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Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

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

#141

Post by est »

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.…

> what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies

My two cents:

1. Baidu has more market share than Google before Google left. 2. Google's chinese processing was bad before Kaifulee, but now Google's Chinese NLP is way better than rest of the world.

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

#142

Post by maldusiecle »

Surprisingly little talk here about the degree to which Google has abused its search market position in ways that push other players out. I would have expected more. Antitrust laws exist for a reason. If Google uses its dominance in search to stop better solutions from having a chance, it hurts everyone--consumers included, but startups especially. It's not just a matter of "protectionism," it's a matter of keeping the market open to innovation.

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

#144

Post by marcosdumay »

scott_s wrote: post #135
hueving wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around? They care about consumer freedom, that's why. What you are implying is that competition can never work and that people with a head start should be regulated away. It screws the consumer and there is no proof it works best in the long run. France is super protectionist but they aren't doing so well. In many cases, it just has knock on…

American trade laws do not hold consumer freedom sacred. America has lots of protectionist policies - including a related one on trucks: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/12/414029929/episo...

The US is one of the less protectionist countries in the world.

The fact is that we live in a kafkan place where everybody seems to think that letting consumers choose what they want to buy hurts them, that delivering goods make a country rich, but receiving payment makes it poorer, and that a government picking winners on every market is the best way to ensure competition.

You'll certainly see several protectionist policies at the US, what is extremely annoying, because they claim to be a completely open country. But the US is still one of the less protectionist ones.

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

#145

Post by marcosdumay »

levosmetalo wrote: post #37
JoshTriplett wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries have no problem banning the best technology so that the best local technology can win, even if it's worse, and even if the best technology did nothing wrong. It's easy enough to make up excuses for that after the fact. It would be nice if at least one such country could just blatantly state their motives up front to be judged on their merits: "We're choosing to prohibit a non-local company to encourage…

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…

> And what exactly is wrong with that?

What is wrong with that is that a local company will have to base their offerings on subpar components, and won't be able to compete externally.

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

#146

Post by mempko »

levosmetalo wrote: post #41
adventured wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't kick out the Americans without assuming dictatorship-like command powers over the entire EU economic zone. That only functions at all in China - to whatever mediocre extent it is functioning today - because that's a unified market, one country, under one leadership. Any attempt by Europe to try that, would destroy the European economy. Germany is hyper dependent on exports. The US eats most of its own dog f…

> Kick the Americans out? Ok, well now BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes are banned in the US. Germany just lost a huge part of its economy (look up the two biggest markets for their vehicles: the US and China). As someone living in a German city which is a world leading car manufacturing center, I would actually like to see the end of German auto industry. The whole German economic system is geared towards those big car ma…

Just as a warning, look at what happened to Detroit, when the auto industry left.

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

#147

Post by scott_s »

marcosdumay wrote: post #144
scott_s wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American trade laws do not hold consumer freedom sacred. America has lots of protectionist policies - including a related one on trucks: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/12/414029929/episo...

The US is one of the less protectionist countries in the world. The fact is that we live in a kafkan place where everybody seems to think that letting consumers choose what they want to buy hurts them, that delivering goods make a country rich, but receiving payment makes it poorer, and that a government picking winners on every market is the best way to ensure competition. You'll certainly see several protectionist…

By what metric are you claiming the US is less protectionist than most other nations? We have a lot of farm subsidies and tariffs and limitations in imports, and I have never heard any claim that the US somehow does significantly less than other nations.

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

#148

Post by jayvanguard »

wil421 wrote: post #131
jayvanguard wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of the problem is about the US and the NSA.

What about Chinese spying? Or the internet propaganda firms in Russia? The UK arguably has the worst domestic spying in the Western world. Rules need to be made on a global scale similar to the ICBM restrictions during the Cold War. These are not NSA issues its a global issue. What are the ROE for cyber attacks? There are much deeper issues beside the NSA reading my gmail, which I dont mind. What I do mind is undermi…

> What about Chinese spying?

Absolutely a huge concern going forward but right now they don't have anywhere near the reach of the US.

> Or the internet propaganda firms in Russia?

On a completely different scale from the US.

> The UK arguably

Their domestic spying is just as atrocious but internationally they are just tools of the NSA.

When one actor is 10x the size of all other actors combined globally it isn't out of line to put the majority of the scrutiny on them and the companies they have deep influence on.

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

#149

Post by aoeuasdf1 »

jaawn wrote: post #118

I have seen several comments that basically say "Google puts customers first, but this goes against the EU's strong preference to protect local workers." It is not "customers over workers" it is "customers over local corporations with less developed products". Google has offices in 40 different countries ( https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/ ). Workers could easily go work for Google without moving to Ame…

Well said. Google is hardly an American company anymore. Their EU workers pay EU taxes.

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

#150

Post by bduerst »

rtpg wrote: post #31
biokoda wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term expense of the citizens. Nurturing local business is a long term benefit strategy. Protectionism is how every nation on the planet developed. Why are Americans driving South Korean/Japanese cars and not the other way around? Because the south koreans and the japanese imposed large tariffs on car imports and the US did not. Their car companies had free range on their own turf. Which gave them time and money…

The US practices a huge amount of protectionism as well. The reason that the Americans are driving Japanese cars is that they were built in the US (which happens because of the protectionism). Ford doesn't build cars in Japan. The end result is good for most people (consumers get more choice, jobs are still in the country).

You're forgetting the bailouts for the American auto industry and the ghost town known as Detroit. Protectionism stagnates technological development because of the artificially stymied competition.

Once the major players from hyper-competitive markets inevitably enter the protected market, then they outperform the resident industry there. Protectionism props up non-competitive markets, which is disruptive for citizens when they fall down.

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