this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley' (www.tilburguniversity.edu)
submitted 3 days ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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[โ€“] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 days ago (7 children)

This brings up a point I've been meaning to make for awhile: I don't think Europe has it in them.

The UK actually did some innovating, I mean Alan Turing himself was a Limey, and back in the day they had the likes of Sinclair and Acorn, and they invented the ARM processor, they're one of very few nations to have a processor architecture to their name. Basically the rest of computing innovation happened in the United States, like the industrial revolution before, we took what Britain invented and ran with it. Meanwhile Western Europe has had fuck all influence in the last 50 years of computing. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN, sure...by an Englishman. 35 years later, let's take a look at the top 50 visited websites worldwide and see just what Europe has done with their groundbreaking tech.

Of the 50, 30 are American. The top nine: Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, ChatGPT, X/Twitter, WhatsApp, Reddit and Wikipedia, are American. Tenth is Yahoo Japan followed by Yahoo!. The UK does not place on the list, and only four websites are from the EU: Xvideos and XNXX are French, Xhamster and Stripchat are...What's the adjective for 'from Cyprus?" Cyprian? Cyprese? Cypriot, apparently. "Honorable" mentions to Canada and India for their only entries, Pornhub and Eporner respectively.

Meanwhile, South Korea makes the list twice for Samsung.com and Naver.com, which is apparently their Google; they do everything from search and email to online payments and ISP. I'm pretty sure that if the US is descendant, the future is Asian, not European.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Europe has got nothing that even sort of competes with any of them, so for the last few months they've been publishing headlines about another township switching their computers from Windows to Linux. At one point there was announcement that EurOS or whatever they were going to call it was going to be a fork of Fedora...because they forgot SuSe Linux exists. They boldly announced they were switching from getting software directly from Microsoft, to getting it indirectly from IBM. For their x86 computers.

I simply don't think Europeans have it in them; the ones that did moved to the US over the last century and a half.

[โ€“] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The top nine: Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, ChatGPT, X/Twitter, WhatsApp, Reddit and Wikipedia, are American. Tenth is Yahoo Japan followed by Yahoo!.

Those American things you list, they are not very good.

This brings up a point Iโ€™ve been meaning to make for awhile: I donโ€™t think Europe has it in them.

Do you know who Fabrice Bellard is?

Do you know who, ah, ok, Linus Torvalds counts as a USian by now.

KDE developers are mostly from the EU, I think.

Opera browser, when that was a thing, were mostly from European countries, I think.

Nokia, eh, Nokia, Nokia. Siemens. Sony Ericsson. Bosch. German carmakers.

Minitel, do you know what Minitel was?

Many of the fundamental things used everywhere, like some error-correcting codes for satellite communications, have people from the EU as authors.

Actually, I think if you compare fundamental achievements, and not commercial ones, you'll see that European countries are not that far behind.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, IBM, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Europe has got nothing that even sort of competes with any of them

Yeah, the hardware production thing is generally sad. This wasn't so even in the early 90s, so my own modest honest opinion is that this was killed because of the US creeping patent war. Similarly to other things. A relatively recent development.

I mean, yeah, competencies don't pop up overnight, but frankly there's no magic in making a computer.

There's hardly achievable level of minimization, involving patents impeding competition and very narrow margins, which prevent anything outside of the main "computing silk road" of ASML-TSMC-Intel&AMD&ARM from functioning.

If it were up for me, I'd just say that late 80s' computers were good enough. Or at least early 90s' ones. When that "computing silk road" hadn't yet become as unavoidable.

and only four websites are from the EU: Xvideos and XNXX are French

France is still a great nation.

I simply donโ€™t think Europeans have it in them; the ones that did moved to the US over the last century and a half.

Y-yeah, that part has changed a lot, because on the other end of the pond there's not much "innovation" now too.

[โ€“] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does it really matter if the American entries are "good" or not? Where's Europe's answer to...any of this?

Oh yeah, Nokia, the company that made dumb phones a quarter of a century ago, failed to enter the smart phone market at all, disappeared, was sold to Microsoft as their phone/tablet division, failed again and disappeared again.

Ah Bosch, the makers of my pain in the ass why the fuck did they do it that way router. Particularly the standard base needs to be jawholed up someone's lederhosen.

German automobile manufacturers, whose motto seems to be "Never use a part when a system will do." Expensive and complicated to maintain and not tremendously durable. Meanwhile the Japanese will sell you a war worthy compact pickup truck.

France is still a great nation.

At what, exactly? The Austrians make better wine, the Italians make better food, the Germans make better cars, the Greeks make better spelling, the Swiss make better chocolate and the British make better television. And apparently the Canadians host better porn. From the news of the last few years, all France is apparently good for is rioting against its own government.

The point still stands that the biggest web presence of the entire EU is hosting porn. In the column under "Type" the United States features search engines, video sharing platforms, social media, marketplaces, news, weather, software, email. Russia and China both feature news, email, social media. South Korea manages "consumer electronics" and "news." These places sound like they're trying to run a society, meanwhile Europe has the second through fifth most popular porn sites.

Globo news out of Brazil makes the list but the BBC and Reuters don't?

Also, Temu is American?

[โ€“] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Whereโ€™s Europeโ€™s answer toโ€ฆany of this?

Europe's answer to that cancer? I guess not having it is the best one possible.

Oh yeah, Nokia, the company that made dumb phones a quarter of a century ago,

First, not "dumb phones", Java phones. As in phones running Java applications. Mostly very good ones. I'm not that young to not remember that time, so don't feed me this bullshit.

Second, they made a lot of other things. They were also a major contributor to QT.

They were sort of Finnish alternative to Samsung, one can say.

failed to enter the smart phone market at all,

That's historical revisionism. It had Symbian, it had Meego and Maemo. A certain Stephen Elop became its CEO after working at Microsoft, dismantled the company and then returned to Microsoft. The company was doing fine before that certain Stephen Elop.

disappeared, was sold to Microsoft as their phone/tablet division, failed again and disappeared again.

"Disappeared" is an interesting way to say this.

Ah Bosch, the makers of my pain in the ass why the fuck did they do it that way router. Particularly the standard base needs to be jawholed up someoneโ€™s lederhosen.

Well, they make nice lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners ... Or made. I dunno, don't have anything new Bosch.

German automobile manufacturers, whose motto seems to be โ€œNever use a part when a system will do.โ€ Expensive and complicated to maintain and not tremendously durable. Meanwhile the Japanese will sell you a war worthy compact pickup truck.

Today - certainly, 20 years ago they were the shit. Bureaucracy replacing competition and having markets fenced from competition do bad things to companies - whodathunk.

At what, exactly? The Austrians make better wine, the Italians make better food, the Germans make better cars, the Greeks make better spelling, the Swiss make better chocolate and the British make better television. And apparently the Canadians host better porn. From the news of the last few years, all France is apparently good for is rioting against its own government.

One Fabrice Bellard weighs more than all the mentioned. And rioting against your own government does that too.

In the column under โ€œTypeโ€ the United States features search engines, video sharing platforms, social media, marketplaces, news, weather, software, email. Russia and China both feature news, email, social media.

In other words, social honeypots. I'm serious. I live in Russia, don't tell me about Russian news and social media, it's a vast junkyard of half-propaganda half-schizophrenia mossy crap, and people using those for purposes for which they could mostly as well use the 90s' piece of software called Hotline. And they should, I'm serious. And US search engines, video sharing platforms, social media and such are the same.

It's all one big broken dream of humanity, broken by its passions and entertainment and laziness.

Using the same approaches to human psyche that gambling businesses use, except gambling is held in its dedicated corners of society, while this shit has spilled everywhere.

These places sound like theyโ€™re trying to run a society,

That's an indicator of a war lost if someone is trying to centrally run your society with that much success. It's death, feeding with your remains probably in the future someone who hasn't lost that battle, or someone born from the ashes.

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[โ€“] jojo@piefed.social 13 points 3 days ago

Yes, another Silicon Valley is definitely what we need โ˜ ๏ธ

[โ€“] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 days ago

Even if you are American, you should support this movement. The best way to end or reverse enshittification is through competition. The big American tech companies are no longer competing to make good or innovative products. They are competing to see who can monetize the most while risking the least.

[โ€“] drmoose@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

How about helping businesses actually stay in Europe. It's almost impossible to scale up in europe due to insane moats everywhere.

[โ€“] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because people already owning shares in important companies or connections to politicians or company bureaucrats etc - they don't need to scale up. That's intended.

I swear, the humanity is stupid. I just can look at everything around me and see all kinds of socio-economic arguments to be right. All of them at the same time.

[โ€“] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

You absolutely need to scale up. I've been on several european teams who had to reincorporate under LLC just because its impossible to compete in Europe as a new business. There's just too much moat.

I agree and welcome meaningful regulation but in Europe its absolutely being used as a market moat, especially in tech. People who are defending this looking at this issue through the wrong lense of political theory crafting rather than how these tools are used in practice.

The only places in Europe that are actually growing tech now are Eastern european countries that losen up the moat to allow innovation in and dont have strong incumbents that reinforce the moat.

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[โ€“] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

you don't have to have a silicon valley

[โ€“] Ptsf@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Ban might be a bit much, but we're using tariffs and taxes as a confrontational trade war measure. Might as well use them in return and funnel the proceeds into homegrown solutions that can compete legitimately.

[โ€“] join@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Breaking news: oil found in Europe.

[โ€“] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

There's plenty of oil already found in Europe.

[โ€“] Pirate@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

lol

[โ€“] polysexualstick@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

"We must ban bad thing from somewhere else so we can do bad thing here

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