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How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Ban Oracle and Microsoft from public procurement and start
by nivenkos 5y ago
How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy?
Ban Oracle and Microsoft from public procurement and start supporting the European equivalent of Baidu or Yandex. With ARM (prior to the acquisition), Linux, MariaDB, etc. - Europe was in a great position to do this.
We need to stop this digital colonialism where massive, monopolistic US corporations pay no taxes in Europe, and then take all the profits back to the US where they pay 3x the salaries - only supporting the US economy.
- nob0dyasked 5y agoWhy judging things by their capacity to pay taxes? Taxes are about the least thing that matters for society. You complain about incompetent bureaucracy but who do you think manages taxes? Good service, privacy, innovation, these are the questions.
- tester34 5y agoI'd rather ban fb, twitter, tiktok
- spodek 5y agoCalling them tech associates them with inventors and people who want to improve life. The Sackler family and Purdue Pharma is a more accurate association. They purport to help and in some situation they do. We all love cat videos and notes from mom and dad. But they make money from addicting people. Whatever technologies they create serve that mission. They're not opposed to improving the quality of users' lives, but that's a side effect. Mostly they relieve craving in ways that recreate it.
- TX0098812 5y ago> How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Their power is to make rules, so they will make rules because it is all they know how to do. Leaving things alone is often the most difficult (and important) thing to do.
- csunbird 5y agowho cares about new rules when nobody is enforcing them. it has been 3 years since gdpr is in effect, but nobody actually cares, especially the U.S. tech giants.
- etripe 5y agoIf all you have is a ban hammer, everything looks like a flame? I'm not sure that criticism is entirely valid, as it looks at European institutions exclusively. Surely lobby groups and their perpetual pressure on legislators play a role, too, like they would for the US House and Senate. Even with that pressure, I suppose they could "leave well alone", but then they'd be seen as uncooperative and ignoring their constituents. I'd like to live in a world where legislators have competent cabinets and can be assumed to be reasonably well-informed, but for instance the Facebook hearings have shown there's a long way to go. Even non-technical issues show this to be true. Case in point: the UK and Dutch governments thinking they would solve the housing crisis by giving mortgage grants to starters. Expectation: case closed. Reality: housing prices surged even more due to the cash injection.
- dmitriid 5y ago> instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? What do you mean by "endless bureaucracy"? Making sure that people's personal data is not sold right and left?
- mtgx 5y agoWhy not both?
- md9001 5y agoIt won't happen. EU bureaucracy just likes to travel from one capital to another and enjoying 5 star comfort pretending to be extremely busy completely disconnected from reality. Its not that they haven't poured in huge amounts of cash into science and tech. Its that its all gone into building ivory towers even more disconnected from reality. So the people in those ivory towers have no clue how to compete in a ruthless world. When someone just gets cash grants without loosing sweet and blood how the fuck are they supposed to compete with people around the world who have that experience?
- tester34 5y ago(real question) aren't e.g Tesla, SpaceX, NASA, Boeing using govt money too?
- Ralfp 5y agoIn fact they are: SpaceX does gov contracts for US defense and NASA. Tesla is selling their carbon credits to other companies. NASA is gov agency. Boeing is doing both defense and civilian contracts for US gov.
- dgellow 5y agoRegarding Tesla, it's even their main source of revenue! https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/02/01/teslas-dirty-little-secret-its-net-profit-doesnt-come-from-selling-cars/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/02/01/teslas-dirty-little-s...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dieortin 5y agoI’d say Airbus is competing quite well, Boeing not so much.
- throwaway12509 5y ago
- axlee 5y ago>How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Why do you make it sound like they don't? The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate). One does not prevent the other. And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best.
- YorkshireSeason 5y ago> EU invests massive amounts in technology An interesting question is: what's the ROI of this investment. Anecdotally, the over the last 50 years the EU has been loosing their leadership in field after field. First to the US, then Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, now China. With the loss of the UK Arm is no longer an EU company. Have you looked into Linux commits recently [1], or where papers come from in the top CS conferences? [1] https://news.itsfoss.com/huawei-kernel-contribution/ https://news.itsfoss.com/huawei-kernel-contribution/
- flexie 5y agoWell, Arm is not a UK company much longer either: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in-arm-as-regulators-threaten-nvidia-deal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in...
- Chris2048 5y agoThe link says "as regulators threaten to block"
- MaxBarraclough 5y agoThat's in reference to nVidia buying ARM from SoftBank Group, the Japanese holding company that bought ARM in 2016. Here's the relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Changes_of_ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Changes_of_ownership
- 5y ago
- Barrin92 5y agoI don't want to replace Facebook's panopticon data collection with a European one in the name of European nationalism, I just want companies to respect user privacy, I don't want to adopt Russian or Chinese style surveillance state-capitalism to do.. what exactly? America, Russia and China are heading head first into cyberpunk dystopia and your suggestion is we better hurry up because we're currently being stopped by 'endless bureaucracy'? I'm gonna be honest I'd rather take the bureaucracy than play that game
- simfoo 5y ago>How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? How about doing both the first while also ensuring that european law is actually being followed? So far US monopolists have relied on being in bed with Irish lawmakers to avoid the GDPR fines.
- LightG 5y agoWhether Facebook comes from the EU or the US, the same data issues would arise. Hence, regulation.
- Dobbs 5y agoBecause not everything is about money and business. The EU while far from perfect does try and look out for, respect, and care for its people. Both at an EU wide level, and at individual country levels. GDPR and this are both attempts to provide more protection to individuals. Not necessarily to build homegrown alternatives. The problem isn't the specific company, but how companies in this sector act.
- gerdesj 5y agoRather than play silly buggers why not start with things like this: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/sharing-or-collaborating-with-government-documents https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-fo... That's the UK govt standard for document/data exchange. Short, simple and open. Get the basics right first then tackle the complicated stuff.
- dpwm 5y ago> That's the UK govt standard for document/data exchange. Short, simple and open. Get the basics right first then tackle the complicated stuff. Which would be great if they actually followed their guidance. In reality, the UK Westminster government is one of the worst entities for pushing out spreadsheets that use over-engineered excel-specific validation (often wrong for excel, too) with protection. There is no offer of an ods version, only xlsx.
- tallanvor 5y agoFor one thing, these countries employ thousands of people in the EU. Banning them from public procurement would hurt many of their residents, and still wouldn't guarantee good solutions.
- dvdkon 5y agoHow about we actually think hard about the situation, formulate clearly why we don't like it and propose non-ad-hoc legislation that fixes the specific issues? Banning companies on the basis of "too powerful"/"I don't like them" is how dictatorships work, we should strive to be better than that, even if it is more work. I agree with your motives, but I still believe in the "legal state" ideal.
- WhyNotHugo 5y agoI wouldn't ban the company (there's no way to make that sound right). Just ban the practices they follow, which makes them unqualified to participate unless they really change that. For example, public procurement should always require software be open source as a hard dealbraker. This is actually the case in [too few] countries.
- estaseuropano 5y agoI'd be curious about an example of a country where this is at all a requirement. Sadly I think not even Estonia asks for that, they just work with great central services and APIs.
- realityking 5y agoIt‘s starting to happen in Germany, at least in healthcare. The Corona Warn App was open sourced (developed by SAP und Deutsche Telekom) and the server software (developed by IBM) will also be open sourced (https://www.kma-online.de/aktuelles/it-digital-health/detail/ibm-zur-entwicklung-des-fachdienstes-e-rezept-beauftragt-a-44365 https://www.kma-online.de/aktuelles/it-digital-health/detail...)
- usr1106 5y ago> It‘s starting to happen in Germany, at least in healthcare. The Corona Warn App was open sourced And now there is a closed source competitor with a lot of backing from some politicians. So it's not that they would have learned the lesson.
- jandrewrogers 5y agoAs a practical matter, there would need to be exemptions (and usually are). There is closed source software used by government that has no open source equivalent, is unlikely to have an open source equivalent in the foreseeable future for various reasons, and the government has no leverage to force the companies to make their software open source. Some things can be open source, the government already uses a lot of open source in many countries, but the government has little recourse if providers of critical software capabilities refuse to do business under those terms.
- Stranger43 5y agoEurope is not America and emulating American mercantilism is probably not going to result in anything positive, as the European market is too decentralized for the kind of collusion between the political/diplomatic system that allows the American multinationals to dominate. What the EU should do is play to it's strengths as the last organizations left that takes the regulative role required by smiths model of capitalism serious and start enforcing transparency, choice and interoperability on the digital field, with the same zeal it treats similar regulation in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.
- apocalyptic0n3 5y ago> Ban Oracle and Microsoft from public procurement and start supporting the European equivalent of Baidu or Yandex. Neither of those are EU either, are they? Baidu is Chinese and Yandex is Russia (admittedly they are in Europe, but not part of the EU). How is that any different, from the EU's perspective, to supporting Oracle and Microsoft? Unless I'm misinformed, which is entirely possible.
- Teknoman117 5y agoThe commenter said equivalent. They were not saying the EU should fund Baidu or Yandex. They were saying to either find or create an equivalent in the EU and fund that. Curious as to how one expects to will such a company into existence, but whatever I guess.
- apocalyptic0n3 5y agoThat's fair. I suppose I misread what the OP said. Thanks for the clarification. It's greatly appreciated.
- systemvoltage 5y agoI wonder what would HN say if we switch roles here. "Ban EU services in the US" would not fly well both, with Americans and Europeans alike.