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> Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or anything. I think the EU would h

> Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or anything. I think the EU would have loved that. There are perfectly viable alternatives to pretty much everything that Google offers, some of which created in Europe. They just never gain any traction because it's convenient to just use Google for everything. I still use Gmail and Google Calendar at the moment, but that's primarily out of inertia. The biggest thing I'd miss would probably be search, but even for that there are reasonable alternatives.

bzb6 6y ago
It seems you don’t see the value in having one integrated provider for everything. Other people clearly do. Also if there were GOOD European alternatives to those google service people would use them, but there simply aren’t. Low salaries and terrible regulations are to blame.
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  I'm not sure many people go upload on youtube because they already had a gmail, and a small enterprise loosing all their documents because they got their home made ads copystriked by drive by DMCA trolls also doesn't sound like a great integration feature... Honestly, what, beyond the account infrastructure, is integrated in googles consumer products?
- jariel 6y ago
  I don't think regulations are holding people back. Low salaries, yes, but that's a failure of leadership, but also a systematic problem of companies inability to make tons of money. It's a long laundry list and it can't be boiled down just to a few things, they are so intertwined it's hard to separate the issues.
- piva00 6y ago
  Do you understand the difference between US vs EU markets? As in: demographics issues, language issues, product targeting issues? There are no good European alternatives due to a conflation of these issues, not just because of regulations, that's such a naive (or willingly ignorant) take on a complex issue. How would European tech companies start and compete against FAANG right now? Given that the EU market is quite fragmented between demographics and language? How can an European tech company avoid being acqui-hired or acqui-killed by one of the current massive tech giants? If you don't develop your arguments of what kind of regulation holds EU tech companies back and posit that against the issues I mentioned then I can't really trust you understand the problem and differences between markets that give benefits to the US economy, as it always had, it's a massive and more homogeneous economy than the EU. Let's compare US vs China tech as that seems more of an appropriate comparison from the baseline.
swagonomixxx 6y ago
Out of curiosity, what are the European alternatives to GSuite?
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  The biggest competitors are obviously not European (eg. MS, Fastmail) but there are smaller companies like mailbox.org that offer less polished but functional alternatives. I'm not saying that those would be a perfect replacement for everything that Google offers, but they get close enough that they might do the trick for a large number of people (which would then give them the income to make further improvements to their platform).
- jariel 6y ago
  There's nothing, not even close and it's obviously a problem. The reason a lot of this antagonism exists is because the EU is not able to compete in a lot of these areas. While there's a lot of good impetus is privacy legislation, there should be 10x more effort into gearing themselves to be more competitive. Edit: Europe's inability to materially face this problem is by far the #1 issue. There definitely is an acceptance, on some level, behind closed doors certainly there is discussion and some action, but much more energy seems to be devoted to punishing foreign, successful companies. It's a bad position to be in to try to legislate foreign behemoths than to have your own, and be worried about how foreign nations may be regulating your own behemoths. Edit 2: I've made a similar comment a few times and it's guaranteed to be down-voted (again, that's fine, I don't mind it's not a personal issue I have no problem with votes) - but assuming that this is more than likely Europeans down-voting as a rough measure of disagreement, it's really quite a disturbing sentiment that at least popularly, there's difficulty in accepting the obvious lack of competitiveness in these areas. This is why I say it's the #1 challenge - until there is acceptance, there will no progress.
- GrantZvolsky 6y ago
  LibreOffice, to some extent. But more pertinently, the Czech search engine Seznam[1], founded in 1996, was the most used search engine in the Czech Republic until Google took over in 2014 due to the influence of Android. Seznam is well diversified and it shouldn't be difficult for it to expand into other markets given the opportunity. It is a major regional player in search, maps, email, news, real estate, jobs, ecommerce, video streaming, advertising, and probably more. Its portfolio, which includes a chromium-based web browser, is quite impressive given that the Czech market consists of some 11 million people. [1]: https://seznam.cz https://seznam.cz
calvinmorrison 6y ago
> I think the EU would have loved that. "The EU" entirely depended on Google not doing that. And by that I mean the bureaucracy and other apparatjik - not the people. Had Google literally banned Europe the backlash would be large, large, large against 'the EU' from people who live there and were trying to live and do their day to day online activities. Yeah, it'd be Evil, but sometimes companies should really swing back at heavy handed regulations.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. Google is an American company, and there could well be an element of nationalism in the response, i.e., a sentiment that "stupid imperialist Americans are trying to force us to change our national laws." Furthermore, a monopoly operator that objects to new regulation isn't the kind of entity that typically elicits a lot of sympathy.
  - abellerose 6y ago
    I highly doubt any young person would think that way. Maybe older than 40 would.
- celsoazevedo 6y ago
  I'm not sure if Google would have much support after blocking users and refusing to follow laws that exist to protect users.

bzb6 6y ago

It seems you don’t see the value in having one integrated provider for everything. Other people clearly do. Also if there were GOOD European alternatives to those google service people would use them, but there simply aren’t. Low salaries and terrible regulations are to blame.

SiempreViernes 6y ago
I'm not sure many people go upload on youtube because they already had a gmail, and a small enterprise loosing all their documents because they got their home made ads copystriked by drive by DMCA trolls also doesn't sound like a great integration feature... Honestly, what, beyond the account infrastructure, is integrated in googles consumer products?
jariel 6y ago
I don't think regulations are holding people back. Low salaries, yes, but that's a failure of leadership, but also a systematic problem of companies inability to make tons of money. It's a long laundry list and it can't be boiled down just to a few things, they are so intertwined it's hard to separate the issues.
piva00 6y ago
Do you understand the difference between US vs EU markets? As in: demographics issues, language issues, product targeting issues? There are no good European alternatives due to a conflation of these issues, not just because of regulations, that's such a naive (or willingly ignorant) take on a complex issue. How would European tech companies start and compete against FAANG right now? Given that the EU market is quite fragmented between demographics and language? How can an European tech company avoid being acqui-hired or acqui-killed by one of the current massive tech giants? If you don't develop your arguments of what kind of regulation holds EU tech companies back and posit that against the issues I mentioned then I can't really trust you understand the problem and differences between markets that give benefits to the US economy, as it always had, it's a massive and more homogeneous economy than the EU. Let's compare US vs China tech as that seems more of an appropriate comparison from the baseline.

swagonomixxx 6y ago

Out of curiosity, what are the European alternatives to GSuite?

DangerousPie 6y ago
The biggest competitors are obviously not European (eg. MS, Fastmail) but there are smaller companies like mailbox.org that offer less polished but functional alternatives. I'm not saying that those would be a perfect replacement for everything that Google offers, but they get close enough that they might do the trick for a large number of people (which would then give them the income to make further improvements to their platform).
jariel 6y ago
There's nothing, not even close and it's obviously a problem. The reason a lot of this antagonism exists is because the EU is not able to compete in a lot of these areas. While there's a lot of good impetus is privacy legislation, there should be 10x more effort into gearing themselves to be more competitive. Edit: Europe's inability to materially face this problem is by far the #1 issue. There definitely is an acceptance, on some level, behind closed doors certainly there is discussion and some action, but much more energy seems to be devoted to punishing foreign, successful companies. It's a bad position to be in to try to legislate foreign behemoths than to have your own, and be worried about how foreign nations may be regulating your own behemoths. Edit 2: I've made a similar comment a few times and it's guaranteed to be down-voted (again, that's fine, I don't mind it's not a personal issue I have no problem with votes) - but assuming that this is more than likely Europeans down-voting as a rough measure of disagreement, it's really quite a disturbing sentiment that at least popularly, there's difficulty in accepting the obvious lack of competitiveness in these areas. This is why I say it's the #1 challenge - until there is acceptance, there will no progress.
GrantZvolsky 6y ago
LibreOffice, to some extent. But more pertinently, the Czech search engine Seznam[1], founded in 1996, was the most used search engine in the Czech Republic until Google took over in 2014 due to the influence of Android. Seznam is well diversified and it shouldn't be difficult for it to expand into other markets given the opportunity. It is a major regional player in search, maps, email, news, real estate, jobs, ecommerce, video streaming, advertising, and probably more. Its portfolio, which includes a chromium-based web browser, is quite impressive given that the Czech market consists of some 11 million people. [1]: https://seznam.cz https://seznam.cz

calvinmorrison 6y ago

> I think the EU would have loved that. "The EU" entirely depended on Google not doing that. And by that I mean the bureaucracy and other apparatjik - not the people. Had Google literally banned Europe the backlash would be large, large, large against 'the EU' from people who live there and were trying to live and do their day to day online activities. Yeah, it'd be Evil, but sometimes companies should really swing back at heavy handed regulations.

jcranmer 6y ago
I wouldn't be so sure. Google is an American company, and there could well be an element of nationalism in the response, i.e., a sentiment that "stupid imperialist Americans are trying to force us to change our national laws." Furthermore, a monopoly operator that objects to new regulation isn't the kind of entity that typically elicits a lot of sympathy.
- abellerose 6y ago
  I highly doubt any young person would think that way. Maybe older than 40 would.
celsoazevedo 6y ago
I'm not sure if Google would have much support after blocking users and refusing to follow laws that exist to protect users.