Just a couple weeks ago, the European Commission put out its plan for “European tech sovereignty.” It’s not surprising that Europeans are looking at their internet platform option…
What Europeans could not build quickly for themselves, due to a thicket of regulations, they often imported just as quickly from abroad….
Skype was a very successful European company that was acquired by Microsoft (and then shut down to promote MS Teams, a product that is much worse). Mojang Studios, famous for its online game Minecraft, is a Swedish product also acquired by Microsoft. DeepMind was acquired by Alphabet/Google from its UK founders.
The list of European companies that have eventually been acquired by U.S. big tech is very long. What Europe lacks in my humble opinion is a sense of sovereignty, meaning we need to make sure that our stakes are protected and not just sold out abroad. We needs more laws to protect this sovereignty (similar to those in the U.S. and China).
I also agree with other views here like @masterspace@lemmy.ca’s remark that American firms are underregulated, but this is something Europe can hardly influence. But Europe should enhance regulation to make sure that technology developed on the continent isn’t given away.
I strongly disagree with the article in that sense. There is a lot of homegrown EU tech, Mastodon being another example.
Yes but clearly Mastodon is not as popular as Blusky. There are countless other examples one could mention where the US competitor gets much bigger than the European one. Usually the European tech that becomes popular is after they get bought by a US company
The problem is that scale and size have a quantity all their own. Those European companies sold out to American ones because the American were allowed to grow so big that they had the resource to make the EU companies offers they couldn’t refuse.
Skype was a very successful European company that was acquired by Microsoft (and then shut down to promote MS Teams, a product that is much worse). Mojang Studios, famous for its online game Minecraft, is a Swedish product also acquired by Microsoft. DeepMind was acquired by Alphabet/Google from its UK founders.
The list of European companies that have eventually been acquired by U.S. big tech is very long. What Europe lacks in my humble opinion is a sense of sovereignty, meaning we need to make sure that our stakes are protected and not just sold out abroad. We needs more laws to protect this sovereignty (similar to those in the U.S. and China).
I also agree with other views here like @masterspace@lemmy.ca’s remark that American firms are underregulated, but this is something Europe can hardly influence. But Europe should enhance regulation to make sure that technology developed on the continent isn’t given away.
I strongly disagree with the article in that sense. There is a lot of homegrown EU tech, Mastodon being another example.
Yes but clearly Mastodon is not as popular as Blusky. There are countless other examples one could mention where the US competitor gets much bigger than the European one. Usually the European tech that becomes popular is after they get bought by a US company
This is true, but only because they are bought at a very early stage. These are start-ups when being acquired.
The problem is that scale and size have a quantity all their own. Those European companies sold out to American ones because the American were allowed to grow so big that they had the resource to make the EU companies offers they couldn’t refuse.