5 ms·

Apologies for the stupid question, as I feel like I’m missing something obvious: why is that? Is it the regulatory environment?

worldofmatthew 6y ago
Would investors want to risk investing in a anti-tech part of the world who will blame them for everything? The EU is populist in trying to blame tech companies for all of society's ills.
- gspr 6y ago
  Now this is a claim you'll need to substantiate!
  - worldofmatthew 6y ago
    Do I need to going into the whole blameing tech for "fake news" while the media spreads it themselves? Who wants to invest in what will be scapegoat for law makers to cry at?
    - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
      Social media did kind of spawn a new wave of christian terrorism in the U.S. in the form of Qanon.. so... the concern is not entirely unfounded. We cannot blame the userbase entirely, because the platforms themselves are designed to funnel people into thought bubbles where they can have access to as much batshit nonsense as they can fit into their eye and earholes. Plus even Homeland Security acknowledges that social media is a threat to national security, having recently published a report detailing how popular platforms could be used to create chaos through misinformation in the midst of our next election... So there are definitely some valid concerns... Actually, I forgot that christian terrorism is actually global now, with the Christchurch (N.Z.) mosque shooter having inspired multiple copycat terrorist attacks in California (U.S.), Texas (U.S.) and Norway. Of course these massacres are in addition to the other, white-supremacist christian terror attacks that had already been widespread in the United States before COVID took us all out of public places.
    - worldofmatthew 6y ago
      And Newspapers have started wars with fake news.
- petre 6y ago
  No, the EU blames FAANG for skipping taxes and monopolistic behaviour. They might just prefer to punish US companies rather than domestic ones. What I don't like as an EU citizen is that our network infra is ridden with Huawei equipment. I'd much rather have US equipment and services if domestic companies aren't capable delivering it rather than One Belt, One Road. Just take a look at Kyrgyzstan and how it's going to become a Chinese colony.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Agreed, its nicer doing business in a country where you can fraudulently cause global economic meltdown and go on unscathed.
  - tupputuppu 6y ago
    I mut have missed this global economic meltdown you speak of, which was caused by GAFA?
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Is lack of corporate accountability exclusive to GAFA? You can kill ~300 people and noone goes to jail. You can launder money for druglords and just get a fine. What does a corporation have to do to actually suffer serious consequences, like jailtime or breaking up a company? Something that's not just 'cost of doing business'?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
nemo44x 6y ago
It’s cultural. It’s really hard to get investors to invest in things that aren’t a guarantee. Most potential billion dollar companies. Investors in the USA are fine taking risk investing in them. In the EU you don’t find that culture. Could part of it be regulatory in terms of tax write offs? I’m not sure.
- fvdessen 6y ago
  I don't buy the culture argument after looking at the success of China. I think it's a matter of having a big enough internal market to be able to compete with the American monopolies.
  - yibg 6y ago
    Big internal market might be a part of it. But at least for China, investors do take some crazy bets. I know if many that are pretty head scratching. But in the end, it just takes a few of these crazy bets working out.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    EU is as large as the USA.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      It's not one coherent market though.
      - nemo44x 6y ago
        Wasn’t that the main selling point of the EU?
        read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        It's not to the same degree as the US. There's still different languages and cultures.
fcantournet 6y ago
It's not a stupid question. First of all, none of the GAFA were actually started as Cloud infrastructure providers. So the question is not why isn't Europe creating big Cloud Infrastructure companies, one could argue that the biggest "pure-player" in Cloud is OVH which is European. If anything it's the (insanely lax and pro-monopoly) American regulatory environment that has the biggest impact on the creation of big Cloud providers outside of the U.S. The only country that manage tyo do that are China & Russia to a lesser extent because they have active protection against AWS/GCP/MS. As to why Europe doesn't create big GAFA-like companies in other sectors, one reason is that the E.U is not a single market from the perspective of these companies. Yes the regulatory environment is stable & simple enough for companies to operate in all E.U countries, but that's not all that makes a market. The fact that europeans speak 27 different languages for instance makes building a european sized company much harder than a U.S sized one, for roughly the same market in terms of $$$. EDIT: I don't think creating GAFA-style companies is a goal any state should pursue. The U.S needs to get their head out of their ass and split AMZN & Google ASAP, & fix Facebook.
- sneak 6y ago
  NeoFeznet asked: > why is that? Is it the regulatory environment? fcantournet: > If anything it's the (insanely lax and pro-monopoly) American regulatory environment that has the biggest impact on the creation of big Cloud providers outside of the U.S. I don't think you can say the problem there is America's lack of regulation preventing European cloud providers (which was what the question was about) from starting. It seems like the problem there is one of the European regulations being too strict. Stifling regulation is not a force of nature, it is a lever that can be adjusted.
  - alexgmcm 6y ago
    I think he means there is little to no protectionism in Europe when it comes to software - so we get 'digitally colonised' by the USA. Whereas China and Russia have stricter rules about what foreign corporations can do, so there that allows for the creation of homegrown solutions like Baidu - would Baidu exist today if Google was able to run their services without interference in China since the start?
AdrianB1 6y ago
I think one of the reasons, other than legislation, is lack of motivation; it is more or less egalitarian and that promotes mediocrity, not innovation. In US you can become filthy rich relatively fast, not in Europe, so why bother? Just see the IT salaries in Europe vs. Silicon Valley, they are a lot lower, so really good and ambitious people move to SV, don't spend time in Europe.
- kazen44 6y ago
  because money is the only prime motivator in life? Also, this egalitarianism and promoting of mediocracy you speak of makes no sense in regards to people who want to attain personal growth. Not to mention having a system like the US comes at a massive cost in regards to the wellbeing and welfare of the general population. Innovating isn't just about money. Not to mention a ton of innovators exists in the EU, they are just not the same scale as amazon/google etc.
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    I never said money is the only motivator; also egalitarianism and promoting mediocracy does negatively impact people who want to attain personal growth, being treated the same as the village idiot is not a morale booster. Appreciation is a top motivator according to Maslow.
  - rad_gruchalski 6y ago
    > because money is the only prime motivator in life? The task of a business is to make profit. So yes, in that sense, the money is the ultimate goal and profit is the one and only kpi to look at.

worldofmatthew 6y ago

Would investors want to risk investing in a anti-tech part of the world who will blame them for everything? The EU is populist in trying to blame tech companies for all of society's ills.

gspr 6y ago
Now this is a claim you'll need to substantiate!
- worldofmatthew 6y ago
  Do I need to going into the whole blameing tech for "fake news" while the media spreads it themselves? Who wants to invest in what will be scapegoat for law makers to cry at?
  - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    Social media did kind of spawn a new wave of christian terrorism in the U.S. in the form of Qanon.. so... the concern is not entirely unfounded. We cannot blame the userbase entirely, because the platforms themselves are designed to funnel people into thought bubbles where they can have access to as much batshit nonsense as they can fit into their eye and earholes. Plus even Homeland Security acknowledges that social media is a threat to national security, having recently published a report detailing how popular platforms could be used to create chaos through misinformation in the midst of our next election... So there are definitely some valid concerns... Actually, I forgot that christian terrorism is actually global now, with the Christchurch (N.Z.) mosque shooter having inspired multiple copycat terrorist attacks in California (U.S.), Texas (U.S.) and Norway. Of course these massacres are in addition to the other, white-supremacist christian terror attacks that had already been widespread in the United States before COVID took us all out of public places.
  - worldofmatthew 6y ago
    And Newspapers have started wars with fake news.
petre 6y ago
No, the EU blames FAANG for skipping taxes and monopolistic behaviour. They might just prefer to punish US companies rather than domestic ones. What I don't like as an EU citizen is that our network infra is ridden with Huawei equipment. I'd much rather have US equipment and services if domestic companies aren't capable delivering it rather than One Belt, One Road. Just take a look at Kyrgyzstan and how it's going to become a Chinese colony.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Agreed, its nicer doing business in a country where you can fraudulently cause global economic meltdown and go on unscathed.
- tupputuppu 6y ago
  I mut have missed this global economic meltdown you speak of, which was caused by GAFA?
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Is lack of corporate accountability exclusive to GAFA? You can kill ~300 people and noone goes to jail. You can launder money for druglords and just get a fine. What does a corporation have to do to actually suffer serious consequences, like jailtime or breaking up a company? Something that's not just 'cost of doing business'?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

nemo44x 6y ago

It’s cultural. It’s really hard to get investors to invest in things that aren’t a guarantee. Most potential billion dollar companies. Investors in the USA are fine taking risk investing in them. In the EU you don’t find that culture. Could part of it be regulatory in terms of tax write offs? I’m not sure.

fvdessen 6y ago
I don't buy the culture argument after looking at the success of China. I think it's a matter of having a big enough internal market to be able to compete with the American monopolies.
- yibg 6y ago
  Big internal market might be a part of it. But at least for China, investors do take some crazy bets. I know if many that are pretty head scratching. But in the end, it just takes a few of these crazy bets working out.
- nemo44x 6y ago
  EU is as large as the USA.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    It's not one coherent market though.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      Wasn’t that the main selling point of the EU?
      - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        It's not to the same degree as the US. There's still different languages and cultures.

fcantournet 6y ago

It's not a stupid question. First of all, none of the GAFA were actually started as Cloud infrastructure providers. So the question is not why isn't Europe creating big Cloud Infrastructure companies, one could argue that the biggest "pure-player" in Cloud is OVH which is European. If anything it's the (insanely lax and pro-monopoly) American regulatory environment that has the biggest impact on the creation of big Cloud providers outside of the U.S. The only country that manage tyo do that are China & Russia to a lesser extent because they have active protection against AWS/GCP/MS. As to why Europe doesn't create big GAFA-like companies in other sectors, one reason is that the E.U is not a single market from the perspective of these companies. Yes the regulatory environment is stable & simple enough for companies to operate in all E.U countries, but that's not all that makes a market. The fact that europeans speak 27 different languages for instance makes building a european sized company much harder than a U.S sized one, for roughly the same market in terms of $$$. EDIT: I don't think creating GAFA-style companies is a goal any state should pursue. The U.S needs to get their head out of their ass and split AMZN & Google ASAP, & fix Facebook.

sneak 6y ago
NeoFeznet asked: > why is that? Is it the regulatory environment? fcantournet: > If anything it's the (insanely lax and pro-monopoly) American regulatory environment that has the biggest impact on the creation of big Cloud providers outside of the U.S. I don't think you can say the problem there is America's lack of regulation preventing European cloud providers (which was what the question was about) from starting. It seems like the problem there is one of the European regulations being too strict. Stifling regulation is not a force of nature, it is a lever that can be adjusted.
- alexgmcm 6y ago
  I think he means there is little to no protectionism in Europe when it comes to software - so we get 'digitally colonised' by the USA. Whereas China and Russia have stricter rules about what foreign corporations can do, so there that allows for the creation of homegrown solutions like Baidu - would Baidu exist today if Google was able to run their services without interference in China since the start?

AdrianB1 6y ago

I think one of the reasons, other than legislation, is lack of motivation; it is more or less egalitarian and that promotes mediocrity, not innovation. In US you can become filthy rich relatively fast, not in Europe, so why bother? Just see the IT salaries in Europe vs. Silicon Valley, they are a lot lower, so really good and ambitious people move to SV, don't spend time in Europe.

kazen44 6y ago
because money is the only prime motivator in life? Also, this egalitarianism and promoting of mediocracy you speak of makes no sense in regards to people who want to attain personal growth. Not to mention having a system like the US comes at a massive cost in regards to the wellbeing and welfare of the general population. Innovating isn't just about money. Not to mention a ton of innovators exists in the EU, they are just not the same scale as amazon/google etc.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  I never said money is the only motivator; also egalitarianism and promoting mediocracy does negatively impact people who want to attain personal growth, being treated the same as the village idiot is not a morale booster. Appreciation is a top motivator according to Maslow.
- rad_gruchalski 6y ago
  > because money is the only prime motivator in life? The task of a business is to make profit. So yes, in that sense, the money is the ultimate goal and profit is the one and only kpi to look at.