- CEOs of European technology companies told CNBC at the Web Summit technology conference this week that the continent should adopt a “Europe-first” approach to tech, after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory.
- Andy Yen, CEO of VPN maker Proton, said Europe should “step up” and “be aggressive” to counter U.S. Big Tech firms’ tight grip on many important technologies, such as web browsing, cloud computing, smartphones — and now artificial intelligence.
- Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Lithuania-based used clothing app Vinted, urged Europe to take the “right choices” to ensure it doesn’t get “left behind.”
If there’s a way for that to happen without just building equality abusive and exploitative mega corporations of similarly monopolistic scale, that seems like a very good thing.
Though I honestly kinda worry the only way to really compete with the US would be for Europe to make choices that are similarly shitty as all the ones we’ve made here in the states :/
We need to push for open source software, contribute existing FOSS projects, and focus on open standards and interoperability - that way companies know if they don’t play fair people/governments can move to other suppliers more easily.
Properly punishing US tech companies for their shenanigans would help too.
Lol sure, try getting Microsoft’s fingers out of europe’s pie first
Proton
Random Lithuanian clothing app
Lolwtf
Exactly illustrates where Europe’s tech sector is at. It only has a few tech companies, that were founded in the post dotcom bubble era, that people outside Europe would know. If you’d ask an average American to name a European tech company they probably will name an old German company like Mercedes or if they follow financial news ASML or Nokia or something but nothing that has been founded in the last 20 years. They probably don’t even know that Spotify is from Europe. Europe failed to build titans of industry of the 21st century.
Good luck with that. How many times have we tried? Like almost every country in the EU tried to create the Silicon Valley of Europe and non of them are truly successful. Most Europeans just lack a Pan European attitude. Like every country rather wants to do it on their own and create a tech center in their own country and most Europeans are not willing to move abroad for work. In order for Europe to create a tech sector that can compete with the US and China it needs all of Europe’s brightest minds concentrated in one area competing with each other. Like how it is in the Bay Area or Shenzen. Sure there are jobs that can be done remotely but a lot of innovation happens in the lab or on the shop floor.
Europe just lacks the advantage the US and China have. A large single market that speaks the same language, is culturally pretty much the same and has cheap shipping. Like every European country has their own Amazon knock off that is only used within its borders because they failed to expand in Europe mostly due to the language and culture barrier and expensive international shipping. And now Amazon and AliExpress have swooped in and these local companies can’t really compete and have zero chance to grow internationally now.
Best our politicians can do is to give our money to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to store all our data in the US.
If you don’t like it you can let them know through any of Meta’s social networks or X.
Vote for different people (Pirate Party for example), sign petitions like EU-Linux, use Linux and opensource yourself, and talk to your friends and family about it. Nothing will change if we do nothing.
I once campaigned to have a law that says the Portuguese institutions have to use open standards to store information. The law is in the books for 13 years (and now I feel old), and very little changed because the organisations that were supposed to enforce it don’t give a fuck.
