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> ..started making half-hearted efforts to block European users (which isn't what EU wants.. Are we sure about that? GDPR seems like a gift to European startup

> ..started making half-hearted efforts to block European users (which isn't what EU wants.. Are we sure about that? GDPR seems like a gift to European startups who don’t like American competition. BlaBlah car in France got huge, incidentally right around the time the anti-Uber hysteria in France reaches a peak. The sale of Daily Motion to Yahoo was blocked by the French government under ridiculous national economic interest grounds. Europe loves tariffs and trade barriers and they have a history of “protecting” the public from competition. Try shipping spare parts for a child’s stroller to France — I was taxed at 50% — the tax even applying to the shipping fee, not just the parts. My dad made the mistake of sending kids clothes to my kids with the tags still on them — $100 worth of clothes cost me €65 in duties. When I ship small amounts of stuff to the US, I literally have never had to pay a tax. The EU loves protectionism. Farmers literally set fires and throw rocks when Spanish wine crosses into France and the authorities don’t prosecute a single person. Now that EU countries have a bunch of lotteries tickets with American tech companies, the governments are likely foaming at the mouth with excitement over fining American companies. And, sadly, many people in Europe actually think this is about privacy.

ttoinou 8y ago
Blablacar has a different business model than Uber and Dailymotion is now useless because of government intervention. American startups have less to worry about than european ones, they have their non-GDPR market to address and grow, and we'll see in the future if extra european companies get fined (AND effectively pay) because of GDPR
gliboc 8y ago
BlaBlaCar is about carpooling, it is not a Uber ripoff, but you'd know that if you had travelled once to Europe. It is about different values - solidarity, ecology, social relationships - than just underpaying the guy-next-door to do anything you're willing to pay for with your smartphone. Otherwise the only person that seems to be "foaming a the mouth" is you, in this ridiculous Murica rant. Do I need to remind you that your country is just starting an economic war on the rest of the world with illegal customs taxes ? Also, enjoy getting scammed by your own ISPs now that net neutrality effectively got cancelled on you. You don't realize how little Europeans care about your precious American tech companies, and more about values such as not being the data points of international megacorps with shady business practices, or low-end programmers ready to milk people of all their data just to install a phone game.
- bigbugbag 8y ago
  I have to point out that blablacar is not about solidarity, ecology or social relationships, to the contrary actually, it's about being a vampire draining money from solidarity and ecology and market domination. I mean carpooling was about solidarity and ecology, then blablacar seized the market and turned it into "no mobile phone, no credit card, no access to carpooling", "give us money first". I used to carpool before blablacar and many times I did not ask that much money or even no money at all, sometimes I got barter out of carpooling. Or the other way around, people enjoyed my company and refused my money. Now this social link is over because everybody is using blablacar and blablacar requires expensive upfront payment. I hate how blablacar turned something that was about helping each other and bringing people together into a capitalist profit making venture aiming for world market domination.
  - gliboc 8y ago
    > I have to point out that blablacar is not about solidarity, ecology or social relationships, to the contrary actually, it's about being a vampire draining money from solidarity and ecology and market domination. So you just hate it because it's a company and it's making money. Right ? > I mean carpooling was about solidarity and ecology, then blablacar seized the market and turned it into "no mobile phone, no credit card, no access to carpooling", "give us money first". BlaBlaCar single-handedly created the huge carpooling market that now does exist in France for example. They didn't seize the market, people gave it to them. There are still other carpooling websites which you can use, and carpooling panels in events are still a common thing. Up-front payment, not directly giving out people's phone number : you pretend this is bad practice, but this is exactly the security that was needed to bring the masses to carpooling, and as a matter of fact it did. You seem to dislike that people would be ok in a win-win situation, where they both get paid for their expenses, and are happy to chat with other people while doing a small move for the planet. This is what's happening. > I hate how blablacar turned something that was about helping each other and bringing people together into a capitalist profit making venture aiming for world market domination. This is truly misguided. The opposite equivalent to my parent, but now with an anti-capitalist idealistic view of the world. Do you not see that? People are not into this ideological warfare of yours. The "world market domination" ... of carpooling? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Please find a mindset where you are able to leave BlaBlaCar be. Seriously, these are people too, and they are providing a great service. And I'm worried people, just like you do, are too prone to ranting on companies for all the bad reasons. The very reason you're using the excessive word hate, to me, seems to prove you're personalizing the entity and are a bit out of the rational realm in your claims.
bigbugbag 8y ago
Let's look at the timeline to check your claim about blablacar vs Uber: blablacar exists since 2004, it was first covoiturage.fr and had became the market leader in France in 2008, in 2009 the began opening services in foreign countries, in 2011 the bought main competitor which started in 1997 and are confident that their market domination allow them to pivot from free to taking a 20% commission. january 2012, Uber launches in France. in 2013 they change their name to blablacar so it's the same name in the 10 coutries they operate, uber grows to operate in two cities in France. 2014: uber grows to 6 cities in France, blablacar adds ukraine, russia, brazil and gets 100 millions funding to tackle world market and now transports 1 million people per month. 2015: france his 2nd biggest market for uber in Europe with over 500k users per year, blablacar buy German competitor Carpooling, Hungarian competitor AutoHop and Mexican sart-up Rides now totalling 20 millions users in 19 countries and rises 200 millions to speed up world market deployment. UberPop is forced to suspend operation due to operating illegally by evading legal obligations. 2017: uber still operates illegally without a licence and European Court confirms the UberPop suspension while also confirming that Uber is a transportation company and has to follow laws and regulations. As we can see here, by the time Uber arrived in France, blablacar had already seized the french market for quite some time, blablacar operates lawfully while uber evades legal obligations and kept at it despite repeated warnings which is probably the reason why it got into trouble. And this is coming from someone who strongly dislike blablacar. Then again if US tech companies paid their taxes instead of engaging in heavy tax evasion (hello apple, facebook, amazon, google, ...), and respected local laws maybe they would not get so much flak.

ttoinou 8y ago

Blablacar has a different business model than Uber and Dailymotion is now useless because of government intervention. American startups have less to worry about than european ones, they have their non-GDPR market to address and grow, and we'll see in the future if extra european companies get fined (AND effectively pay) because of GDPR

gliboc 8y ago

BlaBlaCar is about carpooling, it is not a Uber ripoff, but you'd know that if you had travelled once to Europe. It is about different values - solidarity, ecology, social relationships - than just underpaying the guy-next-door to do anything you're willing to pay for with your smartphone. Otherwise the only person that seems to be "foaming a the mouth" is you, in this ridiculous Murica rant. Do I need to remind you that your country is just starting an economic war on the rest of the world with illegal customs taxes ? Also, enjoy getting scammed by your own ISPs now that net neutrality effectively got cancelled on you. You don't realize how little Europeans care about your precious American tech companies, and more about values such as not being the data points of international megacorps with shady business practices, or low-end programmers ready to milk people of all their data just to install a phone game.

bigbugbag 8y ago
I have to point out that blablacar is not about solidarity, ecology or social relationships, to the contrary actually, it's about being a vampire draining money from solidarity and ecology and market domination. I mean carpooling was about solidarity and ecology, then blablacar seized the market and turned it into "no mobile phone, no credit card, no access to carpooling", "give us money first". I used to carpool before blablacar and many times I did not ask that much money or even no money at all, sometimes I got barter out of carpooling. Or the other way around, people enjoyed my company and refused my money. Now this social link is over because everybody is using blablacar and blablacar requires expensive upfront payment. I hate how blablacar turned something that was about helping each other and bringing people together into a capitalist profit making venture aiming for world market domination.
- gliboc 8y ago
  > I have to point out that blablacar is not about solidarity, ecology or social relationships, to the contrary actually, it's about being a vampire draining money from solidarity and ecology and market domination. So you just hate it because it's a company and it's making money. Right ? > I mean carpooling was about solidarity and ecology, then blablacar seized the market and turned it into "no mobile phone, no credit card, no access to carpooling", "give us money first". BlaBlaCar single-handedly created the huge carpooling market that now does exist in France for example. They didn't seize the market, people gave it to them. There are still other carpooling websites which you can use, and carpooling panels in events are still a common thing. Up-front payment, not directly giving out people's phone number : you pretend this is bad practice, but this is exactly the security that was needed to bring the masses to carpooling, and as a matter of fact it did. You seem to dislike that people would be ok in a win-win situation, where they both get paid for their expenses, and are happy to chat with other people while doing a small move for the planet. This is what's happening. > I hate how blablacar turned something that was about helping each other and bringing people together into a capitalist profit making venture aiming for world market domination. This is truly misguided. The opposite equivalent to my parent, but now with an anti-capitalist idealistic view of the world. Do you not see that? People are not into this ideological warfare of yours. The "world market domination" ... of carpooling? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Please find a mindset where you are able to leave BlaBlaCar be. Seriously, these are people too, and they are providing a great service. And I'm worried people, just like you do, are too prone to ranting on companies for all the bad reasons. The very reason you're using the excessive word hate, to me, seems to prove you're personalizing the entity and are a bit out of the rational realm in your claims.

bigbugbag 8y ago

Let's look at the timeline to check your claim about blablacar vs Uber: blablacar exists since 2004, it was first covoiturage.fr and had became the market leader in France in 2008, in 2009 the began opening services in foreign countries, in 2011 the bought main competitor which started in 1997 and are confident that their market domination allow them to pivot from free to taking a 20% commission. january 2012, Uber launches in France. in 2013 they change their name to blablacar so it's the same name in the 10 coutries they operate, uber grows to operate in two cities in France. 2014: uber grows to 6 cities in France, blablacar adds ukraine, russia, brazil and gets 100 millions funding to tackle world market and now transports 1 million people per month. 2015: france his 2nd biggest market for uber in Europe with over 500k users per year, blablacar buy German competitor Carpooling, Hungarian competitor AutoHop and Mexican sart-up Rides now totalling 20 millions users in 19 countries and rises 200 millions to speed up world market deployment. UberPop is forced to suspend operation due to operating illegally by evading legal obligations. 2017: uber still operates illegally without a licence and European Court confirms the UberPop suspension while also confirming that Uber is a transportation company and has to follow laws and regulations. As we can see here, by the time Uber arrived in France, blablacar had already seized the french market for quite some time, blablacar operates lawfully while uber evades legal obligations and kept at it despite repeated warnings which is probably the reason why it got into trouble. And this is coming from someone who strongly dislike blablacar. Then again if US tech companies paid their taxes instead of engaging in heavy tax evasion (hello apple, facebook, amazon, google, ...), and respected local laws maybe they would not get so much flak.