The government dictating how businesses are allowed to interact with its citizens is a statement that equally applies to both the US banning TikTok and GDPR.
If the EU banned American big tech, they'd be set aback 20 years. Of course where would be a populist revolution.
The difference between the EU and US on this matter, is that the EU has almost no substitutes, and they just don't - for whatever reason (there are many) have he will to do them.
And of course there's no point - what FB is doing is no different from what a EU-based FB would do.
I've been doing tech in Poland since ~2002 and it's not true.
We had a counterpart for I think every single US-based service, but most sites didn't survive the competition. Right now only eBay failed to enter our market (they tried, but the local Allegro won out).
Personally, I'm not the fan of the local copycats - because of their local scale they couldn't really get enough profit/investment to grow the tech just as much. But still - at least in Poland, it's not true that there were no substitutes.
> If the EU banned American big tech, they'd be set aback 20 years. Of course where would be a populist revolution.
Be more specific. I remember a time where dailymotion was mocking Youtube as a money blackhole due to its shitty tech. Lots of startups people in the US use are from Europe (Spotify). Lots of startups that exist in Europe don't even exist in the US, or don't get that much traction in the US (monzo, revolut, blablacar, thetrainline, toogoodtogo, etc.)
> And of course there's no point - what FB is doing is no different from what a EU-based FB would do.
there is so much wrong in this sentence. By being a US company FB is run much more differently. Control of information.
It's easy to create those apps when there is no external competition. China created every major internet service U.S has. EU can easily do the same.
The point is FB pay tax to US, and a EU-based FB will pay tax to EU. EU actually want to copy GFW , see https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2020/6487...
Unfortunately, all of these answers are off the mark.
A) Europe has tons of bright people and tons of technical talent - this is not the ussie.
B) Governments don't create stuff. So the 'EU' is barely a government it's not 'they' who can go and make something, or 'have it made'. Even the US gov. would suck bad at copying FB. Granted, if there were no competition, substitutes would arrive.
C) Europe does not have quite the dynamic leadership exhibited in the Valley. Maybe there would be something pop up, but it probably would be a bad clone, it might not have all the nimble features. FB advertising engine is complex, massive, they have huge ad sales division. This is the $$$ the pays for everything.
D) EU is still highly fragmented, and not an immigrant place like SV. Better to think of SV as really a 'global centre' that happens to be in America. Tons of talent from around the world, they come for the money and adventure, not so much to be 'American'.
E) Europeans value quality of life a lot, and in some things it's fine, but in some industries ... it means less competitive.
F) Europe esp. Germany, does not 'get' software in the way SV does.
So Europe has all the pieces but they are not quite aligned.
It's not at all 'easy' to fire on all cylinders and create amazing new experiences.
ByteDance et. al. have zillions of workers, working cheaply, often 7 days a week.
So Europe is good at R&D, Hardware, Lifestyle stuff, and stuff that doesn't need huge scale and major talent depth, things that don't move 24/7.
But EU is not going to build something 'better' than FB or Google anytime soon. But they discover good drugs and make good cars etc..
the EU would use yandex and VK. They are decent enough substitutes for google and FB , and of course the extra attention would make them better. There is enough money in the EU to buy them. There are already popular alternatives to US messaging apps, e.g. Viber.
You know there is this movement called open source software right?
With it not only a lot of strategical pieces of software are available to anyone to modify, but it also allowed people all over the world to contribute to them.
This means that not only Europe but other parts of the world have people with enough knowledge to not only contribute, combine and use those things but also to 'push the envelope' in research and development.
BTW, a more decentralized, organic tech world, is something we should try to achieve, because as we are seeing now, there are no safe heavens for anything, anymore.
We should think more like human beings and less with nationalistic mentality, because all i've seeing til now, is nationalistic values being use not just to undermine other countries, but also undermine the nationalistic's own country.
If there's one valuable lesson history teach us, is that even the Rome empire, comparatively much powerful than anything we have now, started to fall when they corrupted the core values that served as a foundation of the Roman empire.
And nationalistic, the "we are better than everyone else", walls, stupid wars, etc..
But lets not forget an important difference here, right now all the achievements, the culture, the universities, the internet, the knowledge is widespread all over the world..
This is a pandora box effect, that once opened, cannot be closed anymore.
So even if the US totally closed itself to the world, im pretty sure the world would keep moving forward, and once this Donald Trump version of US lost it all and tried to become part of the world again, im pretty sure, it would be welcomed with open arms, and a catch up path would be offered to try to recover what was lost along the way. A sort of "Marshall plan" only that this time it would be to put the US back on their feet.
I hope the US dont keep going through this path that only leads to self-destruction..
