91–100 of 279 posts
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But where are the examples of the valued products in large use? Let's see.. Spotify ok, Mojang hmmmhmmm.... Rovio? Outside of Spotify, what do I use on a daily basis as an American that's a valued EU-based company?
Not going to take sides but Europe does have innovation. It’s just not necessarily commercial or they have been bought out. JetBrains, Minecraft, Python, Linux, HTTP/HTML, ARM, DeepMind.
I'm not an economist or specialist, but if I were to guess where the tech[1] world is moving towards, I'd look at established and mature industries like automobile manufacturing and trading. Or, to stay in the trade of intangibles (that is, services), Finance. I don't think there will be 3 or 4 internets, I believe that little by little each country will have its own internet and barriers to connection similar to how goods/services flow today: sometimes freely, sometimes not. This brings huge implications to current assumptions of growth for tech companies.
At the same time I believe certain standards will be built, and agreements made, that will allow what we understand as the Internet today to exist between some or many jurisdictions, just like there are places where you can easily import cars or consume international financial services. In other words, I don't see Americans being blocked from reading Euro blogs or something like that.
In the non tech world, roughly speaking, we went from protectionism to (varying degrees of) free trade, while in the tech world we will go from free trade to (varying degrees of) free trade. A leveling of expectations, if you will.
[1] When I say tech I mean mostly sv-like internet-based companies. Hardware always followed the same pattern as everything else, with some changes in the near future due to concerns about backdoors and privacy.
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Does yours? Why are you so aggressive? Where does the need to call him out comes from?
I asked straightforward questions. I wasn't aggressive in what I said. I did call him out on his self-professed disappointment with the state of affairs which seems to be blaming the tech talent out of India for not working on solving fundamental issues. This sort of punting of responsibility for building India is common among Indian youth. The thought being - someone else is supposed to sacrifice their career and li…
First, I'm not blaming the tech talent here. There is a difference between expressing disappointment and outright blaming. I understand that we're still in early stages of tech innovation. And there are entrepreneurs out there who are trying hard to solve fundamental issues.What I was suggesting that we can do much more if we given our talent pool. Read about the founder of ZOHO and how he has moved back in his village and trying to create job opportunities there in the tech sector. That's one way of thinking about it.
Second, I believe in the idea of building India with the power of technology not with any nationalist agenda. And being in the tech sector for a handful of years, I've plans of doing something in the mentioned areas in coming years.
Third, it's not about sacrificing one's career or life for the betterment of the country. If someone is working, paying taxes and contributing in the economy, that itself is enough. And entrepreneurship is about solving problems be it a problem in the urban economy or the rural economy. But entrepreneurship aligned more with large scale issues create large scale impact. We don't have to go back much in history to see that. :)
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UX nightmares are not the fault of cookie laws, they're the fault of companies that don't want to respect users. If the companies behaved more ethically, there'd have been little impetus to even create such laws.
"The system is perfect; it's the humans that are flawed!"
The UX being bad is a _conscious decision_ by the website owners
I enjoy Ben's articles, but this one has way too many opinions, and I'm not convinced his stance of Europe is fair. For the Privacy Shield matter - "The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) basically ruled that US law is too weak to protect EU citizens' data to the extent EU law demands." We know this - Mr. Zuckerberg asked for more regulation if anything. Regulation from Europe is protection for the consume…
> If anything, Europe is creating a more sustainable framework for private companies and government intervention. Cross the moat, and you don't have to worry about castles. Just build a good product. That's what I'm reading. So it's just a market with restrictions for outside companies? I think the point of the article was the absence vision for Europe to generate its own compelling products and companies that spread…
I'd argue that the majority of consumers will take anything for free and not think about the consequences. Very much like an innocent child getting free food samples. Private businesses have no incentive to correct themselves.
At the end of the day, if I was Europe, as a government, I care less that my citizens can easily start a businesses of their own. Taxes are great and all, but it matters more to me that whatever option our citizens do go with (even if overseas) is in their best interest.
It's not about becoming a super power and spreading across the world. It's ensuring that your citizens are safe, protected and well-looked after even at the expense of increased starting costs. It's a better long-term win for the consumer.
I wonder what will be the impact for blockchain- crypto-tevh adoption as these "splinternets" (regionets?) become reality.
I'm not saying it will be reality, but as Ben states I also sense forces that are adversarial to this "wild west" Internet.
I'm sure there's millions of blockchain transactions broadcasted or mined in China (inside GFW) but, could further tightening of control become an important obstacle to new decentralized networks?
Jio also collects (or said it would collect) information about its users and their habits through traffic analysis and deep packet inspection. This would feed its ambitions in its other ventures in retail, entertainment and other market segments. India does not have a data privacy or data protection law. So this is all fair game for a company that's close to the government and is good at lobbying.
I feel like every Stratechery piece on Europe is just plain bashing because Ben Thompson is allergic to regulation. Somehow extrapolating from one Indian company, Jio, to some sort of global vision of an internet while completely disregarding the European continent (which in pure market value obviously still is large) just seems like bad faith. Every time I read one of these pieces about growth, growth and growth I'm…
But he actually makes a very specific point:
> This Internet, though, feels like the worst of all possible outcomes. On one hand, large U.S. tech companies are winners, at least relative to everyone else: yes, all of the regulatory red tape increases costs (and, for targeted advertising, may reduce revenue), but the impact is far greater on would-be competitors. To put it in allegorical terms, the E.U. is restricting the size of the castle even as it dramatically increases the moat.
He's saying that under Europe's model, giant US tech companies are going to be even more locked in to dominance. The market will be less competitive, and have less room for European-grown companies to rise up. It's pretty hard to see how any regulations Europe might impose are going to substantially ameliorate the harmful economic effects of US companies dominating tech, and Europe's economy being relegated to the 20th century.