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

EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 352 posts

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#241

Post by imtringued »

88840-8855 wrote: post #63
justoreply wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

several people still remember the Stasi and they don't want a state controlled app to monitor their movement. If you want your app to have the biggest installation base (without asking for a mandatory installation) you can't ask for user location, with it enabled fewer people will install it

... the same people that shop on amazon, use "payback" (a shopping monitoring system), post crap on facebook and enjoy google's personalisation. Please, mate, this is just populism what you are doing there.

Not everyone shops on amazon but everyone would have to install a government mandated app. You're overgeneralizing every human.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#242

Post by ajmurmann »

amelius wrote: post #85
bsaul wrote: post #6

As a european, i still think those kind of measures are trying to cure the symptoms by throwing huge pile of cash, rather that fix the core issue : that the private sector in europe is currently unable to produce GAFA-sized companies in the IT sector. My intuition is that once again the money will be grabbed by existing big companies that proved unable to innovate, but are the best at capturing public fundings. EDIT…

The EU just needs an investor climate similar to the US. The only problem is that investors like the idea of cornering markets, which, due to regulation, is harder in the EU.

Another problem is that the needed investments are about similar, but the expected market is much smaller. For to language barriers we are really talking over a dozen separate markets. All these languages are killing the EU as a market. I'm German, but would always start a company in the US and not even consider starting in the EU for this reason even if everything else was equal.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#243

Post by read_if_gay_ »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #222
WanderPanda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What afraids me is, that here in Germany nobody seems to care anymore. The big numbers are just thrown around and everyone (especially the younger generation) has lost any sense as the media is just cheering along.

I wish I could upvote you more. This is what I noticed in Germany as well. The government keeps tooting their own horn on how in every statistic they're the best in Europe and the media parrots that while the younger generations just takes it for granted and doesn't bother questioning the poor decisions the government makes while they spend the public tax money like drunken sailors because hey, "we're Europe's no. 1,…

I agree that the waste of taxpayer money in Germany is beyond comprehension (while they do take utmost care when it comes to taxing you) and as a young German myself I also agree that many young people just don't question the media, if they get involved in politics at all. But I also know many who do and they've mostly just given up on the country. Because emigration aside, what are you going to do?

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#244

Post by nemo44x »

fvdessen wrote: post #229
nemo44x wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s cultural. It’s really hard to get investors to invest in things that aren’t a guarantee. Most potential billion dollar companies. Investors in the USA are fine taking risk investing in them. In the EU you don’t find that culture. Could part of it be regulatory in terms of tax write offs? I’m not sure.

I don't buy the culture argument after looking at the success of China. I think it's a matter of having a big enough internal market to be able to compete with the American monopolies.

EU is as large as the USA.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#245

Post by user5994461 »

PunchTornado wrote: post #209
fcantournet wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a stupid question. First of all, none of the GAFA were actually started as Cloud infrastructure providers. So the question is not why isn't Europe creating big Cloud Infrastructure companies, one could argue that the biggest "pure-player" in Cloud is OVH which is European. If anything it's the (insanely lax and pro-monopoly) American regulatory environment that has the biggest impact on the creation of big C…

It doesn't help that the best engineers work for GAFA because of big salaries. European companies pay smaller salaries compared to the US ones. A good engineer can double his salary by going to the US. Sure, he may see more social issues there because of no safety net, but maybe he doesn't care.

Salaries are irrelevant since it's close to impossible for an European worker to move to the US, work visas are incredibly difficult to get and even if you manage to get one you don't have the same careers prospects as a native.

edited: reworded to "close to impossible"

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#246

Post by 0xfaded »

bserge wrote: post #221
vetinari wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. It could be argued that DARPA and it's development programs during Cold War were top-down. They were providing a market for the innovators, so they could pop up and do whatever their vision was. But that is something different that taking all the funds by incumbents.

DARPA literally gives grants to anyone with innovative/crazy/out of the ordinary ideas. It's the opposite in the EU, big companies get funding to develop something. Startups have no chance, unless someone knows someone.

And don't be fooled by all this "start-up friendly" propaganda. Yes, funding does exist. But it will be doled out $50k at a time. And remember to log all your hours and write reports for the program administrators.

I watched a talk by David Graeber, author of On Bullsh*t Jobs. He observes that actual service sector jobs, where someone does something for someone else, have made up a pretty constant 20% of the economy. According to wikipedia, 74.7% of Europe's economy is services [0]. It's going to be a rude awakening when the curtains are pulled back on a 55% bullshit economy.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union#...

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#247

Post by odiroot »

Call me a pessimist but I think it's gonna end up as usual.

Some European BigCos are gonna grab big bucks and show barely anything for it. Smaller fish are going to massively milk the program for grants that vaguely have something to do with the cloud. All the while the eurocrats are going to gather political points.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#248

Post by umvi »

worldmerge wrote: post #42

Whenever I think of the EU I can't think of a single tech giant from there, countries that come to mind for me are the US, China, Japan and Taiwan. The only things I know about the EU when it comes to tech is it trying to push massive global regulations around tech. For reference I'm a 23 year old from the US. Nothing I have is made in Europe and I don't deal with any EU companies. Even my bike computer was made by a…

Germany has some good tech - farm automation equipment, for example. Most dairy farmers in the US use German robotics (SAP).

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#249

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

bserge wrote: post #221
vetinari wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. It could be argued that DARPA and it's development programs during Cold War were top-down. They were providing a market for the innovators, so they could pop up and do whatever their vision was. But that is something different that taking all the funds by incumbents.

DARPA literally gives grants to anyone with innovative/crazy/out of the ordinary ideas. It's the opposite in the EU, big companies get funding to develop something. Startups have no chance, unless someone knows someone.

Not necessarily, see https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/finance-funding/gettin...

You can apply even as a single person, just need to know your ways through the bureaucracy, how to formulate your application, business plan, etc. Not easy, but doable.

Or use one of the many services which support you in doing that. There seems to be a service industry around that nowadays, which wasn't the case when I did a few years ago, or been to scroogy and stubborn because I can speak and write fucking AMTSDEUTSCH if I have to :)

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#250

Post by mensetmanusman »

The internet means ‘winner take all’

Alibaba wants to spend $30B just to compete:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/20/alibaba-to-invest-28-billion...

If the EU wants to win, it would have to spend an order of magnitude more, and even then, there is a risk that such a top down endeavor wont work. That’s probably why it was scaled back to 10B, because it would be more amenable.

They should try to move to where the ball is going.

Invest the money in decentralized resource management. Incentivize citizens to install software that contributes computational power to something bigger than itself that is useful for everyone.

Post reply on HN