Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 94 posts

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#41

Post by _of »

pjmlp wrote: post #18
criley2 wrote: post #7

Is anyone surprised that Google didn't come from Europe, and the next one isn't either? Good for Europe. Go out there and extract that pound of flesh from the foreign company and show domestics what a powerful government regulator looks like, show them that their business is better started in another country. Is what it is. Hope the tax revenue offsets the lack of innovation and talent flight. But I think Google News…

No, I am upset that Europe is so dependent on foreign technology, region limited from US companies on online content and we are forced to make more data available than we should.

Does it really matter that much? Nobody thinks that searching online is a "foreign technology", even if it is, who cares?

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#42

Post by wongarsu »

fhood wrote: post #38
k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Are Europeans not upset" I'm happy the regulators are not allowing a huge multi-national business to abuse its power. I'm happy that, to some extent, regulators are trying to make sure large foreign tech companies respect my privacy. If that means we lose Google I think you're overestimating how big of a deal that would be. I use DDG for search, iCloud for email/calendar/contacts, Safari as my desktop browser, BB…

Wait you don't use google for searching?!?!?! Or gmail? I am in awe.

Google is still the best search engine, but in my opinion gmail isn't that big of a deal anymore. They were revolutionary in their time and are still very good, but there are great alternatives by now.

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#43

Post by uola »

criley2 wrote: post #31
uola wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's about perspective, I just don't think you have a very broad one. That Google didn't come from Europe has little to do with the current situation. Europe doesn't lack innovation at all, in fact the reason that startups aren't very popular is that there are many other interesting engineering companies to work for. Talent flight is not particularly significant, especially with the US visa rules. European…

"The funny thing is of course that a decade ago no one in the US cared about Europe, but now with all the shit going on in the US you constantly see shallow argument how horrible Europe is. I see that as a good sign." Your entire post is full of the "troll level" ignorance that you claim mine is, but this right here is the ignorant cherry on top. Thank you for demonstrating that you embody the criticism that you leve…

If my post is so full of ignorance it should be easy for you to formulate an argument against it, like I did against your comment. Yet, you seemingly can't.

Europe has been far better at adopting technology than the US has. Everything from Internet connection speeds and traffic prices to digital payments and identification. Europe has many successful technology companies and technologies, why they don't grow into the next big company is in part because they get acquired by US companies with offshore funds. The growth of silicon valley in the first place wasn't exactly a demonstration in free market capitalism if that's what you're claiming.

Edit: Of course none of this matters since your original comment gathered so many responses that the article got caught in the flame war filter (more comment than points over 40 points).

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#44

Post by cronjobber »

fhood wrote: post #38
k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Are Europeans not upset" I'm happy the regulators are not allowing a huge multi-national business to abuse its power. I'm happy that, to some extent, regulators are trying to make sure large foreign tech companies respect my privacy. If that means we lose Google I think you're overestimating how big of a deal that would be. I use DDG for search, iCloud for email/calendar/contacts, Safari as my desktop browser, BB…

Wait you don't use google for searching?!?!?! Or gmail? I am in awe.

The road to hell is paved with great web search results.

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#45

Post by k-mcgrady »

fhood wrote: post #38
k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Are Europeans not upset" I'm happy the regulators are not allowing a huge multi-national business to abuse its power. I'm happy that, to some extent, regulators are trying to make sure large foreign tech companies respect my privacy. If that means we lose Google I think you're overestimating how big of a deal that would be. I use DDG for search, iCloud for email/calendar/contacts, Safari as my desktop browser, BB…

Wait you don't use google for searching?!?!?! Or gmail? I am in awe.

I'll be honest. Google Search is better for certain things. For example it's nice getting those little boxes at the top of the page that answer your question without you even needing to follow a link but I can afford the extra few seconds it takes to click a link every now and then in exchange for better privacy and results that aren't manipulated based on data the search engine holds on me.

As for Gmail that was a recent switch. I'm currently forwarding all mail to my iCloud account and using that. As I rarely use the Gmail web app (I only use desktop/mobile apps to access mail) the switch has been seamless.

For me the final straw was looking at my 'activity' page on Google. Despite having turned it off web history was on. I presume they asked me to click something someday and I wasn't careful enough but that was very annoying. They've also changed the web history interface to make it pretty complicated to figure out how to delete everything. I then noticed they had location tracking on (which I also specifically disabled in the past). I couldn't find a way to delete all of that and had to delete each record individually.

Google wants to do some cool stuff with all this data but it certainly isn't doing anything that makes it worth it for me to give up my privacy.

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#46

Post by k-mcgrady »

fhood wrote: post #34
raverbashing wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are Europeans not upset that they're being forced into sub-standard foreign technology by their government Oh you're so funny. As opposed to the US where people overpay for sub-standard local technology? People in the US still use cheques . And they have to pay (a lot) to print those. Chip cards? No, let's use our fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards. It's cheaper for me to call the US using an MVNO from Europe than p…

Wait wut? First my cheques are free, and the only time I really use them is when somebody needs by account info on file. Second I have a chip card and I hate it. Third, you're right. US telecom blows. Fourth I hate to break it to you but talent really does flock to the US from europe and elsewhere and many of our greatest scientists and entrepreneurs are from abroad. Hell, Elon Musk is South African. That is the resu…

>> Second I have a chip card and I hate it."

Why? A bit more info would be useful.

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#47

Post by mercutio2 »

fhood wrote: post #38
k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Are Europeans not upset" I'm happy the regulators are not allowing a huge multi-national business to abuse its power. I'm happy that, to some extent, regulators are trying to make sure large foreign tech companies respect my privacy. If that means we lose Google I think you're overestimating how big of a deal that would be. I use DDG for search, iCloud for email/calendar/contacts, Safari as my desktop browser, BB…

Wait you don't use google for searching?!?!?! Or gmail? I am in awe.

I'm always amazed by people with your perspective! I hated Gmail from the beginning, it works terribly with IMAP, and it's generally slow compared to a good native app.

Google search is still occasionally better than DDG, but it's never more than an !g away if I'm unhappy with DDG.

What are all these services Google provides people feel are irreplaceable? I don't get it. They're an advertising company with big bags of money to let smart people noodle around on their pet projects. Nice company to work for (if you aren't morally opposed to advertising), but I've never found the products appealing.

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#48

Post by doktrin »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #46
fhood wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait wut? First my cheques are free, and the only time I really use them is when somebody needs by account info on file. Second I have a chip card and I hate it. Third, you're right. US telecom blows. Fourth I hate to break it to you but talent really does flock to the US from europe and elsewhere and many of our greatest scientists and entrepreneurs are from abroad. Hell, Elon Musk is South African. That is the resu…

>> Second I have a chip card and I hate it." Why? A bit more info would be useful.

Probably because it's slightly slower to use than magnetic strips (at least in the US), and since we're in a transition period you kind of never know whether a given store supports chip inserts.

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#49

Post by kyrra »

raverbashing wrote: post #21
criley2 wrote: post #7

Is anyone surprised that Google didn't come from Europe, and the next one isn't either? Good for Europe. Go out there and extract that pound of flesh from the foreign company and show domestics what a powerful government regulator looks like, show them that their business is better started in another country. Is what it is. Hope the tax revenue offsets the lack of innovation and talent flight. But I think Google News…

> Are Europeans not upset that they're being forced into sub-standard foreign technology by their government Oh you're so funny. As opposed to the US where people overpay for sub-standard local technology? People in the US still use cheques . And they have to pay (a lot) to print those. Chip cards? No, let's use our fraud-prone magnetic stripe cards. It's cheaper for me to call the US using an MVNO from Europe than p…

About chip cards: Do you know why the US hasn't cared much about chip cards? The fraud rate is low enough that credit card companies don't need to push it. Chip+pin or chip+sign slows down the process and adds extra barriers to payments.

Plus, you (as a consumer) are only liable for up to $50 of fraudulent charges in the US (it's higher if you are slow to report). But most credit card companies don't make you pay anything when fraud happens.

So until the Target hack happened, there wasn't any motivation for anyone in the payment stack (from consumers to card networks) to move to different tech.

Re: Europe Is Going After Google Hard, and Google May Not Win

#50

Post by jbmorgado »

criley2 wrote: post #7

Is anyone surprised that Google didn't come from Europe, and the next one isn't either? Good for Europe. Go out there and extract that pound of flesh from the foreign company and show domestics what a powerful government regulator looks like, show them that their business is better started in another country. Is what it is. Hope the tax revenue offsets the lack of innovation and talent flight. But I think Google News…

Perhaps it's also got something to do with the fact that we don't have people shooting each other every other day around here, or the fact that we don't have people dying all around us for lack of public health treatment, or the fact that we can be sure that our kids will have a proper education.

See, we like regulation, we like for the people to be forced to contribute to a better society since we know that if we just let people be greedy, they WILL be greedy and we will end up with a de-humanizing society as you have in the USA.

If you don't like our rules, it's simple, just don't come here, we will and always have found an alternative even if it takes us a bit longer.

Post reply on HN