yes. i do want that.
i do not like American products at all. i would love to see alternatives that actually work and are competitive.
i do not like American products at all. i would love to see alternatives that actually work and are competitive.
This would lead to a local tech scene, actually REALLY localised products (where you dont have to wait till google decides to roll out features in Germany after 7 years) and best of all: JOBS. This would lead to millions of jobs. It would make Europe super interesting for high skilled labor and bring a nice twist into the migration problem we are facing now.
Yes, this would hurt America, but yeah... who cares? They are not paying taxes anyway.
And look at China. Look at their amazing apps and services they have there. We have NOTHING here. It is time to do the right thing and to say bye to American companies. We can make our own companies.
Calling the ban or taxing of uber "internet censorship" is too funny... lol
I want a future where the "foundational" internet services (like chat, broadcast social, payments, etc) are decentralised/federated. And it seems like that's the end result of increased internet-service protectionism.
This won't be possible with all internet services, but it seems plausible for several of the large, stabilised ones. Though I'm not sure whether we're quite ready for it yet.
The European telecommunication companies could have built another search engine. Via DNS, the telecom companies had all the server contact knowledge that Microsoft is prying from users' memory with their data collecting.
There was Cliqz, a European search engine, that got dismantled due to Covid, without anybody offering some emergency funding to keep it going.
If a EU firewall is installed, millions of jobs will be created because everything will be done manually again. European companies had the opportunity to create competitive companies, but they didn't. Why should they create a good-enough Google if Google is banned? More likely, they will create a worse Altavista, and they are cut off of all the innovation that builds on Google.
The next unicorns, they don't rely on Google's blessing. Everybody can build them, even a company in Europe. Using their developers to copy Google would be a waste of talent and opportunities. China has to do it to control their news, but why should Europe?
After all, there are no American companies demanding the shutdown of Google just so that they can create the next innovative products. They just create them. If American companies can innovate despite Google, why can't European companies do the same?
The reason for I(C)T to exist is to optimize until all those are gone! Otherwise you can go back to FAX, Phone, Post and paper files, and would probably more 'efficient' because of less friction between cybernetic fiction and factory floor.
Why?
No doubt you'd be the first to howl should an American say "I do not like European (tech) products at all". (Well, if there were any to dislike.)
>i would love to see alternatives that actually work and are competitive.
Why not ask for the moon and the stars while you're at it? You make it sound like all that is needed to develop (as tachyonbeam pointed out) European equivalents to "Google, Duckduckgo, YouTube, Uber, Facebook, Dropbox, Amazon, Netflix, etc" is to shut down access from anywhere in Europe to and from these companies. Do this today and tomorrow EUGoogle and EuroFacebook will appear as if out of nowhere! Why didn't Brussels (or Paris, or Berlin) think of this already?
This isn’t far fetched - it’s a well understood result of Chinas Great Firewall. With American companies banned in China, Chinese companies were free to copy American firms and capture the value of the Chinese market. Protectionism has work, and even India is considering it
In Russia Yandex (search engine) and VKontakte (social network) were and still are quite successful (Google and Facebook were never banned, unlike China). And they were not created to control and/or suppress free speech (at least originally: Putin didn't care what happens in the Internet until around 2014, and it was free from censorship).