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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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111–120 of 348 posts

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#111
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AppStore would be dead on arrival. Yes, exactly! That's the point. The mobile ecosystem would look heaps better without it.

We have the world without it available for inspection. The Android ecosystem is a shambling mess compared to the quality that is availabe in the Apple Playstore. It does look heaps better on many dimensions.

Not anymore. These days PlayStore is roughly on the same level. Source: I have both.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, get rid of their 2nd largest market, at size ~⅔ of the US one. Yes, that will definitely show the EU who's the boss. /s

But what if they will though? Won't china happily replace the EU market? It's much bigger too and Winnie the Pooh doesn't care about ppl privacy that much

Isn’t Apple already in China? There must be a reason why they are not selling much there already, but perhaps they could dump prices and increase marketing. Although China and US is in a trade war right now, so prices are more likely to increase as China increase import taxes to balance ones the US has put on imports from China.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#113
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like my 8 year old, I think they lack the perspective to behave like an adult here. Several companies have fought what they thought were unwanted regulations only to view them as useful later on. Time will tell if they were right to kick and scream or not.

Yeah. Especially in Apple’s case, I don’t understand how they can’t see that a more open iOS could easily dominate the market.

It already dominates the market though, at least in the US, the wealthiest market there is.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up everything the EU/Europe and Apple comes up: iMessage is hugely popular, it is just not the most popular (or even third or second) messaging platform. Also the largest is Facebook Messenge, and in the top five is another Meta product, WhatsApp. So it's not like it's all Signal, Viper or Telegram, it's mostly platforms from another US tech giant.

I’ve never heard anyone using iMessage in NL. most use WhatsApp, Telegram and some Signal.

It's the same in Germany and France I think, but then you have Denmark where iMessage is like huge. The point is that the EU isn't particularly homogeneous in terms of messaging platforms. The only thing that is true across the EU is that Facebook/Meta is in control of most of messaging.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up everything the EU/Europe and Apple comes up: iMessage is hugely popular, it is just not the most popular (or even third or second) messaging platform. Also the largest is Facebook Messenge, and in the top five is another Meta product, WhatsApp. So it's not like it's all Signal, Viper or Telegram, it's mostly platforms from another US tech giant.

Switching is easy

Hard, the only platform I could realistically get more than 50% of friends and family on is Facebook, but I don't have Facebook.

Switching is super hard when your primary platform just fallback to SMS.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#116
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is iMessage actually popular or is it just "popular" because it automatically takes over if you try to send an SMS to a person with an iPhone?

> takes over if you try to send an SMS to a person with an iPhone? That's a huge part of it. Finding good stats is hard, but take Denmark and Sweden, it more likely that not that the person you're messaging also have an iPhone. Still most countries, from the statistics I've seem, have around 20 - 33% iMessage usage. Sure some of these people also have Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, but 30% is still a massive number.…

> Some seem to think that if iMessage goes away, people will just switch to WhatsApp or Signal. NO, they'll fallback to SMS/MMS.

In the US? Maybe. In Europe, where many people have Android phones and iPhone users need WhatsApp/Messenger anyway? I doubt it.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#117
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is iMessage actually popular or is it just "popular" because it automatically takes over if you try to send an SMS to a person with an iPhone?

> takes over if you try to send an SMS to a person with an iPhone? That's a huge part of it. Finding good stats is hard, but take Denmark and Sweden, it more likely that not that the person you're messaging also have an iPhone. Still most countries, from the statistics I've seem, have around 20 - 33% iMessage usage. Sure some of these people also have Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, but 30% is still a massive number.…

I have lived in Germany and The Netherlands. Not having iMessage would be a mild inconvenience. Not having WhatsApp would be social suicide. Everything, from sports to kids school stuff is arranged through WhatsApp.

I know many iPhone users here who don’t even use iMessage. It’s activated, so it would show in the stats, but they’ll message everyone through WhatsApp.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#118

The EU will win this if they want. Their trump card is that, actually, making the EU not a viable market for the most annoying US tech companies would be a huge win for many of their constituents.

The other problem for big tech is that most countries are modeling their tech legislation based on the EU.

At this point the GDPR is something you have to consider whether you’re in the EU or not because several non EU countries have similar laws and many more are thinking of implementing them, and to the extent many haven’t already it’s because it’s unnecessary since tech companies are following GDPR already.

Essentially GDPR has become a de facto global law at this point.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the same would also be true of other legislation coming out of the EU considering that most tech products are global.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#119
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple should play their Trump card and threaten to pull out of the EU. The EU would blink first because the public backlash would be career ending.

The EU commission and EU parliament are somewhat removed from public backlash, it's one of the reasons people complain about the EU being "undemocratic". So the commission or random EU MEP would be affected after 5 years or so. Tim Cook would get backlash from stockholders the moment he announced he wanted to stop getting EU revenue rather than comply with regulations.

There's an EU parliament election in a few weeks or so, how is that undemocratic?

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#120
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple should play their Trump card and threaten to pull out of the EU. The EU would blink first because the public backlash would be career ending.

The EU commission and EU parliament are somewhat removed from public backlash, it's one of the reasons people complain about the EU being "undemocratic". So the commission or random EU MEP would be affected after 5 years or so. Tim Cook would get backlash from stockholders the moment he announced he wanted to stop getting EU revenue rather than comply with regulations.

While the Commission have mostly free hands to govern, European Parliament, elected by Europeans can veto their laws and can even veto the commission itself.

European Commission is nothing else than an unelected government controlled by a parliament like it happens in most countries.

Also, ultimately, the commission is nominated by elected representatives of each country so, depending on how you see the thing, we could even say that they are more democratically nominated than most governments.

The only major difference between EU and most countries is that the parliament don’t have legislative power.

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