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> Because its almost impossible to compete?

Explain the number of American unicorns and the (almost) complete lack of European unicorns then? Somehow American companies and startups find ways to compete and be relevant, and it just does not happen in Europe.

If you could snap your fingers and force Apple and Google to implement this today, these new markets (app stores and browsers for iOS) would be 99% filled by American companies.

Uncontrolled amounts of dollars entering the stock market and the financial system thanks to dollar having been used as a reserve currency for mainly trading oil? Allowing fractional reserve lending from private banks to awash the economy with cash?

Leading to EXTREME bloat in the stock market in 'valuations' that go over, what, 700 times the actual near-term revenue of corporations? Based on 'future revenue' that is supposed to materialize, but not visible into the next decade?

Ending up in the investment space being able to dump insane amounts of money on hundreds of startups at a time by calculating that even if 99 of them fail at any given time, just one of them turning into an over-valued 'unicorn' would end up flushing the investor with 'value'?

Which came down crashing the moment a few countries started trading oil and other resources with non-dollar currencies? So much that now all those unicorns all the way to Twitter and Facebook are in hot water because of their overvalued shares compared to their actual profits?

...

Give any country free, non-devaluing money, and anyone will be able to do anything.

The parent comment was being unfair. There is one market where Europeans dominate both in sheer volume and in innovation: excuses.

Excusing business, excusing governments; an international pastime of the Europeans, apparently.

Europeans did in fact exist before all of the listed examples came into being, and so could have outcompeted any of them even if they are now dominant. But I still think Europeans _could_ compete, even if culturally they are not prepared to be competitive. Amazon is only a fraction of retail sales and has huge weaknesses; Europeans who know their markets better could compete if they wanted to (especially with the huge amount of protectionism national governments are willing to engage in). LINE exists in Japan, presumably a smaller market than Europe that has managed to produce a viable WhatsApp competitor. Facebook was unstoppable until TikTok ate their lunch.

Again, I’m astounded by the European affinity for excusing uncompetitive businesses.

> Europeans who know their markets better could compete if they wanted to

This is not realistic.

When amazon noticed diapers.com, they were basically forced to sell out. because amazon was already selling diapers at a loss and was ready to drive the price "down to zero".

No body can compete with that.

https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-be...

Americans seemingly can. Walmart and Target do healthy business, despite facing the big and fearsome Amazon. So does Shopify and Shopify’s merchant partners. So does my local book store (the French say it is impossible for bookstores to compete with Amazon without absurd anti-consumer protections).

Before Amazon was ascendant, I think it was Walmart that was the dominant player making sure a small company like Amazon could never grow to become competitive.

I don’t understand the European culture of making excuses for uncompetitive business when time after time the Americans, and increasingly the Chinese, show that it is actually possible to innovate and disrupt entrenched competitors.

Yeah. And Europeans are astounded by American affinity for excusing socipathic corporations who bloat on uncontrolled cash influx floating their shares, giving them to power to profit from even murdering you Americans. From healthcare to guns to pink goo being sold as 'food'.

Any country can 'compete' if they allow their society to be ravaged by such sociopathy. Until they face social collapse. Like the US is doing now.

Europeans have a lot going for them that should make them more competitive - social safety net, better regulation, ability to build infrastructure without local opposition.

Gun violence is a huge drag on the American economy, so it doesn’t make sense to say “Americans are competitive because corporations can profit off guns”. Americans are competitive _despite_ massive regulatory failures and IMO could be quite a lot more competitive if we paired entrepreneurial ambition with basic government competence.

By the way, “pink goo” (more commonly pink slime) is not dangerous, and is used to cut down on waste. It is the “ugly produce” of the meat world. I don’t see anything objectionable about pink slime that isn’t also objectionable about meat in general as a food.

> Europeans have a lot going for them that should make them more competitive

And they are competitive. They have a big tech space rendering every single product and service that US tech renders. Except, there is no such obligation in Europe to constantly hawk stocks to increase stock prices. From cloud providers to social networks, all kinds of things are in Europe. In China. In Japan. Americans dont hear about them.

> Pink goo

It was an example. Those corporations have no obligation to tell you what exactly they put in the 'food'.

Well, at one point of history it was "impossible to compete" against Nokia on mobile market. I find statements that we are living at the point of the market where competition is no longer possible to be very naive.

> For example WhatsApp has many many better alternatives, which have better features and better privacy, but it still the #1 because of the monopoly it has on communication.

No, it’s because users don’t feel the need to switch. I have uninstalled WhatsApp 4 years ago, same time when I deleted my Facebook account. Haven’t had a single regret. When people ask me to contact them via WhatsApp, I tell them I don’t use it. Anyone can do that.

Sounds like pure copium to me.

Well its happening anyway, and companies can face fines up to 20% of worldwide revenue if they don't comply.

you seem oddly excited about the prospect of an EU with no smartphones

No I'm excited about a world where I can use one chat app for all of my contacts, a world where I don't have to deal with Safari's shortcomings, and many other improvements.

But you can, it's the sms app.

Signal is not a $75B company so it doesn't have to interop with Whatsapp (nor do I think this makes any sense, as the encryption story is different across apps)

I didn't mention signal in my comment, because I knew it didn't break the limits.

Also no body uses SMS outside the US, and the rule requires to keep encryption, yes its probably not going to be E2EE, unless the app is translating the message to another protocol locally. But its still better than SMS.

Yeaaaah. Its only US tech monopolies who make smartphones. Nobody else does.