Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

es.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 107 posts

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#61

Post by ivan_gammel »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #44
ivan_gammel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... Not all services popular in Europe are US-based. Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1, Takeaway.com are just some of the big names, that lots of people in Europe are using on daily basis. Here in Berlin there are lots of…

Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1, Takeaway.com I'm not from Europe or America and the only one I've heard of is 'spotify'. Are you really denying that the EU is well behind the US in terms of software though? I mean that's immediately obvious to any casual observer. Not sure why people are so defensive about it.

European IT industry is certainly behind in terms of scale and penetration of global markets (the reasons are explained here in other comments, including fragmentation of the EU market and harder access to VC money), but I don't think it is behind in software engineering (especially considering numerous offices of American giants and EU aquisitions like Skype) and European companies can easily dominate on the local markets. All mentioned companies are quite successful and visible in EU (e.g. check the revenue of Zalando). And of course there are many other, classic software companies like SAP, TomTom, HERE etc.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#62

Post by skookumchuck »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #54
skookumchuck wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at a 30 year trend in, say, the S&P 500 vs the European stock index, suggests Europe would do much better if they started emulating US business.

Would that emulation be prioritizing shareholder returns over everything else (those profits have come at the expense of the environment and US worker pay and benefits)? As an American, I implore Europe to not make the same mistakes we have in the name of unbridled capitalism. Defend the quality of life you have that we foolishly relinquished.

> those profits have come at the expense of the environment and US worker pay and benefits

Have they? I don't think that's clear at all.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#63

Post by ivan_gammel »

pmontra wrote: post #17
ivan_gammel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... Not all services popular in Europe are US-based. Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1, Takeaway.com are just some of the big names, that lots of people in Europe are using on daily basis. Here in Berlin there are lots of…

As a single European datapoint: I know Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB and used all of them except AirBnB. I never used any of Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1. I know Flixbus and Spotify. I probably heard about Zalando. Asos, Xing, Klarna, Auto1 are totally new to me. I googled them and actually I knew Xing and forgot it, it's hard to compete with LinkedIn. Klarna moved to Columbu…

I'm not surprised people on HN don't know popular fashion brands or German used-car matketplaces, but if you are not sure they are big, check their revenues. Zalando is bigger than AirBnB or Instagram, Auto1 and Asos earn more than Dropbox. Brand recognition is not the only sign of success.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#64

Post by eyko »

pmontra wrote: post #17
ivan_gammel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... Not all services popular in Europe are US-based. Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1, Takeaway.com are just some of the big names, that lots of people in Europe are using on daily basis. Here in Berlin there are lots of…

As a single European datapoint: I know Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB and used all of them except AirBnB. I never used any of Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1. I know Flixbus and Spotify. I probably heard about Zalando. Asos, Xing, Klarna, Auto1 are totally new to me. I googled them and actually I knew Xing and forgot it, it's hard to compete with LinkedIn. Klarna moved to Columbu…

ASOS is my Amazon for cheap fashion. I've heard of Zalando (and have used them once) but they sort of compete for the same audience, and I just gravitate to what I'm used to.

I don't think Google could've been built in Europe, but as a European I certainly would love more European products in tech: one advantage is that Europeans think in localisation by default, and some American products start our being very USA centric.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#65

Post by ivan_gammel »

eyko wrote: post #64
pmontra wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a single European datapoint: I know Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB and used all of them except AirBnB. I never used any of Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1. I know Flixbus and Spotify. I probably heard about Zalando. Asos, Xing, Klarna, Auto1 are totally new to me. I googled them and actually I knew Xing and forgot it, it's hard to compete with LinkedIn. Klarna moved to Columbu…

ASOS is my Amazon for cheap fashion. I've heard of Zalando (and have used them once) but they sort of compete for the same audience, and I just gravitate to what I'm used to. I don't think Google could've been built in Europe, but as a European I certainly would love more European products in tech: one advantage is that Europeans think in localisation by default, and some American products start our being very USA ce…

Yandex is quite successful despite not being American, so a local search engine business in Western Europe would not be impossible (www and mp3 are European inventions, so could be the PageRank algorithm). Europe is more open to competition and American rivals usually have much more money for a blitzkrieg. It's more like competition of financial markets, than technology or business model.

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#66

Post by yourduskquibble »

dgut wrote: post #36
StavrosK wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Laws that put Europe behind the rest of the world in how easy it is to build online services It is, indeed, inconvenient to consider the rights of the users when building a service, especially when they aren't the ones who pay you for it. Still, I'm not sure it's such a bad idea.

Have you considered that users can think for themselves, that we might not have to spoon-feed them? :-)

Playing devil's advocate here (and I think like you) but you're in a minority group just by virtue of being on this site, the average end user that isn't you is really stupid about tech issues and wants "protection" (or some other self serving issue).

Thus, we get dumb laws by politicians so they can point to what they have done for the average user that has no understanding of how any of the internet works. The web of today for me has really just turned into a problem of critical mass. For example, Google Eternal September[1], early adopters (nerds) have been going through this problem on the internet for awhile, and I honestly feel like it's never going to get better for us.

C'est la vie.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#67

Post by aclsid »

Cort3z wrote: post #22
TekMol wrote: post #2

The web is becoming more and more fragmented. I wonder where this will lead to. Europe seems to fall behind the US at an accelerating pace. During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product la…

The EU says sorry for making Linux

Although I'm a big fan of Linus, it is unfair to say that he created the whole platform. I would argue that there is a big percentage of US contributed code to it and don't get me started on the GNU/Linux thing

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#68

Post by aclsid »

pilaf wrote: post #7

I think it should be noted that this is the entire Spanish language Wikipedia, not Spanish as in "from Spain", so this shutdown affects a lot of people (estimated 350 million native Spanish speakers worldwide). I haven't seen the community discussion that led to this decision, but assuming that it was democratically decided across collaborators from the entire Spanish-speaking world, I think gives the protest a lot m…

I don't think Wikipedia should be used for political activism like this, especially when one does not even live in the EU. I find this a bit offensive since if Europe ends up being a media dictatorship, why on earth do other people in the world have to endure the problems of that part of the world?

Re: Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law

#70

Post by sonnyblarney »

thecleaner wrote: post #10
TekMol wrote: post #2

The web is becoming more and more fragmented. I wonder where this will lead to. Europe seems to fall behind the US at an accelerating pace. During the last two decades, Europe already failed to take part in building the internet. Now Europeans all use US services. Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber... This was due to the culture of Europes entrepreneurs which is often "bureaucracy first, product la…

I never understood the lamentation of Europe not having an internet giant and I mean it as a question. Does it matter whether the companies are American ? I mean their economic contribution are taxes and jobs. Companies would pay as little taxes as is possible no matter where they are and regarding jobs if these companies find sufficient talent in Europe they would setup offices here (like Google is doing in Berlin).…

"Does it matter whether the companies are American ? "

Yes, a lot.

Taxes, industrial base, spin off jobs, etc. so many reasons.

Post reply on HN