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Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

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Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#81
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he just found out, that's exactly what the EU can do. And as he's about to find out, the EU is way too important a market for the American economy to ignore or pull out of. Play on your neighbour's yard, obey their rules.

I think rather, that it is the EU who cannot live without US cloud services and AI-services. Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

> Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

temporarily yes, then EU will be able to build them on its own.

But what would also collapse is trust in all US companies, whole world will start working on their own solutions, no more AWS/GCP/Azure hegemony in the world. Everyone would close their internet, just like China did and develop own solutions

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would hurt the EU more than it would hurt us and they're in denial about it.

Let's say you are right on this. What's the point of hurting yourself? There would be no meaningful benefit.

Oh man you wanna talk about benefits? I actually don't even think the US should have given the internet to the world. It's basically been one giant gift. Sure it's created a situation where we sell the tech both as software and hardware and that has allowed us to redirect wealth from the world to the US however in hindsight it's making our enemies stronger and allowing technology like drones to proliferate. An alternate reality where we didn't do that would be a reality where people would be smuggling American tech to their countries the way they did with jeans in the 80s. We basically decided to make a bunch of money on the tech over the past 50 years but it's actually created a situation where our soldiers are gonna be dodging drones in the next big conflict where as if we never allowed advanced chips to proliferate around the world we would be sitting high on tech that is basically magic to the rest of the world. In hindsight I'm not sure if it was a good idea.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#83
post #80
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he just found out, that's exactly what the EU can do. And as he's about to find out, the EU is way too important a market for the American economy to ignore or pull out of. Play on your neighbour's yard, obey their rules.

The EU can certainly do a lot, with the exception of producing their own major tech companies.

The end goal shouldn't be "monopolies, but European", the end goal should be no monopolies.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#84
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We would build our own alternatives. Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? The gap between US/China and the EU in AI is becoming wider by the day. Russia has like 3-4 large tech companies (Sber, Yandex, VK, and maybe Ozon). And they completely rely on foreign hardware. I don’t even want to imagine how could Russia start building frontier AI in these circumstances.

It's actually pretty sad for the EU that the biggest tech company names on the continent are all Russian.

ASML, SAP, ARM, Spotify, ...

How do you define biggest? Can't be by market cap.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#85
post #80
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he just found out, that's exactly what the EU can do. And as he's about to find out, the EU is way too important a market for the American economy to ignore or pull out of. Play on your neighbour's yard, obey their rules.

The EU can certainly do a lot, with the exception of producing their own major tech companies.

*ad companies

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think rather, that it is the EU who cannot live without US cloud services and AI-services. Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

It would hurt the EU more than it would hurt us and they're in denial about it.

> It would hurt the EU more than it would hurt us

So what? It will hurt everyone, but end result will be that US companies won't be able to sell in other parts of the world, because everyone will have own standards, own solutions, new regulations will come up about data residency, which will require using unknown AWS alternative in a small country and even if you are willing to maintain 150 Datacenter across different countries, companies will be afraid of using US tech, to one day lose access to their data

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you are right on this. What's the point of hurting yourself? There would be no meaningful benefit.

Oh man you wanna talk about benefits? I actually don't even think the US should have given the internet to the world. It's basically been one giant gift. Sure it's created a situation where we sell the tech both as software and hardware and that has allowed us to redirect wealth from the world to the US however in hindsight it's making our enemies stronger and allowing technology like drones to proliferate. An altern…

If there's one thing all historians agree on, it's that collaboration has always been the winning strategy in human history.

If the US had never opened up their innovations to the world, they wouldn't have been able to extract the gargantuan amount of money from it they did. If the US had not instated the Marshall plan after WW2, there would never have been as close ties between Europe and the US. If American companies hadn't outsourced much of the manufacturing to poorer countries, the standard of living would be a lot lower than it is today. If USAID hadn't improved and saved the life of millions of humans, American companies wouldn't be met with such universal acceptance and opportunities to sell their goods as they have.

It's not like the US isn't massively benefitting of their investments in the rest of the world. But it sure looks like you're pretty aligned with the current administration there, so we'll both see how this plays out in real time.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#89
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might need to reconsider how open Android actually is given the recent moves.

You don't even know how good you have it. With incentives like this what company would make anything open in the future? You're punishing them for it. They're gonna make it like iOS precisely because of rulings like this.

> They're gonna make it like iOS precisely because of rulings like this.

And then what? It’s not like iOS is exempt from the rules. See all the trouble they’re having with the DMA.

Re: Google loses fight over record $4.7B EU antitrust fine

#90
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As he just found out, that's exactly what the EU can do. And as he's about to find out, the EU is way too important a market for the American economy to ignore or pull out of. Play on your neighbour's yard, obey their rules.

I think rather, that it is the EU who cannot live without US cloud services and AI-services. Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services. Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

> Imagine if the US, behind closed doors of course, threatened to cut off all cloud services

That would be the single best thing that could happen to the EU.

I think people would be surprised by how quickly European and international companies and governments can rid themselves of the American tech stack. They use this stuff because it's convenient, solid, and cheap, not because it's the only option.

> Huge parts of the public and private sector could collapse.

Yes, both in the EU and the US, initially. It would also force the EU to finally invest in its own tech stack and end the US's ability to sell software globally.

People seem to believe that America's global economic dominance is a law of nature that will never change, regardless of what the US does. But it's not. There is no American exceptionalism, other than what America worked for.

If you continually kick your customers in the face, they'll eventually stop being your customers.

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