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US threatens EU digital services market access

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Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#41

Post by wkat4242 »

closewith wrote: post #23
techterrier wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And are rushing to get away! I work on a product thats source available and self hosted. Many of our new customers are EU gov agencies.

Good to hear, but probably depends on the country. Ireland is all-in on Azure and only deepening ties.

Same with Holland. The tax office is moving away from their own office package onto m365 right now. They apparently had an alternative all this time, which I find very surprising (the media didn't really elaborate on this).

But Holland, Ireland, UK are the most neoliberal countries in Europe, they worship America and believe that the market solves everything. The rest of europe doesn't share that sentiment to the same extent.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#42

Post by 4gotunameagain »

RobotToaster wrote: post #18
closewith wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many EU Governments run entirely on MS/Meta/Amazon and to a lessor extent Google services. Many (most?) government services run on Azure or AWS, and huge parts of the continent run on WhatsApp.

Which is a huge mistake. We should have learned that the USA can't be trusted when Nixon ended bretton woods so it didn't have to give France it's gold back.

  “It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”
Henry Kissinger ― US secretary of state, Nobel peace prize laureate, war criminal.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#43

Post by throwaway13337 »

The tariff talk was ostensibly because the EU exported more goods to the US than the US exported to EU.

The US exports far more digital services to the EU, though.

Understanding those things, it would seem a particularly unwise framing for the US government to focus on EU digital services exports.

LLMs are rapidly commoditizing software, and in particular making it far easier to handle the regulatory compliance and regional fragmentation that have traditionally held back software companies in the EU. Combine that with growing concerns about software trust, and the EU looks like an increasingly attractive bet for future software investment.

Ironic, then, that Europe seems slowest to adopt the very tool that could finally solve its fragmentation problem.

Two governments, two very different strategies to cripple themselves. The race is on.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#45

Post by ivan_gammel »

nephihaha wrote: post #29
csomar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you would only have the European selection.

There is currently no real European equivalent/serious competitor to the Apple/Microsoft duopoly, Google monopoly, Wikipedia monopoly etc.

On Wikipedia: German chapter is the second largest (>100 FTEs) and collects donations directly, funding root org from them and keeping significant part for its own operations. It’s not exactly an American monopoly.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#46

Post by 1718627440 »

jonnybgood wrote: post #15
nephihaha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these hadn't been allowed to emerge as monopolies we would have a wider selection.

Is that really the case for the EU? The EU doesn’t seem to foster an environment for competitive companies that can operate at the necessary scale the above listed can.

The opposite seems to be the case. The EU fosters really competitive markets, so large companies are really hard to emerge. There are tons of small software shops in my city alone, you can walk through the city and see ads for them in front of their houses.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#47

Post by jack_tripper »

input_sh wrote: post #31
shellwizard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternatives to Microsoft, Google, IBM or AWS exist in Europe?

None of those are products, those are companies that offers 100s of products. The question is not is there as an alternative to Google-as-a-whole, but is there an alternative to Google Search (yes), to Google Analytics (yes), to Gmail (yes), to Google Ads (yes, but not really), to YouTube (no), and to Android (yes, but not really). Having a European mega-company that offers 100s of tightly-integrated products shouldn…

[dead]

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#48

Post by nairboon »

nephihaha wrote: post #29
csomar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you would only have the European selection.

There is currently no real European equivalent/serious competitor to the Apple/Microsoft duopoly, Google monopoly, Wikipedia monopoly etc.

> There is currently no real European equivalent to the [..] Wikipedia monopoly

8 out of the 10 largest Wikipedias are European languages...

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#50

Post by csomar »

nephihaha wrote: post #29
csomar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you would only have the European selection.

There is currently no real European equivalent/serious competitor to the Apple/Microsoft duopoly, Google monopoly, Wikipedia monopoly etc.

The parent was talking about the scenario where Europe is forced to create alternative (like China) and that it will lead to a better/wider selection for him (I assume he is in the EU) and my answer is that it will lead to only a European selection.

Interestingly, the only people having a wider selection are the ones outside of EU/US/China as they'll be free to pick up whatever they want.

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