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Whenever I read "Blocking entire EU" I classify it as a romanticized revenge daydreaming. No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about

Whenever I read "Blocking entire EU" I classify it as a romanticized revenge daydreaming. No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol. Just look at FB, Google and the rest of the advertising companies. They bent over backwards trying to accodomate the law. But: GDRP will filter out businesses that existed in the legaly grey area because technology was faster than the law in this type of busines competitive advantage features.

ceejayoz 8y ago
> Just look at FB, Google and the rest of the advertising companies. They bent over backwards trying to accodomate the law. Did they? Isn't Facebook's GDPR flow "agree or fuck off forever"? https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/25/facebook-google-face-first-gdpr-complaints-over-forced-consent/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/25/facebook-google-face-first...
- quickben 8y ago
  It will take some time to play out. People will sue, costs of lawsuits payout will be weighed against continuing the existing practices (IBM vs Xerox style) etc. Two things: they are still operating in EU, and it didn't go well for Microsoft itself when they tried to disobey EU. So, we'll see how it ends.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol Probably not. It would make sense to roll out services on a country-by-country basis, limiting exposure to those where the national data regulator is known. EU lobbyists and lawyers were just granted a massive break.
- quickben 8y ago
  If anything, this is good for tech jobs overall as we all have a lot more to do now.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    The vast majority of the work this creates will flow to lawyers and lobbyists.
Silhouette 8y ago
No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol. Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on your business and your market. We're in the UK. If we'd understood how much trouble the EU VAT rules were going to cause when they came in three years ago, we would have excluded customers from the remaining EU member states rather than adapting our systems and processes to comply -- and it would have been one of the clearest and easiest business decisions we'd ever made. Given the amount of uncertainty and liability involved with the GDPR, it seems entirely possible that some non-EU services will take a similarly conservative approach.
nordsieck 8y ago
> No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol. Just look at FB, Google and the rest of the advertising companies. That's true for big companies. The calculation changes for small companies, and really changes for hobby projects.
- apple4ever 8y ago
  Exactly this. The big companies can afford to pay people to deal with the issue. For small companies one mistake and they could be out of business. So its easier to avoid the problem to begin with.
Grue3 8y ago
>No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol. Considering how many US-only startups I see on HN every day, this is patently false.
krschultz 8y ago
FWIW the first serious startup I worked at chose not to do CE compliance (the EU governing body for electronic devices that may interfere with RF). Thus we did not sell our product to Europe. Every single blog post had a set of people raging that we were assholes for doing this, but the reality was the cost of compliance just didn't make sense for the MVP. It was high 5 figures in cost which was just too much at the time. If we had achieved product market fit then the obvious move would have been to do that compliance to gain more customers, but we never quite got there. I doubt GDPR gets to that level of cost, so the ROI looks a bit different. But I still think it's a reasonable decision to say "I simply won't do business in the EU because it costs more than I'll gain". A lot of companies also don't bother to go through the effort of printing the dual language labels required to sell their products in Canada, even though it's a decent sized market close to the US. Tech, specifically the internet, has grown without regulation for a long time. But that era is over. These kind of decisions are routine in non-internet businesses where distribution, borders, and regulations exist. I suspect we're going to have to think a lot more about this in our work in the future.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
spaceman1331 8y ago
> No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA that's ridiculous, small companies grow by targeting audiences and computing expected future cash flow the cost of legal action is a risk that affects the bottom line (it also affects reputation, but for new laws, the issue of reputation isn't as relevant because the laws haven't been tested by the society yet, they are fresh laws) the idea that a corporation is "insane" for estimating the future cash flows and legal expenses for providing services to an audience is comedy no, that's how a good, well-run, intelligent organization grows the GDPR represents a risk to the bottom line when services are provided to European customers, and that risk must be factored in; this risk directly affects the corporate financial structure, and investors may have some input in terms of when and how to extend service to the EU pretending that spite or some petty or small emotional frame of mind is required to apply basic sound financial principles of running a business is bizarre when running a business, you are expected to win, and winning means not going bankrupt because some psycho lawyer in the EU wants to make money by destroying your reputation, destroying your life, and destroying your business GDPR gives fuel to psycho lawyers. If you don't want to get sued by psycho lawyers, don't provide services to people who hire psycho lawyers, don't provide service to the EU. If you have deep pockets and you know the expected cost of fighting off psycho lawyers is less than the expected revenue of providing service to the EU, then it may be time to expand to the EU; you and your investors should both have an understanding of the risks and rewards of expanding service. Let me repeat: this is not an emotional matter, it is a matter of doing business.
aussieguy1234 8y ago
Lets say your a hot upcoming startup and you dont have the funds to pay GDRP lawyers. In the early stages, blocking EU customers entirely may be tempting...

ceejayoz 8y ago

> Just look at FB, Google and the rest of the advertising companies. They bent over backwards trying to accodomate the law. Did they? Isn't Facebook's GDPR flow "agree or fuck off forever"? https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/25/facebook-google-face-first-gdpr-complaints-over-forced-consent/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/25/facebook-google-face-first...

quickben 8y ago
It will take some time to play out. People will sue, costs of lawsuits payout will be weighed against continuing the existing practices (IBM vs Xerox style) etc. Two things: they are still operating in EU, and it didn't go well for Microsoft itself when they tried to disobey EU. So, we'll see how it ends.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol Probably not. It would make sense to roll out services on a country-by-country basis, limiting exposure to those where the national data regulator is known. EU lobbyists and lawyers were just granted a massive break.

quickben 8y ago
If anything, this is good for tech jobs overall as we all have a lot more to do now.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  The vast majority of the work this creates will flow to lawyers and lobbyists.

Silhouette 8y ago

No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol. Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on your business and your market. We're in the UK. If we'd understood how much trouble the EU VAT rules were going to cause when they came in three years ago, we would have excluded customers from the remaining EU member states rather than adapting our systems and processes to comply -- and it would have been one of the clearest and easiest business decisions we'd ever made. Given the amount of uncertainty and liability involved with the GDPR, it seems entirely possible that some non-EU services will take a similarly conservative approach.

nordsieck 8y ago

> No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol. Just look at FB, Google and the rest of the advertising companies. That's true for big companies. The calculation changes for small companies, and really changes for hobby projects.

apple4ever 8y ago
Exactly this. The big companies can afford to pay people to deal with the issue. For small companies one mistake and they could be out of business. So its easier to avoid the problem to begin with.

Grue3 8y ago

>No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA out of spite and take a profit hit just because of new PII protocol. Considering how many US-only startups I see on HN every day, this is patently false.

krschultz 8y ago

FWIW the first serious startup I worked at chose not to do CE compliance (the EU governing body for electronic devices that may interfere with RF). Thus we did not sell our product to Europe. Every single blog post had a set of people raging that we were assholes for doing this, but the reality was the cost of compliance just didn't make sense for the MVP. It was high 5 figures in cost which was just too much at the time. If we had achieved product market fit then the obvious move would have been to do that compliance to gain more customers, but we never quite got there. I doubt GDPR gets to that level of cost, so the ROI looks a bit different. But I still think it's a reasonable decision to say "I simply won't do business in the EU because it costs more than I'll gain". A lot of companies also don't bother to go through the effort of printing the dual language labels required to sell their products in Canada, even though it's a decent sized market close to the US. Tech, specifically the internet, has grown without regulation for a long time. But that era is over. These kind of decisions are routine in non-internet businesses where distribution, borders, and regulations exist. I suspect we're going to have to think a lot more about this in our work in the future.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

spaceman1331 8y ago

> No sane western corporation will willingly eliminate an entity about the site of USA that's ridiculous, small companies grow by targeting audiences and computing expected future cash flow the cost of legal action is a risk that affects the bottom line (it also affects reputation, but for new laws, the issue of reputation isn't as relevant because the laws haven't been tested by the society yet, they are fresh laws) the idea that a corporation is "insane" for estimating the future cash flows and legal expenses for providing services to an audience is comedy no, that's how a good, well-run, intelligent organization grows the GDPR represents a risk to the bottom line when services are provided to European customers, and that risk must be factored in; this risk directly affects the corporate financial structure, and investors may have some input in terms of when and how to extend service to the EU pretending that spite or some petty or small emotional frame of mind is required to apply basic sound financial principles of running a business is bizarre when running a business, you are expected to win, and winning means not going bankrupt because some psycho lawyer in the EU wants to make money by destroying your reputation, destroying your life, and destroying your business GDPR gives fuel to psycho lawyers. If you don't want to get sued by psycho lawyers, don't provide services to people who hire psycho lawyers, don't provide service to the EU. If you have deep pockets and you know the expected cost of fighting off psycho lawyers is less than the expected revenue of providing service to the EU, then it may be time to expand to the EU; you and your investors should both have an understanding of the risks and rewards of expanding service. Let me repeat: this is not an emotional matter, it is a matter of doing business.

aussieguy1234 8y ago

Lets say your a hot upcoming startup and you dont have the funds to pay GDRP lawyers. In the early stages, blocking EU customers entirely may be tempting...