A bit of a tangent here. I'm not a native English speaker but is it me or is this text badly written?
> The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers.
Persisted in a continuing course, saying the same thing twice.
> In stark contrast, EU service providers have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.
"Benefiting" is spelled with one t.
> If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means...
Again, restricting and limiting mean the same thing. Also, can you deter competitiveness?
Throwing stone from a glass box eh? If I understand correctly, US is by far the largest services exporter to EU… should EU merely apply the same “tariffs” that US might impose on these goods, some healthy European alternatives would finally gain some ground..
I think you can make a bigger list of US firms that are benefiting from EU laws, like Epic Games, Garmin, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft. But these companies are again also benefiting from maybe other American more established and US protected companies.
None of those are products, those are companies that offers 100s of products.
The question is not is there as an alternative to Google-as-a-whole, but is there an alternative to Google Search (yes), to Google Analytics (yes), to Gmail (yes), to Google Ads (yes, but not really), to YouTube (no), and to Android (yes, but not really).
Having a European mega-company that offers 100s of tightly-integrated products shouldn't be the end goal, that's just swapping one monopoly with another. We need a healthly ecosystem where there are hundreds of separate companies each solving 1-5 use cases.
just a nitpick, shouldn't youtube also be "yes, but not really", since there are plenty of alternatives to hosting video. but none have the reach that youtube has, similar to ads?
I would name PeerTube the project and the various PeerTube instances various organizations are running (like for example https://vhsky.cz/) as a good Youtube alternative.
Sure, you might not have all the media on one big convenient pile like on Youtube, but that is kinda the point (with no single pile owner there is no single entity that decideds what goes on the pile or not).
Digital Service dominance in this case isn't based on some trait of American Exceptionalism - or conversely based off some sort of lack of academic rigour or work ethic in European Entrepreneurship.
Rather, the current state of SaaS in the context of the historic stock market is a severe economic aberration divorced from any sort of valuation fundamentals like securities weighting. Instead we observe predatory VC and PE entities supported by a complimentary taxation and economic regime, all ultimately facilitated by the passing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
In short, this notion of self-sufficiency is unachievable in the European context as it is predicated entirely upon wealth inequality and thumbing the scale of the free-market via lobbying, and is the doctrine denounced to the point of anathema in any Socialist Democracy.
The end result here is not some sort of organically earned digital services dominance - instead you end up with scenarios like forcing the FDIC to bail out the VC bank of Choice - SVB - where uninsured deposits were estimated to represent 89 percent of total deposits at the bank, totalling $18 billion of the ultimate $20 billion cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund.
Possibly. Until recently, anyone who was in tech wanted to move to the US because there was simply more opportunity. Salaries are higher, chances of making it big are higher, failing is often seen as a positive in the US, etc... The adage that the best place to make money is the US and the best place to spend money is the EU still rings true.
The US become less welcoming to immigrants is a great opportunity for the EU, but it remains to be seen if they will be able to take advantage and overcome the structural differences.
Is that really the case for the EU? The EU doesn’t seem to foster an environment for competitive companies that can operate at the necessary scale the above listed can.
Mostly an artefact of the non-application of antitrust laws, the US selectively decided to not apply those anymore for the past 30-40 years, corporate consolidation takes hold, companies providing a service grow enormously and are allowed to swallow prominent competitors to stamp them out.
The EU has many competitive companies, I think HN is too focused on "tech" as in digital/web stuff and quite blind to other technological industries...
The opposite seems to be the case. The EU fosters really competitive markets, so large companies are really hard to emerge. There are tons of small software shops in my city alone, you can walk through the city and see ads for them in front of their houses.
You say that like scale is an inevitability. If Microsoft's offerings were unbundled into lots of smaller interoperable solutions we'd all be better off.
It seems to be. As in most of the world, nearly everyone is divvied up between Apple and Microsoft, and use Google Search, with Wikipedia being the default place normies go for information. I know there are people who use Linux and prefer to use other search engines, but they are few and far between.
You probably mean Schwarz Gruppe, the owner of Lidl, and their subsidiary StackIT. Yes, they are growing. Schwarz is also building 11B€ AI data center in Lubbenau, so I fully agree with you. We will be fine without American digital services.
A "functioning market" doesn't prevent oligopolies. Oligopolies are natural and optimal (desirable) in many industries, if not most. That's where regulations come in.
The EU has an extremely fragmented digital internal market, laws that suck for startups in most places, worse capital markets and funding mechanisms (and related laws), and doesn't have a Silicon Valley. It also underinvests in R&D and doesn't have a DARPA.
So yes, just tariffing or restricting US tech wouldn't help much. Europe "lost" that race fair and square. It needs to focus on fixing all those things.
On the other hand a lot of these startups and tech companies are a net negative for the world. Externalise problems and pollution, internalise profits. We don't want society to be only decided by those who make the most money. That's why we have those laws.
I personally don't want the EU to become the US. And Investors gambling with other people's money is what gave us the world financial crisis of 2007. No lessons were learned as usual.
Yes, funnily, mutual tariffs on IT services between the EU and USA would incentivize competition, which is a good thing. Unless the EU is try incapable of doing IT right, in which case it would slow the the EU economy, but let’s assume we’ll improve on that.
On Wikipedia: German chapter is the second largest (>100 FTEs) and collects donations directly, funding root org from them and keeping significant part for its own operations. It’s not exactly an American monopoly.
It does not matter anything in this case. It’s open source, it’s community-driven, and governance structure isn’t a moat. It can be forked in a matter of days, especially given that there exist independent European structures to support it.
Wikipedia is not community driven. About as public as so called public ownership in reality. It is clearly directed by a small group of people, mostly those with enough time on their hands.
Most folk can no longer edit it. They're blocked.
There are clear biases in its content provision, such as its coverage of certain rich people and establishment bodies.
Calling a system that is 90% foss and public domain "owned" by anyone is a bit of a stretch. I can, fully legally, download all the text of Wikipedia for about 130gb and host it myself.
Besides, Jimmy Wales is awesome.
The parent was talking about the scenario where Europe is forced to create alternative (like China) and that it will lead to a better/wider selection for him (I assume he is in the EU) and my answer is that it will lead to only a European selection.
Interestingly, the only people having a wider selection are the ones outside of EU/US/China as they'll be free to pick up whatever they want.
The tariff talk was ostensibly because the EU exported more goods to the US than the US exported to EU.
The US exports far more digital services to the EU, though.
Understanding those things, it would seem a particularly unwise framing for the US government to focus on EU digital services exports.
LLMs are rapidly commoditizing software, and in particular making it far easier to handle the regulatory compliance and regional fragmentation that have traditionally held back software companies in the EU. Combine that with growing concerns about software trust, and the EU looks like an increasingly attractive bet for future software investment.
Ironic, then, that Europe seems slowest to adopt the very tool that could finally solve its fragmentation problem.
Two governments, two very different strategies to cripple themselves. The race is on.
If American companies don’t respect Europe regulation it’s time to Europe invest in dedicated software competing with office 365, social networks, even android/apple/windows os.
Many EU Governments run entirely on MS/Meta/Amazon and to a lessor extent Google services. Many (most?) government services run on Azure or AWS, and huge parts of the continent run on WhatsApp.
The EU countries had decades to build and foster alternative companies yet they did not manage to do so. China did though.
Was it a lack of political will or short-termed-ness? Maybe both but the end result is the same.
You can't undo 20 years of inaction in a few years. It will take decades before viable EU competitors emerge and begin to rival US giants and that's if they even are allowed to do so in the first place.
Same with Holland. The tax office is moving away from their own office package onto m365 right now. They apparently had an alternative all this time, which I find very surprising (the media didn't really elaborate on this).
But Holland, Ireland, UK are the most neoliberal countries in Europe, they worship America and believe that the market solves everything. The rest of europe doesn't share that sentiment to the same extent.
Long term, it would be good for the EU if tech market access was restricted. The reason there aren't EU tech giants is because the US and EU are basically one market, so naturally, all tech giants end up being American. So it's not in the interest of the US to restrict market access in anyway and these tech giants know it.
The E.U. making life difficult for U.S.-based monopolists, and the U.S. making life difficult for E.U.-based monopolists? For a net effect of life being difficult for all monopolists?
Well, that sounds like a wonderful idea!
I am all for it. Through this model, we might actually enjoy effective antitrust enforcement, and escape regulatory capture! Who would have thought that this day would ever come? Once again, it turns out I have been too cynical all my life.
"effective antitrust enforcement, and escape regulatory capture"
Give me an example where Antitrust was actually breaking any monopoly.
In the EU and the Microsoft antitrust case, the remedy was to give the best poison to the competitors (free software Samba in that case) in that case royalties over patents.
Antitrust don't work, fines are too low, remedies are not working, and the administration is biased and politicized.
US would like entire world to adapt American laws, values, norms, morals, life styles, mindset, ethics etc. Any deviation would, ofcourse, be uncomfortable.
Is that defense umbrella actually real? Over the last year the US acted less and less as an ally to the point I wouldn't trust to actually help out in case of an attack
Accenture is operating from Ireland, legally speaking. It may be in American hands, serving American shareholders and American interests, and it may have been started as a European front for an American business, but it's technically an EU company.
I don't think those kinds of details matter to a government looking to start yet another trade war, though. The list is based on the question "what legally European tech companies do business in America, sorted by income".
FAANG usually only operate what is necessary to collect payment and maybe do some lobbying on the side. Accenture actually has a full HQ with people on the ground in Europe.
But yes, legally speaking, FAANG is also EU, same way Volkswagen is an American company. That's not really how people tend to talk about these companies, though.
Yay, jackpot! We taunted the monkey in the glass box into throwing the first stone.
The EU is just itching for any opportunity to get rid of US tech firms because they’re increasingly seen as sovereignty risks. And while the GDPR fines (that this likely refers to) appear huge on absolute terms, they are still low enough that US firms voluntarily decide to violate those laws and just pay the fines.
The US sees TikTok as a risk. For the EU, it’s Microsoft Office.
I think the American government is mad at the DMA more than anything. Breaking up the monopolies that are currently firmly held by American tech giants goes directly against the interests of the White House, especially now that they're able to openly bribe the president.
> The EU is just itching for any opportunity to get rid of US tech firms because they’re increasingly seen as sovereignty risks. And while the GDPR fines (that this likely refers to) appear huge on absolute terms, they are still low enough that US firms voluntarily decide to violate those laws and just pay the fines.
That is not even remotely close to the truth. The EU is not itching to get rid of Microsoft nor Windows nor Google. If these companies left tomorrow, the EU will have enormous problems replacing them if that is even possible in the first place.
The EU countries should have had a homegrown version of each US service up and running and on par with their US counterparts a decade ago, then the EU would have had leverage but as it stands, they have none.
Unless you think that every governmental office will switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning, in which case I have a bridge to sell you.
Not to mention that the entire EU's messaging needs are met via US companies. Let's see how long the EU can last without WhatsApp, IMessage and Facebook Messenger.
My guess is not long unless you want to use Telegram which was most likely backdoor-ed by the French government not long ago.
This is the problem with the EU as it stands, there is really no mea-culpa from the institutions for their inaction and getting caught with their pants down.
All of this was foreseeable and could have been avoided, yet here we are.
I really don't mind sitting on a table and discussing things but having the biggest military power on the planet becoming suddenly hostile and pushy like this is really really fucked up.
Is this all simply spurred on by the recent fine against Musk/X? That wasn’t even about censorship but other issues. Not to mention the irony of threatening market access after throwing high tariffs on key allies while going soft on China.
The problem isn't knowledge workers, we have plenty. The problem is that given the choice between being paid $55k for a EU based company and spend half your salary in rent vs making $200k+ working for a US based company most people chose money. Even without relocating, working for a US based company in Europe makes more sense...
Working for Dassault or Rheinmetall on high tech military equipment will net you less than half what you'd get helping Facebook come up with the most effective way to cram as many ads as physically possible in your fellow citizens' lives... it's like we got our priorities backward and reward things than shouldn't even exist
A lot of people work comfortably for EU companies. Yes, there’s more money somewhere else in this world, but when your income is good enough other things matter more. I think you are exaggerating the problem. Europe can certainly handle building the core tech stack to achieve sovereignty.
The internship I had half way through my studies for a US based company (10+ years ago) paid more than most tech jobs you can land in Paris with a masters degree (right now)... I think you're underestimating the problem. Tech workers are seen as an expense, not a resource, and certainly not as assets.
I don't think that's true. Have a look at the people who are actually working in the US offices of US companies. There are some Americans but you'll also find plenty of Europeans as well as people from all over the world.
Have a look at where US tech companies offices are. You'll find plenty of them in the EU
The EU can only fine US tech giants because it's good at suffocating its own European companies with some of its members states having one of the highest taxes and subject to the EU's regulations.
It's no wonder AI startups like Mistral (France) are so dependent on US VCs and the same is true with Lovable (Sweden) who were able to grow faster than Europe trying to strangle them.
Since there are rare startup home-runs that are from Europe, the EU instead needs find a way to impose fines on US big tech companies. They (EU) will certainly do the same with the Big AI companies very soon.
You're pretending like the fines target US companies. GDPR fines target malpractice and mishandling of data. The DMC seeks to break up artificial digital market monopolies. These apply to corporations operating in the EU, with no basis on where they operate from. Don't want to get punished for creating an uncompetitive monopoly? Don't create an uncompetitive monopoly.
> The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers.
Persisted in a continuing course, saying the same thing twice.
> In stark contrast, EU service providers have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.
"Benefiting" is spelled with one t.
> If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of U.S. service providers through discriminatory means...
Again, restricting and limiting mean the same thing. Also, can you deter competitiveness?
The question is not is there as an alternative to Google-as-a-whole, but is there an alternative to Google Search (yes), to Google Analytics (yes), to Gmail (yes), to Google Ads (yes, but not really), to YouTube (no), and to Android (yes, but not really).
Having a European mega-company that offers 100s of tightly-integrated products shouldn't be the end goal, that's just swapping one monopoly with another. We need a healthly ecosystem where there are hundreds of separate companies each solving 1-5 use cases.
Sure, you might not have all the media on one big convenient pile like on Youtube, but that is kinda the point (with no single pile owner there is no single entity that decideds what goes on the pile or not).
That's why Europe needs that push to get their act together and start being self-sufficient, digital services-wise.
Rather, the current state of SaaS in the context of the historic stock market is a severe economic aberration divorced from any sort of valuation fundamentals like securities weighting. Instead we observe predatory VC and PE entities supported by a complimentary taxation and economic regime, all ultimately facilitated by the passing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
In short, this notion of self-sufficiency is unachievable in the European context as it is predicated entirely upon wealth inequality and thumbing the scale of the free-market via lobbying, and is the doctrine denounced to the point of anathema in any Socialist Democracy.
The end result here is not some sort of organically earned digital services dominance - instead you end up with scenarios like forcing the FDIC to bail out the VC bank of Choice - SVB - where uninsured deposits were estimated to represent 89 percent of total deposits at the bank, totalling $18 billion of the ultimate $20 billion cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund.
The US become less welcoming to immigrants is a great opportunity for the EU, but it remains to be seen if they will be able to take advantage and overcome the structural differences.
https://www.challenge.org/insights/structural-differences-in...
The EU has many competitive companies, I think HN is too focused on "tech" as in digital/web stuff and quite blind to other technological industries...
You’re correct that few EU companies get as large as US monopolies, but that’s kind of the goal when you want a functioning market.
So yes, just tariffing or restricting US tech wouldn't help much. Europe "lost" that race fair and square. It needs to focus on fixing all those things.
I personally don't want the EU to become the US. And Investors gambling with other people's money is what gave us the world financial crisis of 2007. No lessons were learned as usual.
Most folk can no longer edit it. They're blocked.
There are clear biases in its content provision, such as its coverage of certain rich people and establishment bodies.
8 out of the 10 largest Wikipedias are European languages...
Interestingly, the only people having a wider selection are the ones outside of EU/US/China as they'll be free to pick up whatever they want.
Its practical to use GCP, Azure and AWS for sure but yeah they were always market dominant.
Its probably time to say good buy to an old ally who became demented and hostile to europe :(
The US exports far more digital services to the EU, though.
Understanding those things, it would seem a particularly unwise framing for the US government to focus on EU digital services exports.
LLMs are rapidly commoditizing software, and in particular making it far easier to handle the regulatory compliance and regional fragmentation that have traditionally held back software companies in the EU. Combine that with growing concerns about software trust, and the EU looks like an increasingly attractive bet for future software investment.
Ironic, then, that Europe seems slowest to adopt the very tool that could finally solve its fragmentation problem.
Two governments, two very different strategies to cripple themselves. The race is on.
Globalisation has made America the richest country on the planet. The real problem is that the money doesn't reach the "deplorable" population.
But that is an INTERNAL issue that could have easily be solved with voting for Bernie Sanders.
People vote against their own interests is a tale as old as democracy itself.
We should have learned that the USA can't be trusted when Nixon ended bretton woods so it didn't have to give France it's gold back.
Was it a lack of political will or short-termed-ness? Maybe both but the end result is the same.
You can't undo 20 years of inaction in a few years. It will take decades before viable EU competitors emerge and begin to rival US giants and that's if they even are allowed to do so in the first place.
But Holland, Ireland, UK are the most neoliberal countries in Europe, they worship America and believe that the market solves everything. The rest of europe doesn't share that sentiment to the same extent.
It really isn't representative of the real world average human intelligence and capacity to debate or even discuss ideas.
Well, that sounds like a wonderful idea!
I am all for it. Through this model, we might actually enjoy effective antitrust enforcement, and escape regulatory capture! Who would have thought that this day would ever come? Once again, it turns out I have been too cynical all my life.
Give me an example where Antitrust was actually breaking any monopoly.
In the EU and the Microsoft antitrust case, the remedy was to give the best poison to the competitors (free software Samba in that case) in that case royalties over patents.
Antitrust don't work, fines are too low, remedies are not working, and the administration is biased and politicized.
Ignoring that if the service is free, YOU are the product, is childlike
I don't think those kinds of details matter to a government looking to start yet another trade war, though. The list is based on the question "what legally European tech companies do business in America, sorted by income".
But yes, legally speaking, FAANG is also EU, same way Volkswagen is an American company. That's not really how people tend to talk about these companies, though.
The EU is just itching for any opportunity to get rid of US tech firms because they’re increasingly seen as sovereignty risks. And while the GDPR fines (that this likely refers to) appear huge on absolute terms, they are still low enough that US firms voluntarily decide to violate those laws and just pay the fines.
The US sees TikTok as a risk. For the EU, it’s Microsoft Office.
I think the American government is mad at the DMA more than anything. Breaking up the monopolies that are currently firmly held by American tech giants goes directly against the interests of the White House, especially now that they're able to openly bribe the president.
It's the not the government, it's the large american companies behind it.
That is not even remotely close to the truth. The EU is not itching to get rid of Microsoft nor Windows nor Google. If these companies left tomorrow, the EU will have enormous problems replacing them if that is even possible in the first place.
The EU countries should have had a homegrown version of each US service up and running and on par with their US counterparts a decade ago, then the EU would have had leverage but as it stands, they have none.
Unless you think that every governmental office will switch to Ubuntu tomorrow morning, in which case I have a bridge to sell you.
Not to mention that the entire EU's messaging needs are met via US companies. Let's see how long the EU can last without WhatsApp, IMessage and Facebook Messenger.
My guess is not long unless you want to use Telegram which was most likely backdoor-ed by the French government not long ago.
This is the problem with the EU as it stands, there is really no mea-culpa from the institutions for their inaction and getting caught with their pants down.
All of this was foreseeable and could have been avoided, yet here we are.
Otherwise, how can words like "discrimination" even be appropriate?
I really don't mind sitting on a table and discussing things but having the biggest military power on the planet becoming suddenly hostile and pushy like this is really really fucked up.
fu usa...
Working for Dassault or Rheinmetall on high tech military equipment will net you less than half what you'd get helping Facebook come up with the most effective way to cram as many ads as physically possible in your fellow citizens' lives... it's like we got our priorities backward and reward things than shouldn't even exist
Have a look at where US tech companies offices are. You'll find plenty of them in the EU
It's no wonder AI startups like Mistral (France) are so dependent on US VCs and the same is true with Lovable (Sweden) who were able to grow faster than Europe trying to strangle them.
Since there are rare startup home-runs that are from Europe, the EU instead needs find a way to impose fines on US big tech companies. They (EU) will certainly do the same with the Big AI companies very soon.