If we’re talking about a reset, then the EU should ban Google/Apple/Amazon/Huawei/Xiaomi/Meta/etc products and services in their entirety, and finance/incentivize local companies to provide replacements.
As a EU citizen I don’t see why those companies should have the disproportionate amount of control and oversight in our daily lives they have today while our bureaucracies are stuck in a constant game of cat and mouse against them, as they have proven countless times they see EU regulation as hurdles to be worked around rather than fundamental rules to play by.
We need that reset in America too. These companies are too big and powerful. There is no fair free market with them just due to their size. Let alone anti competitive actions or lobbying or regulatory capture.
Can we get a reset on the state actors while we're at it? Because I'm sure there are a number of countries who can't infiltrate 2025 FAANG, but could infiltrate 2015 FAANG, and any start-up is going to be dealing with scaling and will have vulnerabilities that rhyme with 2015 FAANG.
"The biggest startup ideas are terrifying. And not just because they'd be a lot of work. The biggest ideas seem to threaten your identity: you wonder if you'd have enough ambition to carry them through [...] The best ideas are just on the right side of impossible."
Look at the reaction to "cookie dialogs" which are the companies trying to toe the line as close as possible on compliance (and arguably often over it) at the expense of UX. Banning Android and iOS would absolutely trigger a much stronger reaction and would seem to me to be away to torpedo any regulation by including it such a requirement
Realistically they are not irreplaceable. They provide convenience for coordination of some stuff but a company that would be able to sell smartphones at scale with an alternative OS could get there pretty fast. All the very useful apps are some sort of marketplace/coordinating software (with an identity/messaging system) that already has a web version anyway.
The major issue is the massive web index since that would take a lot of capital and time to recreate but there are already various alternatives that could get better with use.
For the commercial web it doesn't matter as much since it's always evolving anyway and every big website already has its own search engine.
Would be inconvenient at first but not something that would affect people's lives as drastically as tech people like to think.
China is doing it. Huawei now has its own proper OS (and no, it is not Linux. Lookup HarmonyOS Next). I played with the laptop a bit a couple months ago. It is very basic but it has a functioning browser and some really neat features.
I can’t imagine anyone in my environment becoming really angry over this. Some of them would have to find new time sinks though—-hopefully ones that actually benefit them instead of turning them into commodities.
> finance/incentivize local companies to provide replacements
The EU has been trying to do that for as long as I can remember and they have little to show for it. What reason is there to believe this will suddenly produce useful results?
There are many EU citizens who don't hold your opinion. Are they allowed to do business with the these entities on their own terms? Why can't you just de-google and de-apple and de-meta and let other people make their own decisions?
Sure they can, by setting up a VPN. The same kind of software-config friction people have to overcome to avoid the anticompetitive megacorpos. I'd say it's sensible to have the default lazy option land somewhere in the middle rather than completely lopsided against users.
How exactly do you expect to sell it internationally after banning all competition? Odds are very good that the world will flip you the bird too and ban your software in kind. These central planners as usual lack the empathy to be effective when dealing with their own economies, let alone international ones.
We keep on hearing those nationalism-protectionist rackets proposed as if that will produce something better than an also-ran reinventing the wheel. And expecting to sell internationally after denying the world the same chance? You aren't that special.
Saying that they need first for there to be no alternatives and then they will produce something better should raise some major red flags. You wouldn't accept an exclusivity contract of that nature with your grocery store but accepting it for your communications? Not to mention the real reason for such protectionism goes unspoken: more government spying and backdoors and more censorship and control. That was why China rolled their own.
sucks that market forces doesn't allow a lone developer to be noticed against one of these companies because people refuse to spend time to try something new. as if time costs money. if we spend time on marketing we will be worse developers. then be surprised when one person takes down entire sector.
It's not just that: it's that the hyper platform companies have been allowed to turn {build a better X} into {build a better X + rebuild their entire platform/ecosystem}.
That's the real harm to competition, and why the Digital Markets Act is a great idea.
Fuck Google et al. maintaining their market hegemonies.
In order to build a better web browser, once should not also have to build a highly trafficked search engine AND a widely deployed mobile phone OS.
Yet that's exactly the situation that missing monopoly enforcement has allowed to come into being...
> If we’re talking about a reset, then the EU should ban Google/Apple/Amazon/Huawei/Xiaomi/Meta/etc products and services in their entirety, and finance/incentivize local companies to provide replacements.
I don't think you appreciate quite how much easier it is to write down rules and use your populace as economic hostages to get fines out of companies created in places with good economic policies, than it is to make your own stuff internally.
The same can be said about the EU bureaucracies, why do they have a disproportionate amount of control and oversight in daily lives of EU citizens?
We need a full reset from them. Countries should get their powers back. Take it back from the non elected EU bureaucrats.
There are some very worrisome things going on in the EU with Chat Control, Ministry of Truth, Digital ID Systems, and Central Bank Digital Currencies.
Each individual piece will be introduced to fix something or prevent something. But it is a slippery slope to also use it for something else, and more and more. Before we know it we will live in a continent that is ruled by an authoritarian mob like in China.
The fact that companies like Google are complaining (while pretending like they’re looking out for consumers - which is unsavory) is a great signal indicator that this is going to disrupt monopolistic / anti-consumer business practice's. Good.
You know it can be both, right? Standing up to tech giants can be a good pretext to introduce new taxes, create new smaller monopolies who happen to be your friends, spy on the masses, etc.
But it’s all cool, we are standing up for the tech feudalists.
You mean being both pro-consumer and pro-producer? Sure it can be both, provided we establish the principle uniting the two. Property rights is one. Altruism is another. The two would lead to totally different outcomes.
Speaking of property rights, creating new smaller monopolies is in no way “pro-producer.” Nobody truly benefits by robbing the other, it’s as shortsighted “benefit” as it can be. We need long-term predictable policies that don’t criminalize what is, in fact, not criminal.
Otherwise it can be both anti-producer and anti-consumer, too.
on Android by forcing us to remove our legitimate safeguards that protect users’ security and safety
All you want is complete control, as evidenced by your intention to lock down devices against their actual owners. Google is effectively an unelected global government at this point. Piss off!
But also the EU wants to add chat control so they can read all your encrypted messages so maybe you _dont_ want them to have a say in how Android safeguards work?
The EU is not a single person. There are some people among the EU elites who fight for an open Internet, and some who want to control the Internet. They are not the same people.
Yes, time for a reset. A reset of all the influence foreign companies have on my country! It is many the times I have daydreamed of seizing their assets and pushing them out... Goodbye Apple, goodbye Google!
There are more than two mobile OS's, we just have to be allowed to run our choice of them on our choice of device, and the hardware vendors should be forced to not ship with a default OS.
It's crazy talk. Who's got the time to standardize messaging and data for WWAN modems on mobile devices? It's not like any operating systems ever implemented userland emulation of Android or iOS APIs and delivered a roughly identical experience to customers. Way too unrealistic, we're talking about space age technology here.
We should be happy that Google and Apple don't charge us more for all their hard work. If they leave there are no other phone manufacturers in the world, Europe would simply return to the dark ages.
It's interesting to see the number of folks apparently in favor of DMA and the strict regulatory environment in EU. Genuinely curious: what is the concrete benefit for users (and does it offset the negatives)? And does this foster a healthy and thriving environment for innovation?
In my liberal view it sounds awful for users and entrepreneurs alike. Wondering what are the arguments in favor (other than "apple/google = bad").
E.g.
Consider the DMA’s impact on Europe’s tourism industry. The DMA requires Google Search to stop showing useful travel results that link directly to airline and hotel sites, and instead show links to intermediary websites that charge for inclusion. This raises prices for consumers, reduces traffic to businesses, and makes it harder for people to quickly find reliable, direct booking information.
People in Europe don't have the automatic anti-regulation sentiment that US has. Regulations, at least from consumer perspective, seem to be working pretty well in the EU.
- My mobile operator wanted to charge me $6/MB for data roaming, until the anti-business EU regulation killed the golden goose. Roaming is free across EU. The mobile operator is still in business.
- USB-C not just on iPhone, but also all the crappy gadgets that used to be micro-USB. Consumer prices on electronics probably rose by $0.01 per unit.
- Chip & pin and NFC contactless payments were supported everywhere many years before ApplePay adopted them. European regulators forced banks to make fraud their problem and cooperate to fix it.
- The card payment system got upgraded despite card interchange fees being legally capped to ~0.3%. The bureaucrats killed an innovative business model of ever-increasing merchant fees given back to card owners as cashback, which made everyone else paying the same prices with cash the suckers subsidising the card businesses.
- Apple insinuates they only give 1 year of warranty, but it magically becomes 2 years if you remind them they're in the EU.
Just a day ago, we've had Google's idea of "useful results" frontpaged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45366566. Between this, the malicious restrictions being added to Android, and countless other things, I'm genuinely surprised anyone still believes them to be acting in users' best interests.
> In my liberal view it sounds awful for users and entrepreneurs alike
curious to read what arguments you have against or in favor?
From what I understand, in European countries (inc EU) both public and private sector rely predominantly on US and Asian imports for Computer Hardware, Software and Digital Services.
With DMA, they're looking to level the playing fields for local entrepreneurs, and likewise for small firms from say, developing economies such as in Africa or Middle East for example (the neighborhood).
Also worth noting, that, Europe has a massive problem with brain-drain and a rapidly aging population. If local entrepreneurs can't compete with Asian or US tech giants, they have to move to Asia or the USA.
In your quote, aren’t those the same thing? Isn’t Google just playing intermediary and integrating it onto their website and claiming that’s different?
Correct, but in this case people went to Google to search for flights, so one may argue the user wants to see, well, flight information. Yet, despite Google knowing the answer, it cannot show to users, per DMA.
Instead, Google needs to send the user to a 3P website, which may or may not have the information the user is looking for. And the 3P website needs to monetize its traffic, so you should expect another wave of ads (in addition to the ones you already saw at google.com), plus cookie consent banners, affiliate links, offer for hotels, car rental, etc.
> Consider the DMA’s impact on Europe’s tourism industry. The DMA requires Google Search to stop showing useful travel results that link directly to airline and hotel sites, and instead show links to intermediary websites that charge for inclusion. This raises prices for consumers, reduces traffic to businesses, and makes it harder for people to quickly find reliable, direct booking information.
Lmao this is just such a big pile of nothing. Lets let Google and Apple run unchecked so consumers can see a link to a hotel. Yes. Good deal.
"Regulatory burdens and uncertainty are delaying our launch of new products, like our latest AI features, by up to a year after they launch in the rest of the world."
The AI features cause the same problems they are claiming the DMA creates...
IIRC its technically not killing sideloading, but enforcing a required signature where you need to go through google so that the software can be sideloaded... So they can say that they aren't technically killing sideloading :)
Readit News
As a EU citizen I don’t see why those companies should have the disproportionate amount of control and oversight in our daily lives they have today while our bureaucracies are stuck in a constant game of cat and mouse against them, as they have proven countless times they see EU regulation as hurdles to be worked around rather than fundamental rules to play by.
I’m not arguing the status who is good, more “is it too late to fix?”
https://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html
The major issue is the massive web index since that would take a lot of capital and time to recreate but there are already various alternatives that could get better with use. For the commercial web it doesn't matter as much since it's always evolving anyway and every big website already has its own search engine. Would be inconvenient at first but not something that would affect people's lives as drastically as tech people like to think.
Nobody that is not a developer loves an OS, and there's a large subset of developers who don't even care that much.
The EU has been trying to do that for as long as I can remember and they have little to show for it. What reason is there to believe this will suddenly produce useful results?
No thanks, just fund local-only and self-hosted open source instead.
Saying that they need first for there to be no alternatives and then they will produce something better should raise some major red flags. You wouldn't accept an exclusivity contract of that nature with your grocery store but accepting it for your communications? Not to mention the real reason for such protectionism goes unspoken: more government spying and backdoors and more censorship and control. That was why China rolled their own.
Because they pay for it. Sincerely, the EC.
That's the real harm to competition, and why the Digital Markets Act is a great idea.
Fuck Google et al. maintaining their market hegemonies.
In order to build a better web browser, once should not also have to build a highly trafficked search engine AND a widely deployed mobile phone OS.
Yet that's exactly the situation that missing monopoly enforcement has allowed to come into being...
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Dead Comment
I don't think you appreciate quite how much easier it is to write down rules and use your populace as economic hostages to get fines out of companies created in places with good economic policies, than it is to make your own stuff internally.
We need a full reset from them. Countries should get their powers back. Take it back from the non elected EU bureaucrats.
There are some very worrisome things going on in the EU with Chat Control, Ministry of Truth, Digital ID Systems, and Central Bank Digital Currencies.
Each individual piece will be introduced to fix something or prevent something. But it is a slippery slope to also use it for something else, and more and more. Before we know it we will live in a continent that is ruled by an authoritarian mob like in China.
But it’s all cool, we are standing up for the tech feudalists.
Speaking of property rights, creating new smaller monopolies is in no way “pro-producer.” Nobody truly benefits by robbing the other, it’s as shortsighted “benefit” as it can be. We need long-term predictable policies that don’t criminalize what is, in fact, not criminal.
Otherwise it can be both anti-producer and anti-consumer, too.
All you want is complete control, as evidenced by your intention to lock down devices against their actual owners. Google is effectively an unelected global government at this point. Piss off!
Ask your lawyers? They can parkour through the most complex laws when you need European tax loopholes.
It’s not like the DMA outlaws software. It deals with certain practices, and makes certain business models pretty untenable.
But it doesn’t just ban everything.
We should be happy that Google and Apple don't charge us more for all their hard work. If they leave there are no other phone manufacturers in the world, Europe would simply return to the dark ages.
I get they THINK they do.
But I don’t think they do.
In my liberal view it sounds awful for users and entrepreneurs alike. Wondering what are the arguments in favor (other than "apple/google = bad").
E.g.
Consider the DMA’s impact on Europe’s tourism industry. The DMA requires Google Search to stop showing useful travel results that link directly to airline and hotel sites, and instead show links to intermediary websites that charge for inclusion. This raises prices for consumers, reduces traffic to businesses, and makes it harder for people to quickly find reliable, direct booking information.
- My mobile operator wanted to charge me $6/MB for data roaming, until the anti-business EU regulation killed the golden goose. Roaming is free across EU. The mobile operator is still in business.
- USB-C not just on iPhone, but also all the crappy gadgets that used to be micro-USB. Consumer prices on electronics probably rose by $0.01 per unit.
- Chip & pin and NFC contactless payments were supported everywhere many years before ApplePay adopted them. European regulators forced banks to make fraud their problem and cooperate to fix it.
- The card payment system got upgraded despite card interchange fees being legally capped to ~0.3%. The bureaucrats killed an innovative business model of ever-increasing merchant fees given back to card owners as cashback, which made everyone else paying the same prices with cash the suckers subsidising the card businesses.
- Apple insinuates they only give 1 year of warranty, but it magically becomes 2 years if you remind them they're in the EU.
3 actually, if bought after 2021
I'm not following. How does DMA help with this?
curious to read what arguments you have against or in favor?
From what I understand, in European countries (inc EU) both public and private sector rely predominantly on US and Asian imports for Computer Hardware, Software and Digital Services.
With DMA, they're looking to level the playing fields for local entrepreneurs, and likewise for small firms from say, developing economies such as in Africa or Middle East for example (the neighborhood).
Also worth noting, that, Europe has a massive problem with brain-drain and a rapidly aging population. If local entrepreneurs can't compete with Asian or US tech giants, they have to move to Asia or the USA.
Instead, Google needs to send the user to a 3P website, which may or may not have the information the user is looking for. And the 3P website needs to monetize its traffic, so you should expect another wave of ads (in addition to the ones you already saw at google.com), plus cookie consent banners, affiliate links, offer for hotels, car rental, etc.
Is this a better experience for users?
Lmao this is just such a big pile of nothing. Lets let Google and Apple run unchecked so consumers can see a link to a hotel. Yes. Good deal.
Dead Comment
The AI features cause the same problems they are claiming the DMA creates...
Isn't it Google killing sideloading, not the DMA?