Submitted by smurfyjenkins t3_1027s43 in science
Reply to comment by r2k-in-the-vortex in European economies have developed stronger anti-trust regulations, more competitive markets, and more robust consumer protection than the US in the last 20 years. The reason for this is the EU. EU member states are incentivized to empower a strongly independent pro-competition regulator. by smurfyjenkins
> There are a lot of historical and inherent reasons EU is playing catchup to US in pure economic indicators.
Not when it comes to digital services or computer hardware though. Why are all the CPUs designed by American companies and manufactured abroad?
How come there is no Microsoft or Google or Amazon or Apple or... equivalent in Europe? I don't mean that it has to be a big corporation, but rather that they offer some service that is globally the leader. All we seem to have is SAP and... Spotify?
>How come there is no Microsoft or Google or Amazon or Apple or... equivalent in Europe?
You're asking why there is a lack of monopolization of digital services in Europe under a post about more successful European antitrust laws.
Jokes aside, the EU currently has no (or a very underdeveloped) digital single market. Imagine living in Utah and ordering something from Amazon only for transaction not to go through because the item can only be sent to Arizona. That stuff still happens in the EU all the time. That's why a European Amazon is wishful thinking until the digital single market is complete or at least mature and comparable to the US service market.
Apple: Europe had Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson,... who were some of the most successful phone companies on the planet, but they were bought by foreign competitors or pulled out of the phone industry altogether in large part because of the missing infrastructure and most of all accumulated capital in the EU to keep the expertise here. The EU made it much easier for other tech to either stay in Europe or re-shore back to Europe, e.g. battery technology, electric vehicles, space and aviation industries, renewable energy..
Microsoft and Google: First mover advantage of the US. Just a 2-3 year lead in the software sector will result in the monopolization of parts of it. Microsoft and Google are great examples of that. One massive achievement was EU legislation that forces these companies to stop exclusive in-house development of all the technology they use and stop them from buying every small competitor or provider of a service they use. Imagine a car company that buys every single adjacent company that even remotely touches their supply chains until nothing is left to challenge them. That's what Microsoft and Google did. The study points out the lack of US oversight in this regard.
>You're asking why there is a lack of monopolization of digital services in Europe under a post about more successful European antitrust laws.
But these companies didn't initially become successful because of monopolies. They became successful by offering a very good product.
>That's why a European Amazon is wishful thinking until the digital single market is complete or at least mature and comparable to the US service market.
The irony, of course, is that Amazon itself does work in Europe. The delivery times are long, but you can order in almost any corner of the EU.
>Microsoft and Google: First mover advantage of the US. Just a 2-3 year lead in the software sector will result in the monopolization of parts of it.
But when it comes to an OS the first mover advantage was so long ago. At this point somebody in Europe could've started building and heavily pushing a Linux-based OS as an alternative. Hell, this is something that could even work when done by the government, because they could start by using it in government services.
Google also wasn't the first search engine. Nor are they the last - there are already other alternatives. Even some European ones, but they aren't as good.
No offense, but you don't seem to understand how monopolization works. A company can offer a great product and slowly buy up the other competitors or make deals with other parts of the supply chain in order to achieve a monopoly. How many people choose a Microsoft OS when they buy their Intel processor? This choice is rarely, if ever, made by the end consumer.
>The irony, of course, is that Amazon itself does work in Europe. The delivery times are long, but you can order in almost any corner of the EU.
That's exactly the problem, Amazon now has a monopoly here as well and kills competition. Delivery times aren't long at all, that's never been the problem. But it's much easier to conquer the entire US market and then have the necessary ressources and know-how to set up offices in every European country and deal with several different customs regimes than the other way around. Single market and customs union improved this since the 90s, but it's still a work in progress (like I tried to explain).
Logically, logistically, statistically.. it just makes zero sense to expect a mega-corporation like Amazon to come out of the fractured European market which additionally does a better job at preventing monopolization than the DoJ in the US. I don't know if we've established this yet, but something like Amazon isn't necessarily good for our economy to begin with.
>But when it comes to an OS the first mover advantage was so long ago.
And therefore they had more than enough time to create an almost unbreakable monopoly. Right?
>Google also wasn't the first search engine. Nor are they the last - there are already other alternatives. Even some European ones, but they aren't as good.
I would argue that Google survives purely on name recognition and brand familiarity. And of course through monopolization. How many average users consciously type in google.com even a single time in their life? They just enter the searched phrase in their URL line and their browser defaults to Google. In most important ways (privacy, data protection etc) Google is much worse than many alternatives - European and American.
Arguing that Google somehow offers a better user experience for the average person sounds.. not well thought through at best, but actually quite disingenuous.
> How many people choose a Microsoft OS when they buy their Intel processor? This choice is rarely, if ever, made by the end consumer.
Every single consumer makes this choice, because THE ALTERNATIVE IS COMPLETELY FREE. It is so free and good that most of the internet - actual commercial operations - run on it. Sure, if you're into video games or video editing, then Linux has some problems, but almost anything aside from that works pretty well.
>Delivery times aren't long at all, that's never been the problem.
Spoken as somebody that lives in a major country. Ordering something from Amazon takes 1-2 weeks for it to arrive. And that's good, because the alternative websites, of which there are many, often don't arrive at all! They sell something and say it's "in stock", but it really isn't.
A couple of years ago I wanted to buy a HDD. I went to a local online seller of PC parts, it said the HDD was "in stock", I bought it. A few days later I get an email saying that the HDD would arrive in 10 days time, but that the price from the warehouse they're ordering from has increased. I can either pay more or they will refund me the money.
Amazon has a "monopoly" because many of its competitors suck.
But all of this is beyond what I'm talking about. Amazon got so big because they offered a great service, as did Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. We have some of these in Europe too, but for some reason this hasn't happened nearly as much in the past few decades compared to before - where's the modern equivalent of Nokia?
>Arguing that Google somehow offers a better user experience for the average person sounds.. not well thought through at best, but actually quite disingenuous.
If it doesn't, then why don't you use one of the many alternatives?! It's literally like 5 clicks to make the alternatives work! I default to a different search engine than Google, but frequently have to go back to Google because the one I'm using simply can't find the relevant answers I want. Sure, Google isn't perfect - nowadays the search results feel like they're getting worse, but it's still a very good service.
So?
Digital services come in many shapes or forms, not just things you find on the internet or on your office computer.
Siemens is one of the world's leaders in automation, Bosch is one of the world's leaders in car parts, including automotive software. Etc.
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