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You're too much of an optimist. What you call "complacency" is actually years of progress in international trade and cooperation going down the drain. Yes, pe

You're too much of an optimist. What you call "complacency" is actually years of progress in international trade and cooperation going down the drain. Yes, people eventually wake up, but sometimes it takes a war to do it. Indeed, everybody woke up after WWII.

Svip 10y ago
Hope is not the same has belief or prediction. Nothing wrong with hoping for the best. I still maintain it's part of the 'complacency' we endure, because a lot of things are 'good enough', and when people are satisfied, they feel little motivation to right the wrongs that remain. Like surveillance, skewed trade deals, privacy laws, the emerging of rivalling global powers (see China and Russia) and taking the internet and computers serious in general. Oh and, if we can lift the global standard of living, then we don't need big border protection budgets, because people will have less motivation to migrate. I sure hope we will be able to avoid a war. At least a war like the Second World War.
patrec 10y ago
Free trade is not an end in itself. If data-protection barriers improve EU citizen's privacy and digital rights and weaken the stranglehold of a handful of companies on the whole IT infrastructure by making EU companies more competitive that's not necessarily a bad thing, ultimately even for people outside the EU.
- bad_user 10y ago
  I do not believe that "any-protection batteries" work, ever. You might get a boost, but it's only short term. What I believe instead is that nationalistic policies eventually lead to hunger and from my recollection, history seems to agree. Because we are all interdependent. More on-topic: If the EU doesn't have software companies to rival those of the US, that's not because those US companies exist. If the EU is bad at software innovation, what makes you think we'll be any good at making clones? Also, most companies that care about data security and are afraid of industrial espionage from the US have already switched after the Snowden revelations, especially given that the US government made it clear since then that non-citizens should not have an expectation for privacy. I doubt there are many companies left willing to make a switch to alternatives based on data security concerns. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more EU companies on the rise. And we already have startups developing in Berlin, London, Paris, etc. But I don't see the existence of US companies as being the problem. Disclaimer: I am an EU citizen from Romania.
  - ar0 10y ago
    First, let me make it clear that I am totally on your page regarding the distaste for nationalistic and protectonist policies and do think that in the long term costs will almost always outweigh the benefits. Nevertheless, I want to point out that there seem to be two large real-world counter-examples to your argument: Russia and China. Both have made live difficult (or impossible) for US tech companies and both now have successful homegrown alternatives (Yandex and Baidu to Google, YK and Sina Weibo to Facebook/Twitter) -- even though I would argue both countries are not exactly known for their Silicon-Valley-style startup culture. The problem with many Internet businesses is that they are natural monopolies or "winner takes all" markets where it is very hard to compete against an entrenched incumbent. This is definitely true for social networking (because of the network effects that you need to be on the platform your friends are on) and I believe today also for Internet search (because of the enormous fixed cost of developing a competitive search algorithm and index and the very low marginal cost of each search query). And I think this is where Europe's different startup culture really comes to bite: I strongly believe that EU companies are from a technical point of view just as capable of innovating as US companies. But they are more careful, less financed and also have much smaller home markets, all of which contribute to the fact that they are much slower at getting products to market. And in a "winner takes all" market, being slower means getting nowhere. So, yes, I would say that the existence of these large US companies is one reason for a lack of large software companies in the EU. But (pre-Trump, at least) this is the beauty of international trade, no? You don't have to be good at everything. The US is good at producing world-class Internet companies (due to its startup culture focused on speed) while Europe is good at producing e.g. high-tech machinery (where probably being careful is more important than being fast). And there is nothing wrong with that - we use Google and Facebook and in turn the US buys our machines and in the end we are both better off than by having to duplicate each others' efforts ourselves (regardless of how good or bad we were at making clones).
    - vetinari 10y ago
      To add to your point: up until 2011 or so, in Czech Republic, the search engine Seznam.cz had bigger market share than Google. However, as you mentioned, they are not capable to resist the network effects and access to capital that Google has and uses, but it demonstrates perfectly well, that the EU companies are capable of creating such products and services.

Svip 10y ago

Hope is not the same has belief or prediction. Nothing wrong with hoping for the best. I still maintain it's part of the 'complacency' we endure, because a lot of things are 'good enough', and when people are satisfied, they feel little motivation to right the wrongs that remain. Like surveillance, skewed trade deals, privacy laws, the emerging of rivalling global powers (see China and Russia) and taking the internet and computers serious in general. Oh and, if we can lift the global standard of living, then we don't need big border protection budgets, because people will have less motivation to migrate. I sure hope we will be able to avoid a war. At least a war like the Second World War.

patrec 10y ago

Free trade is not an end in itself. If data-protection barriers improve EU citizen's privacy and digital rights and weaken the stranglehold of a handful of companies on the whole IT infrastructure by making EU companies more competitive that's not necessarily a bad thing, ultimately even for people outside the EU.

bad_user 10y ago
I do not believe that "any-protection batteries" work, ever. You might get a boost, but it's only short term. What I believe instead is that nationalistic policies eventually lead to hunger and from my recollection, history seems to agree. Because we are all interdependent. More on-topic: If the EU doesn't have software companies to rival those of the US, that's not because those US companies exist. If the EU is bad at software innovation, what makes you think we'll be any good at making clones? Also, most companies that care about data security and are afraid of industrial espionage from the US have already switched after the Snowden revelations, especially given that the US government made it clear since then that non-citizens should not have an expectation for privacy. I doubt there are many companies left willing to make a switch to alternatives based on data security concerns. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more EU companies on the rise. And we already have startups developing in Berlin, London, Paris, etc. But I don't see the existence of US companies as being the problem. Disclaimer: I am an EU citizen from Romania.
- ar0 10y ago
  First, let me make it clear that I am totally on your page regarding the distaste for nationalistic and protectonist policies and do think that in the long term costs will almost always outweigh the benefits. Nevertheless, I want to point out that there seem to be two large real-world counter-examples to your argument: Russia and China. Both have made live difficult (or impossible) for US tech companies and both now have successful homegrown alternatives (Yandex and Baidu to Google, YK and Sina Weibo to Facebook/Twitter) -- even though I would argue both countries are not exactly known for their Silicon-Valley-style startup culture. The problem with many Internet businesses is that they are natural monopolies or "winner takes all" markets where it is very hard to compete against an entrenched incumbent. This is definitely true for social networking (because of the network effects that you need to be on the platform your friends are on) and I believe today also for Internet search (because of the enormous fixed cost of developing a competitive search algorithm and index and the very low marginal cost of each search query). And I think this is where Europe's different startup culture really comes to bite: I strongly believe that EU companies are from a technical point of view just as capable of innovating as US companies. But they are more careful, less financed and also have much smaller home markets, all of which contribute to the fact that they are much slower at getting products to market. And in a "winner takes all" market, being slower means getting nowhere. So, yes, I would say that the existence of these large US companies is one reason for a lack of large software companies in the EU. But (pre-Trump, at least) this is the beauty of international trade, no? You don't have to be good at everything. The US is good at producing world-class Internet companies (due to its startup culture focused on speed) while Europe is good at producing e.g. high-tech machinery (where probably being careful is more important than being fast). And there is nothing wrong with that - we use Google and Facebook and in turn the US buys our machines and in the end we are both better off than by having to duplicate each others' efforts ourselves (regardless of how good or bad we were at making clones).
  - vetinari 10y ago
    To add to your point: up until 2011 or so, in Czech Republic, the search engine Seznam.cz had bigger market share than Google. However, as you mentioned, they are not capable to resist the network effects and access to capital that Google has and uses, but it demonstrates perfectly well, that the EU companies are capable of creating such products and services.