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Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

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Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#51

Post by johnsea »

kennethh wrote: post #23
guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

There were many search companies in the start and for a long time all of them did the same, google came and delivered a better product and kept innovation. People came and saw the google homesite with a logo, textfield and a button. This is simple we can make this also without knowing all the stuff behind it. Search is now a mature industry, it is always better to go for the new places where there are no dominant pla…

Google's search was - for me - much better some years ago than it is now. But now there is no alternative (well, duckduckgo, not yet on googles niveau but getting better).

Don't see the innovation with Ad Words: as _every_ small company can use it, you fight towards the bottom and sometimes against cowards instead for quality which an independent non-ad-financed search engine would much better reveal.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#52

Post by harryf »

hueving wrote: post #29
_pmf_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How? Great firewall of Europe? Or what exactly are you proposing? Forcing them to follow basic rules of fairness is usually enough to keep them out.

"Basic rules of fairness" is meaningless crap that roughly translates to, "we aren't as good so we will keep passing regulations in favor of locals until it's insane for anyone else to try." Frankly, it wouldn't be that surprising if net neutrality started getting violated in Europe by protectionism laws.

I have family in Germany who get their internet through Deutsche Telekom. When visiting I've found its faster to watch YouTube via a VPN through Switzerland than directly through Deutsche Telekom. While this doesn't prove anything it sure does feel like they already violate net neutrality when it comes to YouTube

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#53

Post by mrweasel »

richmarr wrote: post #44
donkeyd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is always fretting about how they need to create their own Silicon Valley but it's easy to do, kick out the Americans! You'll have your own Baidu, Tencent and Alibabas in no time. People seem to forget that Europe is not a country. Europe does not have a single uniting language. What happens, is that every country starts their own smaller versions and they stay mostly within that country. If they want to mov…

I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.

We need to register a company in each EU country we want to ship stuff to, otherwise we would quickly hit the sales tax limits in each country.

From our perspective the EU common marked is pretty much just a pipe dream. Being able to start a business in one EU country and just automatically have access to all of the 500million EU citizens would be awesome, but right now that not how it works.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#54

Post by claudius »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #2

> “Dominant companies can’t abuse their dominant position to create advantage in related markets,” she said bluntly, formally accusing Google of exploiting its supremacy in general search to dominate the market for online product searches It seems completely ridiculous to call those two different markets. Finding the most relevant X on the web is fundamentally part of the same market no matter what X is. Now, if they…

> It seems completely ridiculous to call those two different markets. Finding the most relevant X on the web is fundamentally part of the same market no matter what X is.

Yet in one case (general search) Google has a very large market share, whereas in the other case (e.g. product search), there is still plenty of competition with for example Amazon holding some share of that market. The idea is now that while it’s ok for Google to have such a large market share, it’s not ok for them to use that share in order to get another large market share which they don’t have at the moment. I.e. it’s acceptable for them to have a near-monopoly, but not to use that monopoly to build a second one.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#55

Post by richmarr »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #47
richmarr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.

You are unsing a very specific example do draw a very far-reaching conclusion. The only fact that the there are some 20 different languages makes the EU a much less omogeneous market than the US. This withouth considering that each country has its own employment policies, social security services, healthcare system, education system, revenue service... I'm strongly pro-union, but it's far from perfect, or even effici…

> You are unsing a very specific example do draw a very far-reaching conclusion.

No, I don't think "in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market" is far-reaching at all, especially when accompanied by a concrete example.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#56

Post by johnsea »

icebraining wrote: post #49
levosmetalo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what exactly is wrong with that? As long as the price / performance is not totally off, I'd always rather pay a bit more for a slightly worse service if I know VAT money will stay in my city, tax will be paid in my state, salaries would be paid in the same job market where I am, and the profit would be invested in my neighborhood. There are local monopolies everywhere, even in the USA. And they are protected by t…

As long as the price / performance is not totally off, I'd always rather pay a bit more for a slightly worse service if I know VAT money will stay in my city, tax will be paid in my state, salaries would be paid in the same job market where I am, and the profit would be invested in my neighborhood. Nobody prevents you from buying local right now, so that's a red herring. If you want to force others to do the same, yo…

This leads to nowhere. I could reply: And you pay for the locally laid off people and support the community which now fails necessary means?

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#57

Post by realusername »

guelo wrote: post #3

If you look at what has happened in China after Google left, how they were able to quickly grow massive web companies, protectionism seems like a no-brainer for every slightly advanced country. Silicon Valley sees the huge first-mover advantages and is moving as fast as possible to move into every liberalized market. But it makes no sense for a country to allow Silicon Valley to take these industries for themselves.…

You are maybe half-joking but the only reason it has not happened yet is that the EU is actively promoting free trade. I don't know for other countries but on my case in France, people would happily block or put massive taxes on large American websites to create local equivalents, they only reason it's not done yet is because they can't with the EU. And it's not the United States either, you can't argue that keeping free trade is good for the economy since the general consensus is that free trade is bad and hurting the country.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#58

Post by Vespasian »

mrweasel wrote: post #53
richmarr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.

We need to register a company in each EU country we want to ship stuff to, otherwise we would quickly hit the sales tax limits in each country. From our perspective the EU common marked is pretty much just a pipe dream. Being able to start a business in one EU country and just automatically have access to all of the 500million EU citizens would be awesome, but right now that not how it works.

Just out of curiosity why do you need to register a company in every country (assuming you are US based since there is no sales tax in the EU anywhere ;) ).

I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data (e.g. the customers country)?

Or do you mean that you have to pay VAT at all if you do this? In this case your problem is more political and about the concept of VAT in general. I mean almost any EU country had it for a long time. It sucks that there are huge differences when it comes to the exact amount but the concept itself is nothing new.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#59

Post by ThomPete »

richmarr wrote: post #44
donkeyd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is always fretting about how they need to create their own Silicon Valley but it's easy to do, kick out the Americans! You'll have your own Baidu, Tencent and Alibabas in no time. People seem to forget that Europe is not a country. Europe does not have a single uniting language. What happens, is that every country starts their own smaller versions and they stay mostly within that country. If they want to mov…

I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.

Problem is that those standards (GSM was another) isn't solving how to run a business in different countries with different consumers, different rulesets etc.

Re: Google’s $6B Miscalculation on the EU

#60

Post by confluence »

eru wrote: post #40
paganel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for a Yelp-lookalike website in an Eastern European country, sometime in 2010. The whole thing cost my employer a lot of money to get started, think programmers' and sales people's salaries, to say nothing of the people that we had actually outside the office, walking the streets of our ten-or-so biggest cities and trying to document each and every local business. And then, towards the end of 2010-early 2…

Sorry, I don't follow. How did Google rip anyone off here?

Scrapped the data most likely
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