Europe’s Distorted View of US High Tech
mondaynote.com
mondaynote.com
No they didn't.
> (and the tablet)
No they didn't.
> Facebook coined the concept of social network.
No they didn't.
In fairness, the iPad was the first tablet to matter all that much, if not the first tablet as such. But seriously now. Blackberry? Myspace? These were enormous and important businesses (BlackBerry still is). Hell, you could date social networking back to usenet if you wanted. It would be nice if people writing "mythbuster" articles did some elementary fact checking.
And it doesn't explain how they managed to forget myspace, friendster, friends reunited, etc, etc, etc.
It's quite remarkable how quickly these things get forgotten, even by people who (judging by the byline pics) are more than old enough to have been around at the time. These gentlemen must surely have been the target market for blackberries in the mid-oughts.
> No they didn't
While you're technically correct, the iPhone was such a leap over any previous effort that it basically redefined the meaning of the word. If you showed an iPhone 1 to someone today, they'd at least recognise it as an (old) smartphone. A blackberry from the same era? I very much doubt it, and frankly I'd agree. The word now means "iphone 1 or better".
You're right about myspace though (and friendster before them)
All the other successful smartphone companies today are hardware focused, while companies with strong software departments like Nokia and RIM are struggling. Which is sad because in a couple of years hardware is going to be good enough, while we have ended up with a similar triopoly as the desktop operating systems market is suffering from.
Yeah, I'm sure that a site ran by a former Apple exec/Be Inc. founder and one of Europe's most successful tech journalists absolutely doesn't do any fact checking.
Nerds can quibble all they want about how usenet was totally a social network and tablets were totally a thing in 1995 and smartphones were totally invented by Nokia, but the reality is that if you get out of the nerd echo chamber and ask normal people, for them tablets start with the iPad, smartphones start with the iPhone, and social networks start with Facebook.
The problem with always wanting to be "technically correct" is that it makes you miss the bigger picture.
And some people are convinced that the moon landing in 1969 was an hoax
Reality is that Apple didn't invented the smartphone.
If instead you're using the word "invented" the way the authors are - that is, meaning making a technology enter the public consciousness and creating a mainstream industry out of it, then I stand by my original point.
Still wrong. iPhone didn't create a mainstream industry, inf cat, the smartphone growth pre iphone and post iphone (200-2009) was the same
The European politicians hate that all the major new internet companies are US based, but they have absolutely no idea about how to foster a European Sillicon Valley that can compete and they have no interest in learning how.
Danish politicians thought they could make a new mini-SV by building a few expensive office buildings in a location with really bad transportation. No politicians here think it's important to listen to the IT sector, instead they just tell us (literally!) to stop wearing white sports socks so women will like us better.
When a rich person in SV talks about all the new startups he has invested in, he will be admired and cheered. One of the major show-stoppers in Denmark is that such a person will be thought of as a cheesy show-off, and therefore will shunned and loose social status. So it becomes impossible to build the network needed for startup investments as such networks often live on "happenstance meetings".
Nobody here realizes how important easy access to money is for startups and to have investors that like to take wild chances. Google would never have been able to succeed in Europe because they would never have been able to get the investment money needed to start up.
We have the same high housing prices as SV and almost no investment money. Add the lack of any IT center and that every country tries to do their own rather than having one common SV for all of EU. It's like if USA tried to build a SV in every single state, including Utah! The marmalade is spread too thin.
As a person also from Europe I wish people would stop saying this, because it doesn't do justice to the issue that many of us actually have with these specific companies. All it does is divert from the real issues.
It's nothing to do with envy (for me at least, and many others) and everything to do with the way these companies conduct themselves and the outright lack of respect they demonstrate towards the public and the laws of the countries in which they operate.
They need reigning in.
If you truly want specific examples, I suggest you start with Aral Balkan's talk[1] which covers several of the larger problems that needs reigning in.
[1] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...
There are many examples of startup success in the Nordic countries and we have relativly good conditions for starting companies. Usually ending up in the top ten in business and lifestyle indexes. The things is, you can always sit and wait for things to be to your liking or you can do like SV and look out for your interest and do what you're good at.
While outliers, Elon Musk didn't sit around complaining about the state of the US car industry and Steve Jobs didn't do the same about US telecom companies. Well, they probably did, but more importantly did also did something. Something that wasn't what whatever Europe and Asia was doing.
> top ten in business and lifestyle indexes
Those indexes often ignore things that matters the most. It doesn't matter that it's very easy to start a company in Denmark when I can't get the needed venture capital.
Try name some EU internet based companies which are well known in USA and has huge revenue. Which internet based EU company does an American citizen often buy items from?
Each of these issues is different (for instance, I think the 'right to be forgotten' case was absurd), and presenting them as an amalgam is ... unhelpful.
It's waining among the younger generations, but around here Coke is still referred to as the "dirty water of imperialism" - and only half-jokingly.
So, often these specific complaints are less actual grievances, and more excuses to criticize and call for restricting the expansion of these companies on our soil.
It's easy to dismiss the issues many in Europe have as 'hey you're just jealous' but fuck that.
That's just distracting from the issue many people have and it does nobody any good to debase the argument like that.
Edit: the article mentions that too, it just misleadingly refers to 'Europe' in the title when it probably means France and Germany. It also refers to the UK and Scandinavia as being 'elsewhere' when UK is in the EU and Sweden on the Euro.
I also found the article quite weak. Sure, the 'GAFA' companies have different market penetrations and different revenue models. But there is also something that binds them: they all build ecosystems and try to bind people to them. E.g. All four offer cloud storage, three offer music and movies, three of them have phones and tablets (I'll not count the HTC First), etc.
I think some resistance against against these companies in Europe come from the fact that they aim for hosting your digital life, which leads to concerns, such as how they treat data and whether US law enforcement can easily access it.
The envy that is mentioned primarily comes from governments who are upset that their country does not have a healthy startup economy as SV. Or relatively old European companies (e.g. publishing houses) that see having Google, Facebook, and other as gatekeepers as a threat to their bottom-line.
What does that mean?