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The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

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Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#11

Post by fulafel »

kfk wrote: post #5

The challenge with Microsoft in Europe is that it is so convenient, it doesn’t make business sense to consider alternatives. See how easily MS won market share over Slack (MS Teams) and PowerBI (Tableau / Qlik). They have such a big bundle of services that any single player has to be either amazingly good, or specialized, to win maybe 1-2% of market share. The only way I see Europe doing something about it is antitru…

The convenience and business sense argument could make sense if the value of a communication platform was small and close to its cost. But it's not. Similarly as it doesn't make business sense to rent the cheapest or easiest to lease office exactly because a good office to your company is more valuable than its cost.

People hate Teams/Office because it's so low quality, effecting a large drag on communication. It's also incompatible with effective organizational culture (eg calendar has hardcoded top-down management assumptions, information is siloed to only meeting participants, cooperative doc editing corrupts and loses data, sharepoint is a psychological horror game etc). Its usage is a useful signal about an organisation though.

And of course it's a giant red target from security POV, as is obvious the headlines on the MS phishing epidemics and regular news on the gaping slapstick level security holes ([0] [1] [2] etc) in the load bearing part of company security (identity, and email password reset channel).

[0] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-critical-...

[1] https://www.hkcert.org/security-bulletin/microsoft-exchange-...

[2] https://digital.nhs.uk/cyber-alerts/2021/cc-3977

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#12

Post by eastbound »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #8
roenxi wrote: post #2

One of the interesting things about real colonialism is that the Europeans had wildly better legal infrastructure, that supported wildly better economic infrastructure, which supported wildly better military technology, which supported colonies. The proof in the pudding is that Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft. Until they fix that, they…

Things seem to change in France though. It's relatively easy to open a startup and get tax discounts for research and innovative work. Then you fly-in employees (I'm one of them) on passeport talent which is very easy to get and lasts 4 years. Average IT salaries in Europe are much lower than in US, which is unpleasant but allows to run an IT startup with less funding and healthier economics. However the gap to close…

So you say the best thing about France is that we can hire someone else than French people. And you are kind of right: We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference (something like a rest of revenge against the rich), and make them simply not possible, hindering the ability to build megacorporations. Apple wouldn’t have been possible here. We simply halt growth at median size and earn a good second spot on the market. That was true at the time of Dailymotion (second of Youtube), that is true in the times of AI.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#13

Post by alexey-salmin »

eastbound wrote: post #12
alexey-salmin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things seem to change in France though. It's relatively easy to open a startup and get tax discounts for research and innovative work. Then you fly-in employees (I'm one of them) on passeport talent which is very easy to get and lasts 4 years. Average IT salaries in Europe are much lower than in US, which is unpleasant but allows to run an IT startup with less funding and healthier economics. However the gap to close…

So you say the best thing about France is that we can hire someone else than French people. And you are kind of right: We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference (something like a rest of revenge against the rich), and make them simply not possible, hindering the ability to build megacorporations. Apple wouldn’t have been possible here. We simply halt growth at median size and earn a good…

Silicon valley was largely built by immigrants too. I believe in this concept, people who have enough determination to move are already above some potential energy threshold. And this threshold despite being relatively low still cuts off a huge part of local population who didn't have to pass it. I've seen it at work both for internal and international moves.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#14

Post by dijit »

oneshtein wrote: post #6
kfk wrote: post #5

The challenge with Microsoft in Europe is that it is so convenient, it doesn’t make business sense to consider alternatives. See how easily MS won market share over Slack (MS Teams) and PowerBI (Tableau / Qlik). They have such a big bundle of services that any single player has to be either amazingly good, or specialized, to win maybe 1-2% of market share. The only way I see Europe doing something about it is antitru…

The problem is that when data is stored in the cloud, I don't have full control over it. My data hold as hostage against me. We need to break up data storage from data processing. Imagine if all your data was stored in a secure, independent location, like a large vault. You could then choose which services could access your data, allowing you to use multiple services simultaneously. Better, if this will be on browser…

How would that even help?

Are we forgetting decades of office suite incompatibility? The main reason most european companies use Office365 over alternatives is:

1. Fear of retraining

2. Fear of untrodden path

but most crucially:

3. Fear of incompatibility with other businesses

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#15

Post by Barrin92 »

roenxi wrote: post #2

One of the interesting things about real colonialism is that the Europeans had wildly better legal infrastructure, that supported wildly better economic infrastructure, which supported wildly better military technology, which supported colonies. The proof in the pudding is that Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft. Until they fix that, they…

>Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft

Nah, what hinders software development at that scale is literally just... scale and network effects. Europe has a significantly better legal infrastructure than Russia or China (which routinely kills entire sectors for random reasons) but Europe is not a homogenous isolated market of hundreds of millions people speaking the same language. That's literally it.

Looking at it another way, what's the American competition for Microsoft? You're just one company ahead of Europe in most cases, and most of them ironically sit in a state that looks like Europe in regulatory terms. If the vast majority of American states can't produce much competition, most of them extremely lax in terms of the legal environment, that's an indicator that this isn't what actually matters.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#17

Post by ikekkdcjkfke »

oneshtein wrote: post #6
kfk wrote: post #5

The challenge with Microsoft in Europe is that it is so convenient, it doesn’t make business sense to consider alternatives. See how easily MS won market share over Slack (MS Teams) and PowerBI (Tableau / Qlik). They have such a big bundle of services that any single player has to be either amazingly good, or specialized, to win maybe 1-2% of market share. The only way I see Europe doing something about it is antitru…

The problem is that when data is stored in the cloud, I don't have full control over it. My data hold as hostage against me. We need to break up data storage from data processing. Imagine if all your data was stored in a secure, independent location, like a large vault. You could then choose which services could access your data, allowing you to use multiple services simultaneously. Better, if this will be on browser…

Yes. Data can and will be used against people wether it's petty scamming or political/war operations. If there is uncontrolled prolifiration of personal data it makes this much easier to exploit

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#19

Post by raverbashing »

roenxi wrote: post #2

One of the interesting things about real colonialism is that the Europeans had wildly better legal infrastructure, that supported wildly better economic infrastructure, which supported wildly better military technology, which supported colonies. The proof in the pudding is that Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft. Until they fix that, they…

I think you need to look into what favoured the creation of MS or Apple in the first place

MS is from Seattle but it didn't start there

Culture and investment/market conditions (sure, with the help of laws) play a much stronger part on that

You couldn't get them without available hardware and without a market willing to experiment.

And you couldn't have that without strong CS/EE departments that had strong investment in the decades prior that had spun a whole semiconductor industry

And you wouldn't have had that without some welcoming immigration laws (at the decades prior) and some worldwide conflicts neither and a specific country that touches both main oceans and has decided that farther away areas might be safer for some developments.

If you want to understand why laws in France are the way they are you need to take a look at what happened in the past 250 yrs more or less.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#20

Post by raverbashing »

Barrin92 wrote: post #15
roenxi wrote: post #2

One of the interesting things about real colonialism is that the Europeans had wildly better legal infrastructure, that supported wildly better economic infrastructure, which supported wildly better military technology, which supported colonies. The proof in the pudding is that Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft. Until they fix that, they…

>Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft Nah, what hinders software development at that scale is literally just... scale and network effects. Europe has a significantly better legal infrastructure than Russia or China (which routinely kills entire sectors for random reasons) but Europe is not a homogenous isolated market of hundreds of millions…

> Looking at it another way, what's the American competition for Microsoft?

Yeah this is another point that people seem to forget

We're talking about 2 or 3 cities in the US that punch way above their level. But we don't hear too often how there isn't a competitive cloud made in Boston or where's the FB competitor from Minnesota etc

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