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US threatens EU digital services market access

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Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#121

Post by bootsmann »

port11 wrote: post #109
throwaway13337 wrote: post #43

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 r…

A major thing that holds us back and will continue to do so in B2B (coming from someone whose last startup failed): differences in language/customs/needs linked to the multitude of cultures in the region. We hired someone that could sell in Italian, French, and Spanish. Her profile is fairly rare, given she had a good understanding of the customer. I can't believe our CEO let her go simply because of a 4-days at the…

Yeah the standard advice for European startups is to sell in the US first and worry about the local markets later, language and culture barriers are still huge.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#122

Post by dh2022 »

arethuza wrote: post #57
torginus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic, FAANG is also EU

Accenture has its HQ in Dublin - FAANG companies have their HQs in the US?

But their Intelectual Property is located in Ireland :) For numerous helpings of double irish dutch sandwiches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#123

Post by wkat4242 »

techterrier wrote: post #62
wkat4242 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sam…

Dutch gov is one of our recent customers! govs are big things and have lots of parts that dont always talk to each other.

Hell yes I hear you on that. I've been sideways involved with some of their projects too. It's always a minefield because they don't know what they want, what they do think they want makes no sense and they don't care about what's technically possible or is streamlined, maintainable and affordable (us engineers try to find a solution that is also robust and straightforward, not just to tick a maze of boxes).

Governments tend to write the legislation of everything under their purview and they don't really have to deal with forces of nature so they think they can just decree water to not be wet and that's sorted then. So their resulting solutions tend to be pretty awful. Oh and the decision makers tend to be there because they're great at spouting hot air, not because they have a clue what they're doing. Not fun projects to work on.

Most corporates are much more flexible. They come to you with a vision and you discuss how to best make this happen. And an 'Actually, it would be a lot simpler if you do ...' is very appreciated.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#124

Post by yladiz »

LunaSea wrote: post #105
Hutrecht wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of developer jobs in Europe paying 70k+ €. While salaries may be lower than in the US, your real quality of life can be much better because: 1. Lower food costs. Groceries are cheaper and healthier and eating out is more affordable (+ tipping is not necesary) 2. Generally lower rent. Unless you live outside a few very expensive cities (but it would compensate with higher salaries) 3. No need for a ca…

I'm sorry, €70K netto maybe, but that represents usually €140K bruto, which is quite uncommon. €70K netto in the other hand is not a good salary in Western Europe if you want a decent quality of life. It means that you will never own more than a studio appartement in your lifetime.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Approx. 6k€ net is way more than enough to live a "decent quality of life" in western Europe, unless you specifically seek out very expensive rent.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#125

Post by stein1946 »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #43

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 r…

> LLMs are rapidly commoditizing software

Can you elaborate on this one? Hopefully with some citations.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#126

Post by llbbdd »

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…

"Everything just works together" is, on its own, a single use case.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#128

Post by seanmcdirmid »

1718627440 wrote: post #46
jonnybgood wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those exist in the USA as well. We have large, medium, and small software shops. You hardly ever hear about the medium or smaller ones though, you’ll find the, splattered all over the place in office parks as well as downtown (at least here in the Seattle area). It didn’t feel very different when I lived in Europe, even the large orgs were present (Google has lots of offices in Zurich and Stockholm among others, for example, and when I was in China my wife worked for a German big tech called SAP).

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#129

Post by grimblee »

LunaSea wrote: post #105
Hutrecht wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of developer jobs in Europe paying 70k+ €. While salaries may be lower than in the US, your real quality of life can be much better because: 1. Lower food costs. Groceries are cheaper and healthier and eating out is more affordable (+ tipping is not necesary) 2. Generally lower rent. Unless you live outside a few very expensive cities (but it would compensate with higher salaries) 3. No need for a ca…

I'm sorry, €70K netto maybe, but that represents usually €140K bruto, which is quite uncommon. €70K netto in the other hand is not a good salary in Western Europe if you want a decent quality of life. It means that you will never own more than a studio appartement in your lifetime.

I make less then 70k€ yearly and I live in a capital and sure I'm not wealthy as fuck but it's perfectly fine.

People need to stop this obssession with getting rich, I know it's because our system glorifies it (and greed), but most people won't get rich (value isn't created magically, if one has a lot, a lot have nearly nothing) and being wealthy is immoral in any cases.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#130

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jeroenhd wrote: post #64
torginus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic, FAANG is also EU

FAANG usually only operate what is necessary to collect payment and maybe do some lobbying on the side. Accenture actually has a full HQ with people on the ground in Europe. But yes, legally speaking, FAANG is also EU, same way Volkswagen is an American company. That's not really how people tend to talk about these companies, though.

> FAANG usually only operate what is necessary to collect payment and maybe do some lobbying on the side.

Google, Meta, Microsoft do a lot of R&D un Europe. Google more so than the others. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple had substantial R&D in Europe as well, although I couldn’t name specific sites like the first three. Maybe you meant big corp instead of FAANG specifically?

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