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In some ways I wish the EU would ban US tech companies, EU basically has no indigenous tech landscape compared to Russia and China who have suppressed US tech.

by iorrus 2y ago

throwaway2990 2y ago
[dead]
- iorrus 2y ago
  There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. It’s not, if Meta, AWS, Google were banned in the EU perfectly functional European equivalents would pop up very rapidly similar to Russia and China.
  - wenc 2y ago
    > There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. I personally think it is difficult due to scale and economics. That is not to say Europeans can't grow a competitor in cloud, search or social media -- of course they can. There's a deep talent pool in Europe. But there's a lot of friction to doing tech at scale in EU. Large amounts of capital is much harder to raise, and varied regulatory environments/languages add cost to scaling. Plus you have to treat the UK and non-EU European countries as a separate markets. The difference between EU vs China (and to some extent Russia) is the latter have similar abilities to scale as the U.S. Also competitive advantages can be difficult to beat. AWS had a 8 year lead over Azure and while Azure is a lot better these days, it's still not all the way there. GCP, even though it is backed by one of the greatest and most highly capitalized large-scale engineering orgs on the planet, struggles to get appreciable marketshare.
- npteljes 2y ago
  Which, I think, would be a good thing on mid and longer term. Because the vacuum would create positions to be filled. And Europe does have tech, and especially would have tech, if it were given some room.
theferalrobot 2y ago
Do recall that the EU has imposed quite a bit of regulation on US tech companies, remember all the requirements that EU citizen data be located in the EU? An outright ban however is unlikely between allied democratic nations, but it is certainly within their right
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
They don’t ban US tech companies, just fine them lots of money. In the end, I don’t think Europe lacks the ability to regulate them.

In some ways I wish the EU would ban US tech companies, EU basically has no indigenous tech landscape compared to Russia and China who have suppressed US tech.

by iorrus 2y ago

In some ways I wish the EU would ban US tech companies, EU basically has no indigenous tech landscape compared to Russia and China who have suppressed US tech.

throwaway2990 2y ago

[dead]

iorrus 2y ago
There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. It’s not, if Meta, AWS, Google were banned in the EU perfectly functional European equivalents would pop up very rapidly similar to Russia and China.
- wenc 2y ago
  > There is this false idea that setting up an AWS or Google or Facebook competitor is in some way difficult. I personally think it is difficult due to scale and economics. That is not to say Europeans can't grow a competitor in cloud, search or social media -- of course they can. There's a deep talent pool in Europe. But there's a lot of friction to doing tech at scale in EU. Large amounts of capital is much harder to raise, and varied regulatory environments/languages add cost to scaling. Plus you have to treat the UK and non-EU European countries as a separate markets. The difference between EU vs China (and to some extent Russia) is the latter have similar abilities to scale as the U.S. Also competitive advantages can be difficult to beat. AWS had a 8 year lead over Azure and while Azure is a lot better these days, it's still not all the way there. GCP, even though it is backed by one of the greatest and most highly capitalized large-scale engineering orgs on the planet, struggles to get appreciable marketshare.
npteljes 2y ago
Which, I think, would be a good thing on mid and longer term. Because the vacuum would create positions to be filled. And Europe does have tech, and especially would have tech, if it were given some room.

theferalrobot 2y ago

Do recall that the EU has imposed quite a bit of regulation on US tech companies, remember all the requirements that EU citizen data be located in the EU? An outright ban however is unlikely between allied democratic nations, but it is certainly within their right

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

They don’t ban US tech companies, just fine them lots of money. In the end, I don’t think Europe lacks the ability to regulate them.