4 ms·

EU market is too big to ignore. We have seen this with Meta and others play out multiple times since GDPR has been increasingly enforced in the past decade. Tha

by shafyy 3y ago

EU market is too big to ignore. We have seen this with Meta and others play out multiple times since GDPR has been increasingly enforced in the past decade. That's why it's important the EU keeps pushing, hopefully mostly sensible, regulation. There is no other counterweight that's aligned with consumer interests rather than corporate interests. Sure, you can accuse EU of hidden protectionisms blabla, but for now, this is better than nothing.

spacebanana7 3y ago
> EU market is too big to ignore It's not what it used to be. The EU's makes up around 15-20% of world GDP depending on how you measure it, but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. Meta only gets around 10% of its ad earnings from the EU [1]. I'm not aware of the figures for Google and Microsoft or whether such figures are even available. Many global banks left the US or reduced it to skeleton operations after the wave of regulation following '08. Unfriendly enough behaviour might cause a similar reaction from tech in the EU. [1] "What we do know is that roughly 10% of worldwide ad revenue comes from ads delivered to Facebook users in E.U. countries", Meta CFO Susan Li quoted on stratechery, https://stratechery.com/2023/metas-low-e-u-arpu-the-supreme-court-and-section-230/ https://stratechery.com/2023/metas-low-e-u-arpu-the-supreme-...
- ilyt 3y ago
  Tell investors you're throwing away 10% of the market and they will fire you > The EU's makes up around 15-20% of world GDP depending on how you measure it, but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. That would have to be corrected for tech spendings, for example the fact asia produces most of the electronics have zero effect on facebook's business profits.
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    Google search and many other big tech divisions already did that with China. When a country/region deviates from the rest of the world in a big way there comes a point at which you can't offer the same products and services as other markets.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      There is a big difference between "censor everything you do to comply to goverment doctrine" and "just don't store PII unnecessarily".
      - spacebanana7 3y ago
        The latter is actually very burdensome because it affects advertising profits
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      I'm still waiting for Google/Facebook to leave Europe. Never seems to happen, despite the incessant whining. Maybe the fines were not heavy enough.
      - Tangurena2 3y ago
        Paying a billion dollars per year in fines is still cheaper for Facebook than leaving the EU.
        ilyt 3y ago
        shrug at least they pay tax now even if in weird way...
  - revelio 3y ago
    > Tell investors you're throwing away 10% of the market and they will fire you Really not. 10% extra market share is something for large companies to worry about, the sort of thing that requires big spend in localization. For a company the size of OpenAI, there are bigger fish to fry. Europeans will use VPNs and route payments via resellers rather than not have access to the latest tech.
- fhd2 3y ago
  I arrive at something like 25% of global nominal GDP according to Wikipedia, but I just quickly added up the numbers in my head, might be wrong. The Facebook ad numbers are probably not too relevant of a comparison though, since Microsoft and OpenAI have a different business model. I'd suspect the share of potential global revenue must be something in the >20% range. But even if the EU was only 10% of the potential revenue - taking a 10% hit is not something large corporations do particularly willingly. I bet as long as they can find a way to make more money in the EU than they spend, they will. It's a business decision. Doesn't mean there won't be any whining.
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    > I bet as long as they can find a way to make more money in the EU than they spend, they will I think this is where the structure of the regulation becomes important. If GPT-4 had to be retrained with regulator friendly data or assume liability for misinformation in the EU then there might not be enough of a profit incentive to stay. I imagine they'd stay in the EU however if they just had to add more banners, data localisation and reporting. Albeit with whining.
- Fnoord 3y ago
  Given how many companies were saying they would leave Russia versus those who actually left Russia there's a gap between what companies say and what they do. > but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. Well, disproportionality [sic] is subjective at best, and those high taxes get evaded within EU. All big corporations do that, btw.
  - spacebanana7 3y ago
    VAT, employment taxes and regulatory fines are hard to avoid paying in the EU, even if corporate profit taxes get moved around a bit.
    - Fnoord 3y ago
      "moved around a bit" well, the amount which gets moved around is enormous. I don't know how its done now (I do know its still being done), but the way it was done was it was getting moved to The Netherlands to Ireland to The Netherlands. There's even a Dutch term for such a company: brievenbusfirma, and the location knows for them residing: Amsterdam Zuidas. So we get the curious situation where Ikea is a Dutch company. You're crying wolf about "disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs" but these examples of yours are drops in a bucket compared to the tax evasion severity.
      - spacebanana7 3y ago
        VAT is the largest tax most software companies pay and the one most difficult to avoid. EU VAT rates are some of the highest in the world. Corporation tax may be avoided but that's true of every geography so doesn't affect the comparison of EU vs non-EU. About compliance costs - the majority of >$1B tech fines come out of the EU.
cm2012 3y ago
EU has gotten steadily smaller as a percentage of world GDP over time. GDP per capita used to be higher than the US in France and Germany and the other big EU countries, now its close to 33% lower.

by shafyy 3y ago

spacebanana7 3y ago

> EU market is too big to ignore It's not what it used to be. The EU's makes up around 15-20% of world GDP depending on how you measure it, but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. Meta only gets around 10% of its ad earnings from the EU [1]. I'm not aware of the figures for Google and Microsoft or whether such figures are even available. Many global banks left the US or reduced it to skeleton operations after the wave of regulation following '08. Unfriendly enough behaviour might cause a similar reaction from tech in the EU. [1] "What we do know is that roughly 10% of worldwide ad revenue comes from ads delivered to Facebook users in E.U. countries", Meta CFO Susan Li quoted on stratechery, https://stratechery.com/2023/metas-low-e-u-arpu-the-supreme-court-and-section-230/ https://stratechery.com/2023/metas-low-e-u-arpu-the-supreme-...

ilyt 3y ago
Tell investors you're throwing away 10% of the market and they will fire you > The EU's makes up around 15-20% of world GDP depending on how you measure it, but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. That would have to be corrected for tech spendings, for example the fact asia produces most of the electronics have zero effect on facebook's business profits.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  Google search and many other big tech divisions already did that with China. When a country/region deviates from the rest of the world in a big way there comes a point at which you can't offer the same products and services as other markets.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    There is a big difference between "censor everything you do to comply to goverment doctrine" and "just don't store PII unnecessarily".
    - spacebanana7 3y ago
      The latter is actually very burdensome because it affects advertising profits
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    I'm still waiting for Google/Facebook to leave Europe. Never seems to happen, despite the incessant whining. Maybe the fines were not heavy enough.
    - Tangurena2 3y ago
      Paying a billion dollars per year in fines is still cheaper for Facebook than leaving the EU.
      - ilyt 3y ago
        shrug at least they pay tax now even if in weird way...
- revelio 3y ago
  > Tell investors you're throwing away 10% of the market and they will fire you Really not. 10% extra market share is something for large companies to worry about, the sort of thing that requires big spend in localization. For a company the size of OpenAI, there are bigger fish to fry. Europeans will use VPNs and route payments via resellers rather than not have access to the latest tech.
fhd2 3y ago
I arrive at something like 25% of global nominal GDP according to Wikipedia, but I just quickly added up the numbers in my head, might be wrong. The Facebook ad numbers are probably not too relevant of a comparison though, since Microsoft and OpenAI have a different business model. I'd suspect the share of potential global revenue must be something in the >20% range. But even if the EU was only 10% of the potential revenue - taking a 10% hit is not something large corporations do particularly willingly. I bet as long as they can find a way to make more money in the EU than they spend, they will. It's a business decision. Doesn't mean there won't be any whining.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  > I bet as long as they can find a way to make more money in the EU than they spend, they will I think this is where the structure of the regulation becomes important. If GPT-4 had to be retrained with regulator friendly data or assume liability for misinformation in the EU then there might not be enough of a profit incentive to stay. I imagine they'd stay in the EU however if they just had to add more banners, data localisation and reporting. Albeit with whining.
Fnoord 3y ago
Given how many companies were saying they would leave Russia versus those who actually left Russia there's a gap between what companies say and what they do. > but that's subject to disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs. Well, disproportionality [sic] is subjective at best, and those high taxes get evaded within EU. All big corporations do that, btw.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  VAT, employment taxes and regulatory fines are hard to avoid paying in the EU, even if corporate profit taxes get moved around a bit.
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    "moved around a bit" well, the amount which gets moved around is enormous. I don't know how its done now (I do know its still being done), but the way it was done was it was getting moved to The Netherlands to Ireland to The Netherlands. There's even a Dutch term for such a company: brievenbusfirma, and the location knows for them residing: Amsterdam Zuidas. So we get the curious situation where Ikea is a Dutch company. You're crying wolf about "disproportionality high taxes and compliance costs" but these examples of yours are drops in a bucket compared to the tax evasion severity.
    - spacebanana7 3y ago
      VAT is the largest tax most software companies pay and the one most difficult to avoid. EU VAT rates are some of the highest in the world. Corporation tax may be avoided but that's true of every geography so doesn't affect the comparison of EU vs non-EU. About compliance costs - the majority of >$1B tech fines come out of the EU.

cm2012 3y ago

EU has gotten steadily smaller as a percentage of world GDP over time. GDP per capita used to be higher than the US in France and Germany and the other big EU countries, now its close to 33% lower.