7 ms·

As a European, I have to say I am generally impressed with the EU in these cases. I'm from a country that's rich and capable, but with a GDP a fraction of Apple

As a European, I have to say I am generally impressed with the EU in these cases. I'm from a country that's rich and capable, but with a GDP a fraction of Apple's market cap. There is no chance that national laws and entities would be sufficient to protect my consumer rights from corporations this size. The EU is fundamentally a centre-right, liberalist, pro-business coalition, but what that means is that it is pro-competition. What's really impressive is that it seems to mostly refrain from devolving into protectionist policies, giving no preferential treatment to European businesses against international (intercontinental?) competitors, despite strong populist tendencies in certain member states.

aryehof 1y ago
Don’t overestimate Apple versus your economy. Its real value (book value) is about 60 billion. It might have a speculative value in the trillions, but speculative value is just well… speculative.
FinnLobsien 1y ago
I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead.
- aerzen 1y ago
  DMA is applicable only to "gatekeepers" who markets with X amount of users. This is designed not to burden smaller businesses, but to limit monopoly of the large few corporations.
- zarzavat 1y ago
  That is the western European way though. It's supposed to be a nice place to live, not a nice place to do business. If that leads to Chaebolification of the economy then so be it. There are other parts of the world that specialise in deregulation at the expense of living standards.
  - FinnLobsien 1y ago
    True! And I generally empathize with this. The core point of the EU and its member states' governments should be to enable high quality of life. But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc. The problem is that Europe is like an old, rich person who now lives off of the principal of their wealth. For a person that's fine because they'll eventually die. For a government, you should strive for an environment that lets you keep growing wealth.
    - Tainnor 1y ago
      > But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc. Cost of living is increasing in the US too (in large part due to geopolitical reasons), and social contributions are rising because of demographic factors. I'm not sure how market liberalism is magically going to fix that latter issue.
      - FinnLobsien 1y ago
        Fair point re: US! Though that doesn't mean it's not a problem. Re: demographics. It's relatively straightforward: To keep contributions constant while supporting more people, you need either: -more people via immigration (which is extremely tricky to get right) who are net contributors, not beneficiaries of social systems -massively increased productivity through innovation/technology -cut benefits from social programs If you do none of those things, the systems will either collapse or you need to raise taxes/mandatory contributions which are de-facto taxes.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    I'd argue that actions like the DMA regulation are actively working against "Chaebolification" though. It's not national law that can be bent locally, it's EU law that applies to all companies of certain size. I think the EU learned the hard way that they can't rely on its members to prioritize common interests (see Ireland vs. Apple tax avoidance, Germany vs. Car evolution, Austria vs. Reduction of Russian influence, Hungary vs. everything)
- Y-bar 1y ago
  The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB-C law" and similar ones) that make it easier for consumers to avoid vendor lock-in. > just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead Temu is under active investigation for breaching these laws, anyone operating within EU is subject to those laws, not just European companies (e.g. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-opens-formal-proceedings-against-temu-under-digital-services-act https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-ope...)
  - FinnLobsien 1y ago
    > The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB-C law" and similar ones) that make it easier for consumers to avoid vendor lock-in. Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers. The problem is that you pass DMA, DSA, GDPR, etc. which Google, Apple etc. can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it. Instead what's happening is that European alternatives (the kind that's actually good, not the kind that's European and half as good) don't exist and the incentives to build one shrink because any scaling company is instantly hamstrung.
    - birksherty 1y ago
      If a company is so small and weak that they can't support GDPR etc., then that company should not exist. I don't care about any companies like Americans do with American business centric laws that hurts normal people. Life isn't about lowest price at any cost model. Buy from china (as everyone is doing but try to hide it) if you want low cost. I don't give a damn if all those companies die for not complying GDPR, fuck them.
- pas 1y ago
  ... where is it easy to do business anyway? sure, there are degrees, levels, grades of this, the size of the barriers to entry matters, there are metrics about how easy it is to start a business for example, but that's just one aspect, and I'd argue mostly an unimportant one (if it takes 2 hours or 2 days or 1 weeks it's fine, what matters is how much does it cost to do it and how much does it cost to maintain the legal entity, and to do the filings, etc.)
- dotandgtfo 1y ago
  > I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. Are you arguing that 27 different sets of laws was a better approach? That these countries would just gladly lie down and never regulate the societal-level harms, systemic lawbreaking, and massive infringement of privacy across the board? I don't think so. For a moment the political system in the US seemed to get to the same conclusions as the EU under Bidens FTC and anti-trust cases. But the conclusions of that remain to be seen.
  - FinnLobsien 1y ago
    The problem is that those 27 sets of laws basically still exist. Regulation is certainly not the only reason. Fragmentation is another massive problem. There's the EU-Inc initiative that the EU has basically made pointless (by wanting to introduce 27 new standards, not one, just making things more complex). Note that I'm not arguing for zero regulation.
    - rickdeckard 1y ago
      This keeps coming up over and over on HN. There are no 27 sets of laws to do business in Europe. It's not perfect, but it's a SINGLE MARKET, if you comply to the EU regulation you are allowed to sell everywhere. It does however not absolve you from additional local market demands to be competitive, i.e. local language support, service infrastructure, etc. For example: Miele is one of the largest washing machine manufacturers in Europe. They have their front panel translated to local languages for most of its markets. You can sell a washing machine with a English front panel, but you won't be able to compete in e.g. the German/Italian/French market
      - immibis 1y ago
        I heard they make quality products that last 20 years and don't use WiFi, too. Maybe they should try exporting to America. If true, it's indicative of some American vs European ideology. American tech bro soyjaks keep screaming criticisms about things like GDPR preventing remote-brickable wifi washing machines, and European bases nordic mans are like "bro those things are crap, why would I want them"?
- davedx 1y ago
  > It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. The DMA (that this article is about) applies to gatekeepers (massive companies like big tech), not mom and pop startups
  - klabb3 1y ago
    It doesn’t even apply to megacorps generally. The DMA applies to Core Platform Services – meaning app stores, browsers, etc – that are evaluated as gatekeepers individually. The same company can have provide CPSs, with different status. For instance, Google is a designated gatekeeper of Android (OS) and Google Maps (Intermediation), but not Gmail. So the DMA won’t dictate anything related to Gmail, even if Google is a gatekeeper in other areas.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  Massive companies typically smother small players anyway, especially in unregulated environments. > Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead. Does this actually happen or are you just making shit up? Is Temu exempt of any packaging requirements?
- isodev 1y ago
  > regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply This is a very inaccurate view. I’ve worked with multiple SMEs and no such “complexities” ever become operational challenges. Even as a indie developer, my compliance is a default provided I’m not trying to do something shady. Looking into the EU regulations, in most cases what they want you to do (or not do) is common sense.
  - Loic 1y ago
    Same experience, from startup to large multinational EU companies. The biggest headaches/issues are normally local regulations (country specific or even more local). The EU directives are more frameworks with a lot of flexibility and well grounded on common sense + expertise. How the different countries implement them in their own laws (with their own historical laws) is a different story.
  - drexlspivey 1y ago
    This indie dev begs to differ https://x.com/levelsio/status/1833126426142179653 https://x.com/levelsio/status/1833126426142179653
    - xandrius 1y ago
      That indie dev got contacted by the government for feedback. Not a bad sign, in my opinion.
    - youngtaff 1y ago
      There’s some definite nope’s in there — excluding small companies from GDPR, exempting them from corporation tax on profits etc
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      Most of that is adjacent to regulation, and it's more or less asking for exemption from regulation for smaller companies. Which the EU already does a lot of: generally smaller companies have much lower regulatory regulatory requirements. But the threshold proposed is silly: you do not need to be anywhere near a $10 million company for complying with the listed regulations to be a pretty trivial amount of work. I do suggest reading these things, for the most part they can usually be sorted with a bit of paperwork, the kind of thing someone who's reasonably on it can bang out in a day or so. (Especially software: hardware can be a bit more of a pain, but that's because of important shit like not starting fires or electrocuting someone)
- exe34 1y ago
  > continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex To be fair, the regulations are there because companies are out-of-control paperclip maximisers. For example, the cookie banner didn't have to be obnoxious - companies choose to comply maliciously to adhere to the text and shit over the spirit of the regulations, which have to become more and more verbose and explicit.
- ajross 1y ago
  > regulatory environment so complex The DMA really isn't particularly complex though. And what complexity it has only becomes complex once you're a manager of a whole consumer platform (a "gatekeeper" in its jargon). To wit: your point is backwards, the DMA is structured such that the only companies that need to bear its burdens are "big tech or Europe's legacy players". If you're a little company wanting to add a paid app store to your Tiny AI Robot Virtual Experience or whatever, go nuts. The DMA absolutely won't stop you.
planb 1y ago
As a former European, I agree with your first statement. I love that the EU is taking this seriously, and I like how they introduced the "gatekeeper" term to apply regulations only to the "big ones" and not small businesses (even though I don't agree with many of the individual laws in the DMA). That said, you can't argue that this isn't protectionist - we simply don't have any gatekeepers here, so if we're fair the DMA is only hitting international competitors (except Spotify maybe?)
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  > we simply don't have any gatekeepers here Booking would love that to be the case. And last I heard, Zalando is currently fighting the EU over having to comply with the DMA.
  - planb 1y ago
    No, this is under the DSA (digital services act), not the DMA. The DSA tells platforms how they must keep users safe and transparent, the DMA tells the largest gatekeepers how they must behave toward competitors and business users.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      Booking is on the DMA designated gatekeepers list: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en It looks like you're right that Zalando is on the DSA list, though.
- Y-bar 1y ago
  European companies I could find which the European Commission has taken action against with the Digital Services Act: Zalando has three enforcement actions against them since June 2023 Booking.com has one Technius (mainly streaming) has two WebGroup CZ (Adult entertainment) has five
  - planb 1y ago
giingyui 1y ago
Europe is centre right? That is an interesting claim. I guess someone’s right is someone else’s left.
- xandrius 1y ago
  Where would you place it? I'm curious because centre-right is quite spot on.
  - giingyui 1y ago
    Socially and economically left wing. Progressive socially and interventionist economically.
    - cess11 1y ago
      Is this a joke? The EU is the product of large industrialists institutionalising their liberalist, capitalist values as an international bureaucracy. It hardly cares about unions beyond what the ECHR and ILO treaties demands, i.e. it's obviously not left wing. If it was inherently left wing it wouldn't have the kind of parliament it has, but rather something like Yugoslavia or the DDR did. It's also not conservative, hence why that movement has had to bolt on militarisation and stuff like Frontex.
      - giingyui 1y ago
        It’s not the eighties anymore. The world has moved on. You have to look at things from the perspective of the present. Forget Yugoslavia.
        saubeidl 1y ago
        Yugoslavia was the perfect economic model. Forgetting it would be doing the world a disservice.
        cess11 1y ago
vegabook 1y ago
I wish people would stop comparing a stock (market cap) with a flow (GDP).
- ksec 1y ago
  That is the whole point, to make company much bigger than they actually are and shift the power back to smaller player, in this case the state and GDP. If you compare annual revenue to GDP all of a sudden these so called maegacrop are tiny.
- andruby 1y ago
  Can you also expand on why? Especially in this case I do feel like it’s an (imperfect) proxy for power they wield.
  - RReverser 1y ago
    Because one is annual, and the other is just total. The equivalent of GDP for corporations would be annual revenue.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 1y ago
    The same reason you don't compare speed with distance. Distance is meters, speed is distance per the unit of time, meters / seconds, m/s. Likewise, market cap is measured in monetary units, dollars, euros, etc., while GDP is measured in money per the unit of time: $XXXX / year.
tobias3 1y ago
I'd argue that it doesn't go far enough at this point. There are imaginable scenarios now where the US uses AWS/Microsoft like China currently uses rare earth exports or even further and AWS/Microsoft + Android/iOS are critical infrastructure. Having some "sovereign cloud" etc. won't help since this needs continuous monitoring and improvements from the mothership. Merely doing monopoly regulation won't help. We have to actually destroy the monopolies.
- lowwave 1y ago
  Good luck with that. Even when Standard Oil has being broken up, it just resulted in a bunch of smaller but more profitable companies. Following the breakup of Standard Oil, the government created the Oil Division of the US Fuel Administration and the Federal Oil Conservation Board, effectively making the oil industry a government-protected monopoly. With the JEDI contracts ect that is basically what is happening to Google, MS and AWS.
  - tobias3 1y ago
    I very much doubt that the US would allow EU institution to break up the US tech companies as they see fit. So this is not a viable approach (even if it would work). The approach would be to gradually limit EU market access till there are other alternatives. This has worked for e.g. China. The German defense force uses Google cloud instances for their "sovereign cloud". I very much doubt that if there were a German Hyper-scaler that it would have similar market access to contracts such as JEDI. Having a buy European requirement there is pretty much a no-brainer IMO.

aryehof 1y ago

Don’t overestimate Apple versus your economy. Its real value (book value) is about 60 billion. It might have a speculative value in the trillions, but speculative value is just well… speculative.

FinnLobsien 1y ago

I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead.

aerzen 1y ago
DMA is applicable only to "gatekeepers" who markets with X amount of users. This is designed not to burden smaller businesses, but to limit monopoly of the large few corporations.
zarzavat 1y ago
That is the western European way though. It's supposed to be a nice place to live, not a nice place to do business. If that leads to Chaebolification of the economy then so be it. There are other parts of the world that specialise in deregulation at the expense of living standards.
- FinnLobsien 1y ago
  True! And I generally empathize with this. The core point of the EU and its member states' governments should be to enable high quality of life. But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc. The problem is that Europe is like an old, rich person who now lives off of the principal of their wealth. For a person that's fine because they'll eventually die. For a government, you should strive for an environment that lets you keep growing wealth.
  - Tainnor 1y ago
    > But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc. Cost of living is increasing in the US too (in large part due to geopolitical reasons), and social contributions are rising because of demographic factors. I'm not sure how market liberalism is magically going to fix that latter issue.
    - FinnLobsien 1y ago
      Fair point re: US! Though that doesn't mean it's not a problem. Re: demographics. It's relatively straightforward: To keep contributions constant while supporting more people, you need either: -more people via immigration (which is extremely tricky to get right) who are net contributors, not beneficiaries of social systems -massively increased productivity through innovation/technology -cut benefits from social programs If you do none of those things, the systems will either collapse or you need to raise taxes/mandatory contributions which are de-facto taxes.
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  I'd argue that actions like the DMA regulation are actively working against "Chaebolification" though. It's not national law that can be bent locally, it's EU law that applies to all companies of certain size. I think the EU learned the hard way that they can't rely on its members to prioritize common interests (see Ireland vs. Apple tax avoidance, Germany vs. Car evolution, Austria vs. Reduction of Russian influence, Hungary vs. everything)
Y-bar 1y ago
The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB-C law" and similar ones) that make it easier for consumers to avoid vendor lock-in. > just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead Temu is under active investigation for breaching these laws, anyone operating within EU is subject to those laws, not just European companies (e.g. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-opens-formal-proceedings-against-temu-under-digital-services-act https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-ope...)
- FinnLobsien 1y ago
  > The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB-C law" and similar ones) that make it easier for consumers to avoid vendor lock-in. Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers. The problem is that you pass DMA, DSA, GDPR, etc. which Google, Apple etc. can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it. Instead what's happening is that European alternatives (the kind that's actually good, not the kind that's European and half as good) don't exist and the incentives to build one shrink because any scaling company is instantly hamstrung.
  - birksherty 1y ago
    If a company is so small and weak that they can't support GDPR etc., then that company should not exist. I don't care about any companies like Americans do with American business centric laws that hurts normal people. Life isn't about lowest price at any cost model. Buy from china (as everyone is doing but try to hide it) if you want low cost. I don't give a damn if all those companies die for not complying GDPR, fuck them.
pas 1y ago
... where is it easy to do business anyway? sure, there are degrees, levels, grades of this, the size of the barriers to entry matters, there are metrics about how easy it is to start a business for example, but that's just one aspect, and I'd argue mostly an unimportant one (if it takes 2 hours or 2 days or 1 weeks it's fine, what matters is how much does it cost to do it and how much does it cost to maintain the legal entity, and to do the filings, etc.)
dotandgtfo 1y ago
> I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. Are you arguing that 27 different sets of laws was a better approach? That these countries would just gladly lie down and never regulate the societal-level harms, systemic lawbreaking, and massive infringement of privacy across the board? I don't think so. For a moment the political system in the US seemed to get to the same conclusions as the EU under Bidens FTC and anti-trust cases. But the conclusions of that remain to be seen.
- FinnLobsien 1y ago
  The problem is that those 27 sets of laws basically still exist. Regulation is certainly not the only reason. Fragmentation is another massive problem. There's the EU-Inc initiative that the EU has basically made pointless (by wanting to introduce 27 new standards, not one, just making things more complex). Note that I'm not arguing for zero regulation.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    This keeps coming up over and over on HN. There are no 27 sets of laws to do business in Europe. It's not perfect, but it's a SINGLE MARKET, if you comply to the EU regulation you are allowed to sell everywhere. It does however not absolve you from additional local market demands to be competitive, i.e. local language support, service infrastructure, etc. For example: Miele is one of the largest washing machine manufacturers in Europe. They have their front panel translated to local languages for most of its markets. You can sell a washing machine with a English front panel, but you won't be able to compete in e.g. the German/Italian/French market
    - immibis 1y ago
      I heard they make quality products that last 20 years and don't use WiFi, too. Maybe they should try exporting to America. If true, it's indicative of some American vs European ideology. American tech bro soyjaks keep screaming criticisms about things like GDPR preventing remote-brickable wifi washing machines, and European bases nordic mans are like "bro those things are crap, why would I want them"?
davedx 1y ago
> It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. The DMA (that this article is about) applies to gatekeepers (massive companies like big tech), not mom and pop startups
- klabb3 1y ago
  It doesn’t even apply to megacorps generally. The DMA applies to Core Platform Services – meaning app stores, browsers, etc – that are evaluated as gatekeepers individually. The same company can have provide CPSs, with different status. For instance, Google is a designated gatekeeper of Android (OS) and Google Maps (Intermediation), but not Gmail. So the DMA won’t dictate anything related to Gmail, even if Google is a gatekeeper in other areas.
surgical_fire 1y ago
Massive companies typically smother small players anyway, especially in unregulated environments. > Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead. Does this actually happen or are you just making shit up? Is Temu exempt of any packaging requirements?
isodev 1y ago
> regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply This is a very inaccurate view. I’ve worked with multiple SMEs and no such “complexities” ever become operational challenges. Even as a indie developer, my compliance is a default provided I’m not trying to do something shady. Looking into the EU regulations, in most cases what they want you to do (or not do) is common sense.
- Loic 1y ago
  Same experience, from startup to large multinational EU companies. The biggest headaches/issues are normally local regulations (country specific or even more local). The EU directives are more frameworks with a lot of flexibility and well grounded on common sense + expertise. How the different countries implement them in their own laws (with their own historical laws) is a different story.
- drexlspivey 1y ago
  This indie dev begs to differ https://x.com/levelsio/status/1833126426142179653 https://x.com/levelsio/status/1833126426142179653
  - xandrius 1y ago
    That indie dev got contacted by the government for feedback. Not a bad sign, in my opinion.
  - youngtaff 1y ago
    There’s some definite nope’s in there — excluding small companies from GDPR, exempting them from corporation tax on profits etc
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    Most of that is adjacent to regulation, and it's more or less asking for exemption from regulation for smaller companies. Which the EU already does a lot of: generally smaller companies have much lower regulatory regulatory requirements. But the threshold proposed is silly: you do not need to be anywhere near a $10 million company for complying with the listed regulations to be a pretty trivial amount of work. I do suggest reading these things, for the most part they can usually be sorted with a bit of paperwork, the kind of thing someone who's reasonably on it can bang out in a day or so. (Especially software: hardware can be a bit more of a pain, but that's because of important shit like not starting fires or electrocuting someone)
exe34 1y ago
> continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex To be fair, the regulations are there because companies are out-of-control paperclip maximisers. For example, the cookie banner didn't have to be obnoxious - companies choose to comply maliciously to adhere to the text and shit over the spirit of the regulations, which have to become more and more verbose and explicit.
ajross 1y ago
> regulatory environment so complex The DMA really isn't particularly complex though. And what complexity it has only becomes complex once you're a manager of a whole consumer platform (a "gatekeeper" in its jargon). To wit: your point is backwards, the DMA is structured such that the only companies that need to bear its burdens are "big tech or Europe's legacy players". If you're a little company wanting to add a paid app store to your Tiny AI Robot Virtual Experience or whatever, go nuts. The DMA absolutely won't stop you.

planb 1y ago

As a former European, I agree with your first statement. I love that the EU is taking this seriously, and I like how they introduced the "gatekeeper" term to apply regulations only to the "big ones" and not small businesses (even though I don't agree with many of the individual laws in the DMA). That said, you can't argue that this isn't protectionist - we simply don't have any gatekeepers here, so if we're fair the DMA is only hitting international competitors (except Spotify maybe?)

jeroenhd 1y ago
> we simply don't have any gatekeepers here Booking would love that to be the case. And last I heard, Zalando is currently fighting the EU over having to comply with the DMA.
- planb 1y ago
  No, this is under the DSA (digital services act), not the DMA. The DSA tells platforms how they must keep users safe and transparent, the DMA tells the largest gatekeepers how they must behave toward competitors and business users.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    Booking is on the DMA designated gatekeepers list: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en It looks like you're right that Zalando is on the DSA list, though.
Y-bar 1y ago
European companies I could find which the European Commission has taken action against with the Digital Services Act: Zalando has three enforcement actions against them since June 2023 Booking.com has one Technius (mainly streaming) has two WebGroup CZ (Adult entertainment) has five
- planb 1y ago

giingyui 1y ago

Europe is centre right? That is an interesting claim. I guess someone’s right is someone else’s left.

xandrius 1y ago
Where would you place it? I'm curious because centre-right is quite spot on.
- giingyui 1y ago
  Socially and economically left wing. Progressive socially and interventionist economically.
  - cess11 1y ago
    Is this a joke? The EU is the product of large industrialists institutionalising their liberalist, capitalist values as an international bureaucracy. It hardly cares about unions beyond what the ECHR and ILO treaties demands, i.e. it's obviously not left wing. If it was inherently left wing it wouldn't have the kind of parliament it has, but rather something like Yugoslavia or the DDR did. It's also not conservative, hence why that movement has had to bolt on militarisation and stuff like Frontex.
    - giingyui 1y ago
      It’s not the eighties anymore. The world has moved on. You have to look at things from the perspective of the present. Forget Yugoslavia.
      - saubeidl 1y ago
        Yugoslavia was the perfect economic model. Forgetting it would be doing the world a disservice.
        cess11 1y ago

vegabook 1y ago

I wish people would stop comparing a stock (market cap) with a flow (GDP).

ksec 1y ago
That is the whole point, to make company much bigger than they actually are and shift the power back to smaller player, in this case the state and GDP. If you compare annual revenue to GDP all of a sudden these so called maegacrop are tiny.
andruby 1y ago
Can you also expand on why? Especially in this case I do feel like it’s an (imperfect) proxy for power they wield.
- RReverser 1y ago
  Because one is annual, and the other is just total. The equivalent of GDP for corporations would be annual revenue.
- Andrew_nenakhov 1y ago
  The same reason you don't compare speed with distance. Distance is meters, speed is distance per the unit of time, meters / seconds, m/s. Likewise, market cap is measured in monetary units, dollars, euros, etc., while GDP is measured in money per the unit of time: $XXXX / year.

tobias3 1y ago

I'd argue that it doesn't go far enough at this point. There are imaginable scenarios now where the US uses AWS/Microsoft like China currently uses rare earth exports or even further and AWS/Microsoft + Android/iOS are critical infrastructure. Having some "sovereign cloud" etc. won't help since this needs continuous monitoring and improvements from the mothership. Merely doing monopoly regulation won't help. We have to actually destroy the monopolies.

lowwave 1y ago
Good luck with that. Even when Standard Oil has being broken up, it just resulted in a bunch of smaller but more profitable companies. Following the breakup of Standard Oil, the government created the Oil Division of the US Fuel Administration and the Federal Oil Conservation Board, effectively making the oil industry a government-protected monopoly. With the JEDI contracts ect that is basically what is happening to Google, MS and AWS.
- tobias3 1y ago
  I very much doubt that the US would allow EU institution to break up the US tech companies as they see fit. So this is not a viable approach (even if it would work). The approach would be to gradually limit EU market access till there are other alternatives. This has worked for e.g. China. The German defense force uses Google cloud instances for their "sovereign cloud". I very much doubt that if there were a German Hyper-scaler that it would have similar market access to contracts such as JEDI. Having a buy European requirement there is pretty much a no-brainer IMO.