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Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

reuters.com

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Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#91

Post by throwaway12509 »

onion2k wrote: post #73
Silhouette wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to sell out to a big US company, so it's worth pausing to ask how we've reached the situation you described.

Of course you don't, but someone offering to make you a multi-millionaire is hard to say no to. I imagine. I've never been in the situation unfortunately.

Generally it's not you making the decision but some investor who needs to close out a 10y fund and can force the sale through some nasty term in the SHA.

In a unicorn situation, the founder will generally take money off the table early and will be okay regardless. Just look at WeWork.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#92

Post by Silhouette »

onion2k wrote: post #73
Silhouette wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to sell out to a big US company, so it's worth pausing to ask how we've reached the situation you described.

Of course you don't, but someone offering to make you a multi-millionaire is hard to say no to. I imagine. I've never been in the situation unfortunately.

It certainly is, but in the US there have apparently been enough incentives for some founders not to accept an offer at that level. Some of those founders have gone on to build their businesses up to billion-dollar valuations, with dominance in their field, and now they've become the ones doing the investing and acquiring for the next generation of tech businesses. We have almost none of that in Europe, and I think it's important to ask why. I don't believe we lack people with ideas, skills and entrepreneurial instincts, and that means something else is getting in the way.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#93

Post by estaseuropano »

Silhouette wrote: post #46
varispeed wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMHO, the taxpayer funding aspect is a red herring anyway. 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 busin…

I see this comment a lot but I have never seen any evidence for this. What exactly is the barrier that a tech startup faces in Europe vs US? Which regulations are in the way (and are they EU or national ones)?

There is a lot of bs thrown around e.g. GDPR is far from evil or bothersome, as well funded lobby groups have made it out to be. You don't need cookie warnings if you use cookies to log your users in, only if you sell your users out to google and other analytics companies. You are obliged to have unsubscribe links in your emails to users. You have to provide and delete data you hold on specific users if requested. From a few hundred thousand users you need a data controller which is for ally responsible to watch out for data breaches (this is just an identified person, not a full time post). What's the big deal?

Much more stifling are e.g. the processes to register a company in the country you are based in or to get a bank account, and of course Europe's language diversity shrinks the potential reach so most that want to scale do so in English and then find it convenient to have offices e.g. in the US or UK.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#94

Post by nr2x »

estaseuropano wrote: post #81
throwaway12509 wrote: post #32

Earlier 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…

I don't see how its in anyone's interest to generate more rent-seeking giants. All these R&D statistics are bullshit as they work on tax data, which in turn clearly incentivises companies to classify every programmer or engineering salary as research. A healthy world needs more dynamic startups, not more anticompetitive giants that squeeze or buy everyone else. The US or Chinese advantage is not quality engineering o…

We’re not talking about artisan cheese here, we’re talking network effects. “Small guys” can’t offer the same value without a user base.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#95

Post by nr2x »

dalbasal wrote: post #59
axlee wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

Calling it bureaucracy, whatever the implications, is perfectly fair... assuming we're talking about the subject of this article. This is about 27 separate national governments to apply separate regulatory procedures, rather than just having Ireland's current gdpr enforcement. That's not necessarily bad, but it is more bureaucracy.

A major goal of GDPR was to streamline enforcement and reduce compliance cost. Then people thought they could use Ireland to just avoid it, and instead they now have to worry about 27 DPAs, so it utterly backfired. Same dynamic in USA: they blocked national level privacy laws for decades and now they’ll have to deal with 50 state laws instead, which is much more onerous.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#96

Post by Bayart »

throwaway12509 wrote: post #32
axlee wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

There no massive capital flow like in the US because nobody's putting their entire life savings and pensions on the markets.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#97

Post by rusk »

Silhouette wrote: post #87
rusk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes on everywhere. New York is the same. Ireland is an outlier in the fact that her ascendancy coincided with the US tech boom and language was an advantage. You have a very awkward situation developing and the current political leaders don't have the imagination to get out of it. The UK is an outlier because though they had a far more robust and diverse economy they threw everything into finance and have just bu…

The UK is an outlier because though they had a far more robust and diverse economy they threw everything into finance and have just burned any bridges back. That's not really true. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06... The financial services sector only contributes around 7% of total UK economic output.

Yeah that’s what they want you to think. Just like how Ireland has the highest GDP in Europe or some nonsense

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#98

Post by thakoppno »

thrower123 wrote: post #71

They keep doing these things that are ostensibly aimed at hurting Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. But the effect of their actions just entrenches those big players, who have the money and the legal teams and the resources, such that the added regulatory burden widens their moats and suppresses upstart competition.

Perhaps it slows down bigger tech companies ability to innovate.

My tech co has spent a significant amount of energy complying with GDPR and CCPA the last couple years while the products have received less and less feature improvements.

A brand new entrant would likely bolt on compliance to their innovative product once it reached critical mass, not before.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#99

Post by Chris2048 »

axlee wrote: post #19
nivenkos wrote: post #6

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…

>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.

> calling regulations against clear abuse "endless bureaucracy" is insidious at best

It's insidious, yes, but also what if foreign competitors gain a competitive advantage due to fewer regulations?

They will still need to follow EU regulations, but they gain R&D momentum locally.

The only solution I see is to bar foreign companies that do not adopt EU regulations locally too - e.g. a self-driving car developer that does not need to follow safety regulation as strictly locally.

Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling

#100

Post by Chris2048 »

flexie wrote: post #83
YorkshireSeason wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EU invests massive amounts in technology An interesting question is: what's the ROI of this investment. Anecdotally, the over the last 50 years the EU has been loosing their leadership in field after field. First to the US, then Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, now China. With the loss of the UK Arm is no longer an EU company. Have you looked into Linux commits recently [1], or where papers come from in the top CS conferenc…

Well, Arm is not a UK company much longer either: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/qualcomm-offers-to-invest-in...

The link says "as regulators threaten to block"
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