... http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html
- masklinn 10y ago
  > In some ways, the EU does have stronger data protection for it's citizens than the US. The EU has stronger data protection for its citizens in all ways I can think of, in what ways does the US have stronger data protection?
  - patrickk 10y ago
    I phrased it like that as I am not an expert on US privacy laws. But yes, certainly everything I've read over the past few years seems to indicate that the EU is way ahead of the US when it comes to protecting user privacy.

justusw 10y ago

Full Ack. Not only do we need privacy respecting data storage and social media, but a EU privacy friendly search engine will be a step in the right direction as well.

quickConclusion 10y ago
> Full Ack. Intentional spoonerism?

baq 10y ago

> We need to wake the fuck up in the EU ...and stop trying to dismantle it from the inside because money and too much regulation. it's in chinese, russian and US interests for the EU countries to negotiate independently, but certainly not in europe's interest at large.

riprowan 10y ago
In fact, at this moment, a united Europe may represent the last significant hope for Western liberal democracy. Past Europe, the superpowers are USA, Russia, China...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  So, super powers aren't working out for the people they govern, so the solution is to create another super power? Centralising political power might not actually be the best thing for "the people". Might be good for GDP though, which I guess is more important? </s>
  - kuschku 10y ago
    So, who is rather able to defend privacy rights when the Chinese or American megacorporations come? Iceland, with its 300'000 citizen? Or the EU, with 500'000'000 citizen, a GDP of 17 trillion? The only way to police corporations is by having a state that is more powerful than them. And with corporations going multinational, superpowers are necessary.
- orbifold 10y ago
  Except in many ways the EU was conceived by US planners to eliminate popular control and provide a negotiating partner for the US that could be dealt with as a whole. The EU is far less democratic and more friendly to corporations and neo-liberalism than ~50% of the national parties in Europe, which often contain a significant democratic-socialist block.

csydas 10y ago

> A good area to start would be in the data storage industry, and perhaps social media too. Obviously, non Silicon Valley based startups face certain challenges[1], but we should at least try. I'm an outsider looking in, but at least in regards to data storage and other provider services, I get to work with tons of independent providers across the EU every day. My experience is that there seems to be far more acceptance for all sorts of cloud and storage providers within the EU than I do with my North American clients, who tend to be seeking support primarily for their infrastructure that just supports their company, as opposed to providing a service to others. I think there's a lot of good happening in this space and where such services can compete with the big three (Google, Amazon, Microsoft) is with having accessible and knowledgable engineers available. They're never going to compete on price, but service will just overall float most of these companies to the top of the list for customers looking for a place to rest their data. So I think the will and the infrastructure is there - more than any point in modern history is it possible for an earnest start up to get a solid clientele, and having local options are important for reasons just like this - rapidly changing political climates shouldn't be able to have a strong impact on your users like this. There has to be some ability for a failover when the stroke of a pen suddenly makes holding data at one GPS coordinate illegal.

drvdevd 10y ago
This is an inspiring point of view for those of us who would like to do business internationally as well I think. Personally, I'm stuck on the idea that the Internet is capable of helping citizens transcend national barriers (and timezones) to live more meaningful lives not strictly defined by the pens of politicians.
patrickk 10y ago
Interesting. Can you give some examples of companies doing good work? I have a particular interest in this space.
- csydas 10y ago
  I'd love to get into specifics, but will more just give a general description for confidentiality reasons. In general, I see a lot of cloud service providers across the EU - think of the marketing materials you've likely gotten from Microsoft, Amazon, or Google about moving from on-prem infrastructure to all cloud and that's basically what these companies are doing, just on a much smaller scale. As far as I can tell, they compete on servie; as I opened with, none of them can beat the big 3's pricing, but there seems to be a huge market in just having a competent DBA that they can call up and talk to when necessary. The companies also seem to provide a legally compliant service with EU data retention policies. Others tend to take more of cloud storage position or cloud backup solution for businesses with on-prem set ups looking to have a DR site handled by someone else. The best I can really describe it as is that all of the infrastructure that the US locks up in Azure, AWS, and cloud.google gets distributed across smaller providers who can be generic "get small business' DB up and running somewhere safe) or can get super specific and deal with stuff like NHS patient data management and storage. > This is an inspiring point of view for those of us who would like to do business internationally as well I think. Personally, I'm stuck on the idea that the Internet is capable of helping citizens transcend national barriers (and timezones) to live more meaningful lives not strictly defined by the pens of politicians. There's a headache of international law to pay attention to with these things, but there's also a really rewarding amount of work if you're willing to take on the initial task. I've only been with my current work about half a year, but without exaggeration I've had the chance to see a few thousand different set-ups and it's quite remarkable how much you can do with a little time and knowledge.

meanduck 10y ago

But EC's recent unpridictable behaviour[1] only gives negative hopes. [1] https://www.itic.org/news-events/techwonk-blog/arguing-against-deeply-troubling-european-commission-tax-actions-us-implores-the-europeans-to-return-to-multilateral-tax-conversation https://www.itic.org/news-events/techwonk-blog/arguing-again...

greenhatman 10y ago

That, and/or open source decentralized solutions, where possible.

spdy 10y ago

Then we need to change the way people are able to raise money on ideas only. We dont have a Google/Facebook etc. because no one is willing to upfront the costs. That's why we dont have a Silicon Valley in the EU. Its a mentality problem inside the investor space to only put money into "safer" bets not moon-shots.

jusq2 10y ago

EU porn tech does beat US porn tech in many metrics. I have always wondered why, when the rest of their tech sector is way behind.

unsoundInput 10y ago
I imagine that the industry is under comparatively little scrutiny by regulators and the public, and can therefore be as fast-moving and rule-bending[0] as the top SV startups. This combined with less (at least perceived) prudence in Europe might give them the edge over their competition. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855554
- jusq2 10y ago
  Makes sense. Even in areas where they do match up tech-wise Auto, Nokia, Airbus/Ariane etc maybe they need a Elon Musk type to do some ass kicking.

ugos 10y ago

100% agree. Funny how when I was 16 my dream was to leave EU as soon as I can to go work at Google, FB, etc... and live the 'American dream'. USA represented progress and innovation to me. Now with Snowden revelations, Obama's expansion of mass surveillance, etc... USA has become the exact opposite to me, they embody a future I don't want to live in. The worst part is that some EU countries start to become like them because they still think like when I was 16, "USA is progress" => "so we have to do like them" and that's how for eg France adopted "Loi sur le renseignement" which allows gov to do like what NSA's doing. Now all that I want is finish my CS master and start working for Protonmail,Signal,Tor,Mozilla,Linux,... or whatever company/app/foundation that is trying to protect us. The thing I'm afraid of is that EU will keep getting weaker in terms of privacy & rights like France because of the "terrorists will kill your children if you don't give us your data" propaganda. I hope EU will understand that even outside the ethical & moral issues having strong laws on privacy is the only way we can compete with USA tech because it's the only thing we have they don't

jeeva 10y ago
Semi-similar: when I was younger, I really wanted to move to the states and work in SV or similar. Sadly, I hadn't researched labour-laws in the US (or healthcare, or... well, many things). Seems like a bad deal, now - though a few of my friends have moved out there, I don't particularly envy them.
Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
I'm a bit of a special case--I'm an American military brat. I was born in the US but lived overseas before I could form a memory until I was a teenager. I, too, had dreams of America being a beacon of progress and freedom. It was my nominal homeland but one I'd never experienced. I was proud of it and loved that other nations looked up to us. But now that dream is dead. We're perfecting the surveillance state I was told would be impossible. Now I look at Europe, and while I disagree with a great deal of its economic policies, I wonder if the grass just might be greener on the other side.
- justaman 10y ago

CalRobert 10y ago

Privacy in data storage might end up requiring owning your hardware in the long run, regardless of your location. One company doing interesting work in this field is protonet, founded in Germany - https://protonet.com/company/about-us/ https://protonet.com/company/about-us/. I'm not sure why it seems harder for companies to take off in the EU. It does seem like funding is harder to come by here, but to be honest it seems like it ought to be _easier_ to start here than in the US. If I fail in most EU countries, I'm not worried about dying in a gutter like I am if I fail in the US.

tankenmate 10y ago
The problem in Europe for start ups is rarely the supply side, it's the buy side; large EU companies don't buy start ups at the rate that large US companies do. This restricts the volume of exits, and therefore restricts the available funding; organisations that fund VCs normally get their money back in 5 to 10 years, but with less exits that means that VCs don't raise as often (which over averages means collectively they don't raise as much) because they don't get back as often.

kybernetyk 10y ago

>We need to wake the fuck up in the EU and start aggressively building European-based competitors Good luck with that. Europe doesn't provide the environment (neither culturally nor financially) needed for these types of companies to arise. And if you want 'state planned' tech companies: What happened to the EU funded Google-killer again? If Europe doesn't reform itself and makes it less punishing for people to start, grow, fail, start again businesses then Europe will be left behind. And tbh. I don't believe Europe can reform. Because the problems are so deeply entrenched in European societies that it would take a herculean effort to change things. Something no one is willing to do. So all we have left is old money industry. But that won't keep up as alive for ever...

airesQ 10y ago
I really abhor this recent escalation, and hope this will be a transient phenomenon. But if things came to the worse, the EU would just have to emulate China. China seems to manage just fine without Google, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. Make life difficult for foreign competitors, and let the internal market take care of the rest. No need for a top down approach. The thing is that most internet companies are big due to network effects, not because the underlying technology is hard to replicate. Ban Facebook in the EU, and we would have a new version in a few months. Ditto for Twitter. Google is a bit more challenging, but it would be possible to get a 'goodish' clone going in a short while. (The same would not be the case for Intel, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Altera, etc... These companies do have something that is hard to replicate, and goes beyond network effects).
patrickk 10y ago
> Good luck with that. Europe doesn't provide the environment (neither culturally nor financially) needed for these types of companies to arise. I think a large part of the success of US tech companies is the large size of the domestic market[1], which means startups can reach new customers much more easily to who speak the same language, use the same currency and so on. For example, if you want to do business in let's say the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, you have to deal with the British pound, the Euro, the Swedish Krona, the Danish Krone and the Norwegian Krone, and have staff who can speak English, German, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. Not to mention the different laws and customs in each country. There are less exit opportunities partially because (for example) a German company flush with cash is less likely to be aware of some Swedish company that is growing like a rocket and would make a good acquisition target (made up example). Whereas in the US, many professionals are likely reading the same news and tech sources, will speak the same language as the company they are looking at acquiring and use the same currency. Not to mention if a startup captures 1% of the market in Sweden or wherever, it's a much smaller userbase than 1% of the US market. [1] Point number 8 in PG's excellent essay on the topic: http://paulgraham.com/america.html http://paulgraham.com/america.html (I would argue that points 8 and 9 are most relevant.)

sir-alien 10y ago

There are many good tech startups and industries in the U.K. that would be able to do such things but with us leaving the EU it seems we might be heading down the same path and be banned from storing EU data. The Snoopers Charter when we leave the EU already makes us incompatible with EU law and is already considered illegal too. Its no wonder that the 1984 novel is flying of the shelves now. ;-P

MicroBerto 10y ago

> start aggressively building European-based competitors to US tech companies that actually respect user privacy Won't happen when all of Europe keeps raising taxes and the US lowers theirs. Most creators like to keep their rewards and distribute it at their discretion, not have over half of it stolen from them by force.

pdimitar 10y ago

Just chiming in to point at the fact that Bulgaria is out of the picture. The police here are very used to just casually walk in (even without an uniform) in your office and just say "let's have a look at your servers". If you resist, they might violently force you. You might eventually win in court but by that time your servers will be somebody's cousin gaming machines for 2 years at least. It seems the only way to win around here is to emphasize the economical benefits of independent and strong privacy-oriented commercial organizations. That however would probably involve bribing politicians to "agree" with you. Yeah, I know. I let desperation creep inside of me but when you see everybody around you being OK with outrageous violations of basic human rights, that tends to happen. :(