How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Ban Oracle and Microsoft from public procurement and start supporting the European equivalent of Baidu or Yandex. With ARM (prior to the acquisition), Linux, MariaDB, etc. - Europe was in a great position to do this. We need to stop this digital colonialism where massive, monopolistic US corporations pay no taxes in E…
It won't happen. EU bureaucracy just likes to travel from one capital to another and enjoying 5 star comfort pretending to be extremely busy completely disconnected from reality. Its not that they haven't poured in huge amounts of cash into science and tech. Its that its all gone into building ivory towers even more disconnected from reality. So the people in those ivory towers have no clue how to compete in a ruthle…
Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
41–50 of 157 posts
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless democracy" is insidious at best. Well, GP wrote "endless bureaucracy" not "endless democracy", unless the comment has been edited. And that, IMNSHO as someone who has founded tech businesses here, is entirely fair criticism. The environment created by all those regulations is insanely hostile to tech entrepreneurship, and it's not as if many of those regulations ar…
You have companies that specialise in creating "start ups" that get tax payer funding, ride the money wave out and then close. Usually they put homeless people in suits to act as CEOs. One business folds, they create another one. Then governments complain the public purse is shrinking and there is no economic growth.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#43How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Ban Oracle and Microsoft from public procurement and start supporting the European equivalent of Baidu or Yandex. With ARM (prior to the acquisition), Linux, MariaDB, etc. - Europe was in a great position to do this. We need to stop this digital colonialism where massive, monopolistic US corporations pay no taxes in E…
> How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Their power is to make rules, so they will make rules because it is all they know how to do. Leaving things alone is often the most difficult (and important) thing to do.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Why do you make it sound like they don't? The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate). One does not prevent the other. And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best.
I believe the EU would be better off if it just deleted its technology funding apparatus and tried to rebuild something like DARPA, while focusing on procurement like the poster suggested. There is a huge amount of money available, but it's locked behind layers and layers of bureaucracy. It is a huge waste of time on both sides, for some anecdotal I'm procrastinating from an application as I type. I should be coding…
Shouldn't the goal be producing tech that's beneficial?
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#45Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless democracy" is insidious at best. Well, GP wrote "endless bureaucracy" not "endless democracy", unless the comment has been edited. And that, IMNSHO as someone who has founded tech businesses here, is entirely fair criticism. The environment created by all those regulations is insanely hostile to tech entrepreneurship, and it's not as if many of those regulations ar…
You have companies that specialise in creating "start ups" that get tax payer funding, ride the money wave out and then close. Usually they put homeless people in suits to act as CEOs. One business folds, they create another one. Then governments complain the public purse is shrinking and there is no economic growth.
There is no reason that a small team of founders or even a solo founder should not be able to start and grow a tech/software business well. The natural barriers to entry are very low in this industry. If you have a useful idea, the technical skills to implement it, and the willingness to try, you should never need lots of external help to build a viable business.
Obviously there are advantages to taking substantial external investment or other funding, and doing so usually also comes with strings attached. You have to weigh up whether the cost/benefit is favourable. But in a tech/software business, this should primarily be useful for accelerating the success of a business already destined to be successful. We're not talking about manufacturing where you need to pay for factory facilities and supply chains of physical materials and other big up-front costs before you can start creating value yourself that you can charge for.
The reason it is increasingly difficult for any small founding team to actually do that in much of Europe has a lot more to do with regulatory barriers and red tape than lack of funding. No startup is going to perform well if someone keeps distracting the people building it and making them do things that aren't directly adding value.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the EU would be better off if it just deleted its technology funding apparatus and tried to rebuild something like DARPA, while focusing on procurement like the poster suggested. There is a huge amount of money available, but it's locked behind layers and layers of bureaucracy. It is a huge waste of time on both sides, for some anecdotal I'm procrastinating from an application as I type. I should be coding…
But why is a high stock value the ultimate goal? Shouldn't the goal be producing tech that's beneficial?
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Why do you make it sound like they don't? The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate). One does not prevent the other. And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best.
> The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate) The problem is that the EU invests. Small businesses are taxed to death and swamped with bureaucracy. From that you can clearly see where this is going.
The bigger issue is that the US has a massive advantage, in that a US tech company can launch in one language (their native language) to 300+ million potential customers, and hire from the same pool with minimal bureaucracy (the laws are largely the same, and at least written in the same language, ID and visa requirements are the same, payment providers are mostly the same, etc.)
In Europe on the other hand, to launch even to other countries in the EU involves a lot of translation work. Then taxation varies a lot, and the laws are in different languages so you'll need local lawyers and a local tax office to hire employees there, etc. - on the employee side, the ID and visa requirements vary a lot too, so you'll need local specialists / relocation companies to help with that. The payment providers also differ a lot, e.g. with Sofort-überweisung in Germany and the lack of online card payment options there (until recently), etc.
And then there's the extra EU regulations - the GDPR, cookie consent laws, age verification laws for video content, link tax for aggregation services, etc.
But I still think the best solution in the short-term is protectionism. Give European companies a bigger advantage in Europe by not sourcing from foreign corporations (especially for critical infrastructure like public services), and invest in FOSS and development companies around that (where smaller companies could work together on FOSS projects).
Otherwise the US companies just dominate, and then use their dominant position to get a monopoly through bribes and threats (see Microsoft in Hungary and Munich for example). Then they pay no taxes in the EU, take all the profit back to the US and use that to crush EU industry even further - just like how in the past natural resources were plundered from colonies, but all the skilled industry was kept in the coloniser countries.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Why do you make it sound like they don't? The EU invests massive amounts in technology (in regards to its paltry investment budget, but that's another debate). One does not prevent the other. And calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best.
I believe the EU would be better off if it just deleted its technology funding apparatus and tried to rebuild something like DARPA, while focusing on procurement like the poster suggested. There is a huge amount of money available, but it's locked behind layers and layers of bureaucracy. It is a huge waste of time on both sides, for some anecdotal I'm procrastinating from an application as I type. I should be coding…
A lot of European startups don't get to the size where an IPO exit would be appropriate because a US company buys them before that can happen.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
It won't happen. EU bureaucracy just likes to travel from one capital to another and enjoying 5 star comfort pretending to be extremely busy completely disconnected from reality. Its not that they haven't poured in huge amounts of cash into science and tech. Its that its all gone into building ivory towers even more disconnected from reality. So the people in those ivory towers have no clue how to compete in a ruthle…
I’d say Airbus is competing quite well, Boeing not so much.
The A220, a legitimate clean-sheet and fantastic aircraft, came from Bombardier and only fell into Airbus hands due to regulatory warfare, albeit from the American side this time.