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Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it. Your ethics ca
by jstummbillig 4mo ago
Here is an idea for a EU product: Build something that is great, and make it so good, that everyone, including US citizens, will want to use it.
Your ethics can still be great, but don't make me feel like your product won't be. If you have to market "Europe" or privacy it probably won't be.
- wqaatwt 4mo agoThat doesn’t work when the incumbents are so entrenched. You’d need to go the Chinese route and just ban everything to give the full market to domestic alternatives.
- ftmootnomoat 4mo ago[flagged]
- kingofmen 4mo agoIndeed they do. And as a result they have rather more of it than European busybodies. :)
- ftmootnomoat 4mo ago[flagged]
- 1123581321 4mo agoStay where? Successful and helpful?
- tomhow 4mo agoIf you're going to use the word, just type the word. We don't need grawlix here. But also, don't comment like this on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deadbabe 4mo agoHow about wines, cheeses, olive oils
- dotcoma 4mo agoOr fast trains you can only dream of in the US, or Airbus that is kicking Boeing’s ass…
- wilg 4mo agoAmerica has world-class wines, cheeses, and olive oils.
- tredre3 4mo agoAmerica can make those those just as well as the Europeans, that much is true. But world-class implies renowned and nobody outside of America wants those American products. Hell, Americans who care about quality in those categories will favor the European option (whether it's based on merits or not isn't relevant, it's just how it is, it just shows that world-class means nothing).
- dgellow 4mo agoThat's definitely the main issue. We will end up with a really neat technical stack, a few products built on it for their 100 users each, and it will be forgotten in a few years...
- mawadev 4mo agoThe problem is impressumspflicht, you have to add your full contact address plus name to a website you host, inviting all sorts of trolls on the internet to ruin your life. No thanks.
- aquariusDue 4mo agoSame problem with the Play Store/Console if you're registering as an individual instead of a company to publish an app.
- drnick1 4mo agoYou can register domain names anonymously. Sure, you will be asked for contact details (WHOIS), but no one verifies them.
- oaiey 4mo agoYou can be suite in some European countries if you have a web page without an impressum and latest your domain registration will have your credit card to track you. Obviously, not all cases can be traced back.
- redrove 4mo agoNo it’s not. You’re generalizing, DACH != the entire EU.
- jstummbillig 4mo agoThe most European reason to not do something.
- moffkalast 4mo agoDoesn't work. As soon as something great appears, US VCs immediately buy it and move it to the bay area. A fair few of the products you think are US grown probably aren't. If not, a competitor appears that is less constrained by regulations and can move faster, taking over most of the market instead.
- wbl 4mo agoUS companies obey EU law when working in the EU. And there is a reason VC does not exist in Europe namely capital markets being divided.
- vidarh 4mo agoHaving spent years working for a VC and having raised rounds from VC's in Europe multiple times over the last 26 years, that it doesn't exist is news to me.
- vovavili 4mo agoI am not aware of anything on the level of YCombinator or Sequoia Capital over here in Europe.
- vidarh 4mo agoThat's a very different thing from VC not existing.
- wqaatwt 4mo agoIt’s mostly pennies relative to the US, though? Obviously nobody implied it literally doesn’t exist.
- vidarh 4mo agoIt's pennies relative to the Bay Area. E.g. London alone is the 3rd large source of VC capital by region worldwide, 1/10th of the Bay Area, but 2/3rd of New York in second place. Every US region outside of the Bay Area is "mostly pennies" relative to the Bay Area too - the Bay Area accounts for 2/3s of the total venture capital in the US. But that's still also somewhat misleading in that a lot of the bug US funds both have a lot of foreign LP's and invest a lot outside the US, and the same pattern holds within the US, so, sure it's pennies in terms of the location of the fund managers. When you instead look at valuation or invested capital by recipients, it's still lopsided but much less so. You find the same in Europe - London is far more dominant as a location of fund managers than it is as a location of LP's in the funds, as well as the location of companies invested in or valuation.
- keiferski 4mo agoYeah, basically no successful American social media company advertises itself as being American. And its users do not think of it as "an American company," they just think of it as its own thing.
- benrutter 4mo agoThat might be true for social media, but there are 100s of American brands that make a large point of being thought of as an "American company" or "American made" goods.
- vovavili 4mo agoThis kind of messaging is overtly Republican-coded.
- znpy 4mo agoFrankly it's always been democrats that have been painting stuff like that as "republican-coded" (and frankly it's giving a lot of people fatigue).
- rndm77be9f 4mo agoDoes the average non-HN type in Europe hold comparable pan-European or even plain National Pride? I think here of the German national relationship with their own flag and feel skeptical of a comparison here.
- vovavili 4mo agoFrom my observation both studying and working abroad in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Finland and Latvia, people almost always tend to cluster along ethnic or linguistic lines in another European country. This stays invariant even if the command of English is perfect. Pan-European national identity is very much non-existent, ethno-lingustic patriotism very much is alive.
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- rayiner 4mo agoIs there room for European companies to be the “Hermes of the Internet?” The American web is ad-optimized slop for the masses. Can the europeans provide higher quality experiences for more discerning buyers? I’m thinking about Tik Tok. When it was Chinese, my feed was stuff I actually wanted to watch. A lot of it was Chinese propaganda, but it was stuff that was pleasant, like people cooking in Chinese villages. Now it’s just rage bait and engagement farming.
- hiAndrewQuinn 4mo agoDepending on how hardcore enforcement of the upcoming Cybersecurity Resilience Act is, that might(?) push EU products very slightly towards this luxury pricing power on the margin. But on the whole I think you're dreaming, Ray. I can't imagine a single case of a successful luxury software product. (Apple is premium mediocre at best, doesn't count.)
- rayiner 4mo agoYou’re probably right i’m just thinking out loud. It is interesting that software has resisted quality-based segmentation, something that exists in almost every other type of product.
- davedigerati 4mo agovery interesting thought experiment here. I wonder how much it would take in a monthly subscription to offset the money they make in ads? picturing an Instagram without drivel and the crap and the manipulative behavior, that I would pay for simply to escape for 15 minutes. Curate the good content, heck create AI content I don't care I'm there to just mentally check out for a bit. Time lock it based on my prefs so that it respects me as a human being, doesn't try to feed off of me as a data source and I'll pay for that. I agree with you why is no one doing this? I can hear an argument about economies of scale, that it's just not worth the hassle, big guys too entrenched, but isn't that what we're all here to do... create new ways to disrupt?!?
- 4mo ago
- warumdarum 4mo agoHave you tried wire card? Its really good! Best payment system i ever used! Bought my villa in moscow with it...
- oaiey 4mo agoThe key part of European projects is not their quality or greatness. They do not think big.
- bluegatty 4mo agoTotally valid point - but there are a lot of other strategic consideration. Especially with 'Social' there are network externalizations like 'critical mass' - that actually compounds across a lot of things. No European country given size and language is going to be able to create something that resonates as well as the American variation beyond the critical mass needed, at least naturally. If 'French Facebook' started at one of the 'Grande Ecoles' it would have grown much more slowly, and maybe never moved out of being French centric and therefore not gone beyond borders. Without the 'momentum' that doesn't attract investors, doesn't make employees want to work 'late nights for the big IPO payoff' etc.. And there are so many other related conventions, such as capitol markets, public markets, so many issues. So - in order to overcome those limitations there may have to be a lot of strategic thinking and manoeuvring. Given that Europe took 4 years to adjust to a nation literally invading it ... well ... I wouldn't hold my breath. There are some winning opportunities: government procurement is powerful but Euros are afraid to negotiate hard with MS Goog etc.. There's a lot of money involved, forcing issues on privacy is entirely possible. Same for local content, some degree of decentralization. Requiring government actors to use 'Euro Mastadon' or whatever - it means school, students, parents come abard and then you have 'critical mass'. Requiring 'open doc format' means you can break the MS Office monopoly. Requiring 'Linux First' on every IT procurement decision - or even 'Open Soruce First' so local city council must give an excuse for why they are not using 'Approved Euro-Linux Variations' etc.. Lots of things.
- znpy 4mo ago> Requiring government actors to use 'Euro Mastadon' or whatever - it means school, students, parents come abard and then you have 'critical mass'. Not really. Reality is that people (eg: students) will have the "euro mastodon" (or whatever) AND the other social media accounts, and will drop the "euro mastodon" when not legally enforced anymore (eg: when finishing school). > Requiring 'open doc format' If you're talking about OpenDocument, it's not european really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument - It was originally built by Sun Microsystems, a very american company (RIP).
- bluegatty 4mo ago
- dutchCourage 4mo agoI don't think making a good product is enough. X is still prevalent despite Musk's actions both as a public person and as X's owner. The alternatives, be it Bluesky or Threads, are fine to use, yet people aren't moving. There's no way we'll be able to compete against Google or Meta in any meaningful way if we can't even get people out of X. Even more so because I'd argue that a good product is a little more boring than the ones that are currently at the top.
- jstummbillig 4mo agoNo, it's not enough. In your case it's not even anything: Being a second mover and copying the incumbent without the benefit of the existing user base does not make a good product to begin with.
- cadamsdotcom 4mo agoAh but for some reason that was missing from the principles. It is the ONLY thing that matters. Being European is a nice boost on the feelgood factor, if people even know. Anyone who ranks that above product quality is a minority - that’s why this has ~400 signatures not 4 million.
- wqaatwt 4mo agoThe product “quality” seems hardly relevant for social network services? Only the user base matters, otherwise Google Plus would have won against FB..
- cadamsdotcom 4mo agoIt’s a hygiene factor. You won’t get a user base with a worse product. With a product that’s good enough or maybe better, at least the chances aren’t a guaranteed zero :)
- doener 4mo agoI would have subscribed to that before Trump‘s second term. Nowadays for many Europeans great product is not a necessary feature to choose European over American.