Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU • Hacker News Board

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#61

Post by levosmetalo » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 9:36 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #49

levosmetalo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what exactly is wrong with that? As long as the price / performance is not totally off, I'd always rather pay a bit more for a slightly worse service if I know VAT money will stay in my city, tax will be paid in my state, salaries would be paid in the same job market where I am, and the profit would be invested in my neighborhood. There are local monopolies everywhere, even in the USA. And they are protected by t…

As long as the price / performance is not totally off, I'd always rather pay a bit more for a slightly worse service if I know VAT money will stay in my city, tax will be paid in my state, salaries would be paid in the same job market where I am, and the profit would be invested in my neighborhood. Nobody prevents you from buying local right now, so that's a red herring. If you want to force others to do the same, yo…

> Nobody prevents you from buying local right now, so that's a red herring. If you want to force others to do the same, you should pay their increase as well. Are you prepared to do that?

That's what governments and elections are for. People vote, government make it more complicated for foreign companies to compete on the local market. People pay a bit more for for a bit worse service, and tax rate for everyone gets lower because of reduced unemployment benefits and increased tax income. Everyone locally gets it a bit better.

I'm not saying that one or the other option is clearly better. There are many ways in which "fully open", "fully closed" and "somewhere in between" policies can fail or succeed. It's always matter of balance, but favouring local companies is not bad per se.

When I go to vote, I vote for the government and policies that will make my life and life of the members of my community better, not the government that would make the world better in total by making it a bit worse for us. It doesn't work that way.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#62

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 9:41 AM UTC

confluence wrote: post #60

eru wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't follow. How did Google rip anyone off here?

Scrapped the data most likely

Well, countries have generally decided you can't copyright factual information, and they did that for a reason.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#63

Post by flexie » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 9:48 AM UTC

richmarr wrote: post #44

donkeyd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is always fretting about how they need to create their own Silicon Valley but it's easy to do, kick out the Americans! You'll have your own Baidu, Tencent and Alibabas in no time. People seem to forget that Europe is not a country. Europe does not have a single uniting language. What happens, is that every country starts their own smaller versions and they stay mostly within that country. If they want to mov…

I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.

In very few ways Europe is a homogenous market, and certainly not in the search business or e-commerce.

French search in French, Germans in German, Danes in Danish, Spaniards in Spanish, Italians in Italian, Dutch in Dutch etc. Then, if your local language doesn't give you good results, you default to English.

Online shopping is mostly a local thing with Amazon as the prominent exception. Even in the market for plane tickets local websites dominate, meaning that a French person travelling from Paris to Berlin is likely to use a different website than a German guy travelling from Berlin to France. Again, the exceptions seem to be mostly American.

European countries even have their own payment solutions.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#64

Post by confluence » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 9:50 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #62

confluence wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrapped the data most likely

Well, countries have generally decided you can't copyright factual information, and they did that for a reason.

I didn't say it was illegal.

They just didn't do the groundwork.

And I'm sure copying maps is illegal.

Place information? Hmmm. Maybe it should be too.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#65

Post by weddpros » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 9:56 AM UTC

For a long time, countries agreed that free-trade was the best way to avoid another war. Europe was created as an economic region first, to avoid another war.

But today I'm afraid Europe suffers memory loss.

They're using coercion against another country (always the same one, the USA) for ideological reasons... which is the very definition of war.

The fact they're citing money as the reason only makes it more frightening. Prosperous countries avoid war and favor trade instead, if possible.

As a European citizen, I can witness the anti-american mindset: it's growing, nurtured by press and politicians. Don't think "it's not the USA, it's Google/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook": they actually cite the USA all day long until Google is a synonym for the USA in people's mind.

A quick check with the first article I can find in my Google newsfeed: in the french press, about Apple Music, the article starts with "Le géant américain de l'informatique Apple" (The american IT giant/behemoth Apple)

The internet is an amazing promoter of free-trade, so unsurprisingly it's the perfect target for Europe.

Please don't call it a conspiracy theory: it's not one, because I hope I'm wrong ;-)

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#66

Post by tomp » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 9:57 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #62

confluence wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrapped the data most likely

Well, countries have generally decided you can't copyright factual information, and they did that for a reason.

That's not copyright. You can still enforce a licence on the data you provide. E.g. Exchanges do this all the time with market price data.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#67

Post by mrweasel » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 9:58 AM UTC

Vespasian wrote: post #58

mrweasel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to register a company in each EU country we want to ship stuff to, otherwise we would quickly hit the sales tax limits in each country. From our perspective the EU common marked is pretty much just a pipe dream. Being able to start a business in one EU country and just automatically have access to all of the 500million EU citizens would be awesome, but right now that not how it works.

Just out of curiosity why do you need to register a company in every country (assuming you are US based since there is no sales tax in the EU anywhere ;) ). I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data (e.g. the customers country)? Or do you mean that you have to p…

>I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data

I think that only works if you have limited business, but I'm not sure. I believe the problem is that we're in a country with 25% VAT, but if we want to charge our German customer only 19%, we need to do that via a German company, otherwise we would have to charge them the 25%, leaving us uncompetitive (6% is more than our entire profit for some products).

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#68

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 10:10 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #66

Dylan16807 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, countries have generally decided you can't copyright factual information, and they did that for a reason.

That's not copyright. You can still enforce a licence on the data you provide. E.g. Exchanges do this all the time with market price data.

Sure, you can make licenses, but if someone gets a copy outside of the licensed channel, you have no recourse.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#69

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 10:13 AM UTC

confluence wrote: post #64

Dylan16807 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, countries have generally decided you can't copyright factual information, and they did that for a reason.

I didn't say it was illegal. They just didn't do the groundwork. And I'm sure copying maps is illegal. Place information? Hmmm. Maybe it should be too.

>I'm sure copying maps is illegal.

You can't directly copy the artistry, things like label sizing and placement, but you can copy every road and city.

>I didn't say it was illegal.

I'm not commenting directly on the legality. I'm trying to refer to the deeper reasons that lead it to be legal. If it's truly ripping someone off to copy facts that they painstakingly collected through their sweat of the brow, why is there a specific exemption from copyright?

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#70

Post by forloop » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 10:14 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

I would hate for Google to leave the UK. The aggregated lost productivity would, presumably, be massive! And I'm part of that aggregate.

If the EU, or UK want to improve their tech chops, they should allocate more resources to the brightest of their respective populations.

If the UK scrapped the war on drugs and gave the billions which are saved/earned through taxation to people who tested as high IQ (say > 139) to invest in STEM activities, what would happen?

I'm not in the set of high-IQ individuals which I propose giving additional resources to; but it's clear in a positive sum game I would benefit greatly from their invention (creation of new products/services) and innovation (improvements of current products/services).

Unfortunately, there's a recent fetish for equal outcome for all (vs. even equal opportunity). As soon as there's equal output from all: that'll makes sense!