401–410 of 450 posts
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Spotify has never been consistently profitable and had Net income last year of a little over a billion. They are a nothingburger
Tell that to musicians, apparently they don't need Spotify after all. I will just go to the record store get some vinyls.
As a European, I have to say I am generally impressed with the EU in these cases. I'm from a country that's rich and capable, but with a GDP a fraction of Apple's market cap. There is no chance that national laws and entities would be sufficient to protect my consumer rights from corporations this size. The EU is fundamentally a centre-right, liberalist, pro-business coalition, but what that means is that it is pro-c…
I'd argue that it doesn't go far enough at this point. There are imaginable scenarios now where the US uses AWS/Microsoft like China currently uses rare earth exports or even further and AWS/Microsoft + Android/iOS are critical infrastructure. Having some "sovereign cloud" etc. won't help since this needs continuous monitoring and improvements from the mothership. Merely doing monopoly regulation won't help. We have…
With the JEDI contracts ect that is basically what is happening to Google, MS and AWS.
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The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB…
> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "U…
as much I'm not a fan of them, Leica is a peer competing against Nikon, Fujifilm, etc.
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I also find editing on an iPhone to be an exercise in futility. Is it no longer possible to place a cursor in the middle of a word? I end up having to go to a word boundary and erase from there and retype everything. The keyboard touch areas also seem offset from Android and I end up one row off too much of the time.
I do more writing on my iPhone (it's the one with the largest screen) than I do on a computer. I can do about 40wpm. To move the cursor you just hold down on the space bar. These complaints kind of sound like someone from the 90's saying that the close window button is on the wrong side
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I'd argue that it doesn't go far enough at this point. There are imaginable scenarios now where the US uses AWS/Microsoft like China currently uses rare earth exports or even further and AWS/Microsoft + Android/iOS are critical infrastructure. Having some "sovereign cloud" etc. won't help since this needs continuous monitoring and improvements from the mothership. Merely doing monopoly regulation won't help. We have…
Good luck with that. Even when Standard Oil has being broken up, it just resulted in a bunch of smaller but more profitable companies. Following the breakup of Standard Oil, the government created the Oil Division of the US Fuel Administration and the Federal Oil Conservation Board, effectively making the oil industry a government-protected monopoly. With the JEDI contracts ect that is basically what is happening to…
The approach would be to gradually limit EU market access till there are other alternatives. This has worked for e.g. China.
The German defense force uses Google cloud instances for their "sovereign cloud". I very much doubt that if there were a German Hyper-scaler that it would have similar market access to contracts such as JEDI. Having a buy European requirement there is pretty much a no-brainer IMO.
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I would argue the opposite: It actually makes European businesses worth off by continuing to make its regulatory environment so complex only massive companies like big tech or Europe's legacy players have the resources to comply. Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and…
The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB…
> it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition
is impossible in the hyper regulatory environment the EU has made, causing ...
> one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market
... because they're the only ones that can afford the legal and/or lobbying efforts to do so.
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You must be thinking this is all wrong. I completely understand and agree with your sentiment, but we're talking about what the contract says. I'm not allowed to install any software I want on my car's computer, the platform belongs to them. They don't provide the tools, libraries, the know-how, or even sue the people who share it online. And similarly, according to Apple's EULA the devices cannot run any app that is…
You keep comparing appliances to general-purpose devices. You also act like the "accept to continue" legalese actually matters to anyone but the legal department that wrote it. Please stop. When someone buys a car, they usually don't expect to run third-party software on it. They use it to get to places. They expect to use the built-in entertainment system to listen to music and maybe use CarPlay or Android Auto, and…
You don’t have to use an iPhone. You’re welcome to use any Android based phone you’d like and install anything Google allows on it.
Or use any European based phone operating system. Oh wait, there’s none, because any phone company that became successful in Europe had to run away.
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Yes, everyone played a role in WW 2, that is why we try to learn from history, instead of supporting those eager to repeating it.
I don't think there is currently any country that was involved in WW2 where repeating WW2 is not mainstream politics.
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> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "U…
> Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers. Competing in category chemicals: BASF, Akzo Nobel, Lanxess, Air Liquide, and a bunch others Competing in category engineering: Siemens, Bosch, ABB, Alstom, ThyssenKrupp, Airbus and a bunch others Competing in category metals: Aurubis, Umicore, Norsk Hydro, Gruppo Riva, ThyssenKrupp, and a bunch others Competing in category pharma:…
Also, this is not true. These are categories huge enough to be meaningless. They are stock market classifications (at best) which do not reflect market competition.
The greatest gem is found in the footnote, IMO > "They managed to convince the courts that iPadOS is a separate operating system to iOS (it's not), which delayed iPadOS being designated as a gatekeeper for almost a year. They are currently challenging all of the rest: the iOS, Safari, and App Store designations, and successfully managed to avoid iMessage being designated at all. They have taken the DMA law to court f…
I'm starting to think about legal battles as a way to refine and improve laws/practices.
Expensive, though, but necessary.