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Comment by FinnLobsien | Hacker News Reader

> The EU has basically said that it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition for customers than one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market. And to resolve that they employ two things, one is the DMA/DSA and similar laws which mostly takes effect when your company reaches a certain large market penetration, the other is standardisations such as the Radio Equipment Directive (think "USB-C law" and similar ones) that make it easier for consumers to avoid vendor lock-in.

Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers. The problem is that you pass DMA, DSA, GDPR, etc. which Google, Apple etc. can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it.

Instead what's happening is that European alternatives (the kind that's actually good, not the kind that's European and half as good) don't exist and the incentives to build one shrink because any scaling company is instantly hamstrung.

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> Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers.

Competing in category chemicals:

BASF, Akzo Nobel, Lanxess, Air Liquide, and a bunch others

Competing in category engineering:

Siemens, Bosch, ABB, Alstom, ThyssenKrupp, Airbus and a bunch others

Competing in category metals:

Aurubis, Umicore, Norsk Hydro, Gruppo Riva, ThyssenKrupp, and a bunch others

Competing in category pharma:

Novartis, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Bayer, and others

Competing in category electronics:

Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Electrolux, Schneider Electric, and lots of others

> any scaling company is instantly hamstrung

You are assuming scaling this way is a long-term positive for consumers, investors, employees, and/or markets. I can find no such evidence.

These are all huge companies in my view.

In addition to them there are also countless small to medium sized companies that nobody's ever heard of, that don't experience hypergrowth but have slow and steady growth - especially in the B2B sector. I've worked at some such companies.

I agree actually, my use of "medium-sized" was not best, in my personal view a medium-sized company is in the 200-500 employee range. These are definitively larger than that, however I assumed the person I replied to took "medium sized" to mean "significantly smaller than Apple/Google/Amazon/… …but not unknown". Because if I were to pull up a list of thirty unknown actually medium-sized companies pretty much nobody would recognise the names.

These companies may be smaller than FAANG, but I also feel that if BASF disappeared overnight it would have a larger impact on the world than if Facebook disappeared.

HN is sometimes incredibly biased towards consumer tech.

Define "impact on the world". Facebook has massive impact (arguably net-negative). I haven't heard of BASF since 5.25 floppies, though I'm sure they produce some very important things. Did you mean positive impact? Physical impact?

Hmmm, let's see - a lot of the chemicals for polyurethane foams. Ammonia, acetylene, formic acid, butanediol.

Engineering plastics used in automotive and electronics applications. Styrenes for same.

Automotive OEM and refinish coatings - one of the bigger suppliers. Industrial coatings and paints.

Some of the bigger fungicides, herbicides, insecticides.

Catalytic converter components, battery components, cathodes, etc.

Are you working in a business that buys chemical products for manufacturing? If not, why would you interact with BASF?

This is exactly what the GP was saying: you're looking at B2C companies as if they matter more, when in reality the vast majority of commerce (but not profits) is B2B.

> I haven't heard of BASF since 5.25 floppies

Oh, you know, it's only largest chemical producer in the world. Oh, I'm sure they produce some very important things, but it can't hold a candle to Facebook.

Siemens has 330,000 employees. I'd always consider that huge.

Only twice the size of mega-corps like Apple.

All of this seems reasonable, and I see the value in keeping things competitive.

I do have one concern though.

Established markets are more entrenched, and hearing that smaller companies may have "slow and steady growth" here seems excellent.

Yet emerging markets move incredibly fast, and the goal is to discover those trenches and occupy them. Being held back in such a market can be troublesome.

So this is what I'd worry about.

> Yet emerging markets move incredibly fast, and the goal is to discover those trenches and occupy them.

Well, only if you make it a goal to occupy all the trenches. The EU has realized that it does not want all possible trenches occupied. For example: There is a lot of market share to be had in waste disposal by dumping it in the rivers and oceans. Regulation generally prohibits this, because we don't want our rivers and oceans full of waste.

Capitalist market self-regulation wouldn't have done this without external pressure (regulation, litigation, etc.) because the capitalist market would externalize all costs if it would increase profits.

Bad example. Dumping waste cheaply illegally is a trench that is continuously filled with really bad stuff. Regulations needs more Oumph, it is just too cheap to do in an dishonest way.

Where are the software companies that compete with apple though? Wasn't that the question?

No it wasn't. The question was that if regulation creates more competition with Apple what are the markets with this competition?

European companies compete with US companies, including Apple, in areas where there is competition. In music software, music streaming, engineering and finance software, services and so on.

Apple has around 33% smartphone market share in Europe. Where is the US competition? Google at 3%. The actual competition is non-US in Samsung and Xiaomi. You can argue that Google competes with the Play Store, but then there is no competition with the Play Store on Android from the US.

Big US tech companies don't compete with each other as much as one might think. Most of their revenue comes from dominating one area or platform, with little competition from the rest.

So therefor the common conclusion that Europe should be more like the US to have competition also doesn't make sense as the big US tech companies don't have serious direct competition in the US in their core businesses.

You can't compete with the big tech companies by creating a Google with 3% market share in smartphones to compete with Apple, a Walmart with 6% online retail market share to compete with Amazon, or a Microsoft with 4% search engine market share to compete with Google.

Apple has <60% market share in the US. It's pretty dominant, but there are definitely still real competitors.

If we're categorizing companies by headquarter location, where are these competitors located?

I'm sure you could look that up for yourself pretty easily if you were actually curious and not trying to make some unknown point by asking the question.

That's why the DMA exists.

Significant about your list is that most of them are businesses who sell to other businesses, not to consumers. That's what is propping up the European economy, since European companies don't seem to be able to make an export that foreign customers are interested in. With some exceptions of course, mostly food and luxury goods. Nokia could have been a forerunner for lots of other European companies taking on the world, but sadly it fizzled out.

Small nitpick but FYI Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia merged. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise still exists but is just the bit nobody wanted.

> Competing in category [...]

Also, this is not true. These are categories huge enough to be meaningless. They are stock market classifications (at best) which do not reflect market competition.

All the companies that I've heard of that you listed were all founded before the EU.

I work at OVH, we're European, we're actually good.

I use our product, it's better than GCP for my use cases.

We've got Hetzner in Germany doing the same thing we are.

Yes. As someone who has worked with 100+ funded start-ups, roughly 85 in USA and 15 in EU - the EU ones have such a harder, trudging climb due to regulations.

Good. I would hate for my country to become like the USA.

> Good. I would hate for my country to become like the USA.

Yeah, there's a whole lot of American exceptionalism going on in this thread, assuming the way things are done over here in the states is the best and only way. I live here and let me tell you, it's not. Just the fact that we have gigantic tech monopolies with more money than several nations combined is proof of that - that's not a thing that should ever happen.

Things are pretty dire right now in the US, but to understand that... it's complicated and I don't think you can blindly reject everything from how things are done in the US. They all have to be reasoned about individually and as part of a bigger system.

> I don't think you can blindly reject everything from how things are done in the US

Sure, but I doubt there's any country in the world that aspires for its citizens to be treated like American consumers.

After having lived in Italy for years, there are some real upsides to being an American customer. Returning stuff that is genuinely not right in some way to a store in Italy is a huge PITA. Here? "I'd like to return this half-eaten thing of salsa, Costco" "sure, no problem!". Italy: "sorry, but grocery stores close on Wednesday afternoons and Sunday? Forget it!". That has subsequently changed, but it blew people's minds who weren't used to it.

I could spend a lot of time comparing the relative benefits and drawbacks of both countries.

The US has a lot of good things going for it which is what makes what is happening now all the more heartbreaking.

Given the tidal wave of vibecoded startups were about to see - the US may want to take a look at what the EU is doing.

You say that like it's a bad thing. But it's not. It's a good thing.

In what areas are the regulations too strict? Is it in service of protecting rights of others?

SAP, Spotify, Sitecore, Roche, Airbus, CERN (the ecosystem powers its research), CodePlay, SN Systems, BAYER, Roche,....

Since when is Airbus a small company and not part of the large state supported corp monopoly gang? Same with SAP, Roche and Bayer. These are all masive corporations that swallowed entire sectors. Same with Spotify having used its monopoly status to screw over smaller artists. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read such comments.

Let me ask you guys something else, if EU hates large monopolist companies so much as you claim, then why are all its car companies monopolistic mega conglomerates that rule the world like Volkswagen, Stellantis, Daimler Benz, BMW, and Renault? Where's EU's equivalent of Tesla if they supposedly hate all these big companies?

I'll tell you why: Just like the US, the capital controlled EU also supports its domestic monopolies and only bitches about foreign monopolies in sectors they don't control and threaten their economic hegemony. That's the cold hard truth, everything else is just political hot air and virtue signaling for brownie points, and I'm pissed people are not only buying it but also parroting it when the goal to monopolize business sectors is as strong in EU corporations as it is in US and Chinese ones.

Europe is just more stricter now with controlling large (mostly foreign) corporations since its own economy lost a lot of ground to the US and Chinese ones (it has now half the real GDP it had 2 decades ago), and since it can't create new large companies, all it can do now is protecting what it has left from foreign companies taking over their turf. The upshot being that a lot of those rules are congruent with the consumer protections which also end up globally favoring consumers abroad.

> why are all its car companies monopolistic mega conglomerates that rule the world like Volkswagen, Stellantis, Daimler Benz, BMW, and Renault?

You just named 5 companies, that’s competition.

US has 1/2 companies controlling 90% market share in several markets. That’s monopoly.

How is Tesla an example of your point? It’s the biggest EV manufacturer owned by one of the world’s richest men.

Perhaps the problem here isn’t that smaller brands don’t exist, it’s that if we give examples of smaller brands then you’ll argue

“Never heard of them. Thus proof that the EU is holding them back”

And if we mention household names then you’d argue

“Those aren’t small companies”

You’ve basically crafted an impossible to satisfy condition. A question that would be equally impossible for you to satisfy with US firms as it is for EU firms.

———

By the way, there’s quite a few car manufacturers that are small listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufactu...

A few of them are relatively big names despite their small company size, for example Noble Automotive.

BYD Q4 sales (only NEV): https://tridenstechnology.com/byd-sales-statistics/ approx 600k.

Tesla Q4 sales: https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-fourth-quarter-2024... approx 500k.

So Tesla are not the biggest anymore (which honestly surprised me).

It doesn't surprise me at all. BYD invests heavily into R&D. I don't know how much Tesla invests into R&D but if their latest product is an ugly Homercar for incels, then they should probably think a bit about their strategy.

The incel car as you call it is extremely ambitious from an R&D perspective. 48v architecture, steer by wire, etc.

Anyway, I’m not celibate. It’s just an excellent vehicle, if you don’t care about hivemind strangers glaring at you.

Tesla has no moat. but people don't wanna look at things objectively.

BYD makes better batteries than Tesla. the EU brands provide a better luxury than Tesla.

the US / Japan brands provide a better car in terms of quality than Tesla.

Tesla is not one of the largest EV manufacturers and sales are rapidly declining.

Name a bigger EV manufacturer in America.

It’s not just America. We are talking about the world. Tesla is trying to compete globally and sales are declining globally.

Yeah sales are declining, but they’re still the second biggest EV globally.

Saying “Tesla aren’t one of the biggest EV manufacturer” is clearly rubbish.

Ford

Nope. Ford are a bigger automotive manufacturer but a smaller manufacturer of EVs than Tesla.

So would you also be satisfied if I argued that Ford was a larger manufacturer of pick up trucks to make Ford look better?

Tesla is failing both domestically and internationally with declining sales. Arguing that Tesla is successful with falling sales is like arguing that RIM was successful in 2009 when the writing was on the wall.

Easy, on the car companies that already exist with much better build quality.

We don't need cars from fascists.

> We don't need cars from fascists.

To be fair, that’s not what they said. I believe they’re asking where are the car companies of Tesla’s size and market position.

> Tesla’s size and market position.

Like, Tesla are very small (in terms of cars sold) but very large in terms of valuation. Seems like a once-off, not something that would be replicable (anywhere).

Old size or new size?

>We don't need cars from fascists.

Really? Because look up on the history of VW, BMW, Porsche, Fiat, etc and their founding families, some of who still own a large part of the shares of those companies today. Most of them worked with fascists no problem, some by force of the era some by opportunity but none of them opposed them.

You see this is the typical European hypocrisy that I dislike. Pointing fingers that Elon is somehow a fascist cause he raised his arm once, but Porsche or BMW who used slave labor from work camps is somehow not fascist now because ... reasons I guess.

Explain me that with logic and reason, and not with the "Elon is a fascist because reddit told me he is".

Yes, everyone played a role in WW 2, that is why we try to learn from history, instead of supporting those eager to repeating it.

You're ignoring my point completely and moving the discussion elsewhere.

If you're claiming to be "fighting" Tesla just for Elon being labeled "fascist" by smooth brain Redditors, why aren't you also fighting VW, Porsche, Fiat, for their owners also being actually documented fascists?

I don't think there is currently any country that was involved in WW2 where repeating WW2 is not mainstream politics.

One more reason not to sponsor companies tied to people pushing such agenda.

The fact that Elon openly supports and speaks at events of a German party that has been officially labeled far right extremist by the domestic intelligence agency is a stronger signal than even the Hitlerite hand gestures.

The average person is not following politics that deeply, and doesn't know which German party Elon Musk supports, what that party is, how much he supports it, or what has been officially recognized about that party (they retracted the recognition btw). It's much smaller than the already small percentage of people who see someone do a Nazi salute and recognize the gesture.

> Let me ask you guys something else, if EU hates large monopolist companies so much as you claim, then why are all its car companies monopolistic mega conglomerates that rule the world like Volkswagen, Stellantis, Daimler Benz, BMW, and Renault? Where's EU's equivalent of Tesla if they supposedly hate all these big companies?

LOL, what?

Tesla has a bigger market cap than those companies COMBINED. And more. How is it a "medium" player? I don't agree with that market cap, to be clear.

It seems that Tesla is the Schrodinger's automotive manufacturer: snappy young upstart when that's convenient, world's biggest/strongest/brightest when that narrative is convenient.

Who cares about market cap? Monopoly is about the share of cars you make - Tesla is near zero.

Spotify has never been consistently profitable and had Net income last year of a little over a billion. They are a nothingburger

Tell that to musicians, apparently they don't need Spotify after all.

I will just go to the record store get some vinyls.

I am sure musicians are loving the royalty checks they are getting from Spotify at $.003 for every stream. They were better off before streaming.

> The problem is that you pass DMA, DSA, GDPR, etc. which Google, Apple etc. can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it.

And how do you compete with the big tech companies without it? It's been decades without anyone being able to do it. Not in Europe and not in the US. OpenAI might have a chance, but they also have billions.

The days where someone could drop out of school and start a company in the garage is over. Cost of living is up, so is competition. Companies need to expand and regulation like GDPR makes it easier to do so instead of having to deal with multiple countries regulation. The US always had an advantage in regulation like the DMCA.

To spell it out, before regulation European companies had to...

Deal with privacy regulation of each country. Which in the EU was supposed to be similar, but wasn't entirely. With GDPR not only is it the same in the EU, but other countries are now following the same model.

Register for VAT in every EU country it sold (enough) products in. Making many not sell to other countries at all until Amazon ate their business. With VAT MOSS you only register in you own country.

Accept many form of payments with many different fees since credit card adoption and cost could vary wildly. With interchange fees capped you increasingly only need to accept common credit cards.

Pay large roaming charges when traveling, making starting services like Uber or Airbnb less relevant since you couldn't assume someone had data in another country.

Try to compete with big tech companies that were charging for access to their platforms while minimizing their taxes through royalty payments, VAT deals and offshore holdings. Giving them a huge advantage. This is still the case, but lesser so.

For actually running a company it is a lot better now.

There are other problems with EU regulations. Some things are natural monopolies or in other ways doesn't do well as markets. Privatization and state-aid rules prevent European countries from effectively managing these areas. Any advantage Europe had over the US in cost of living and public services is rapidly diminishing.

It costs practically nothing to comply with those regulations.

It only costs to somehow keep doing the abusive things they exist to prevent.

It's impossible to express how little sympathy this deserves.

> Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers

as much I'm not a fan of them, Leica is a peer competing against Nikon, Fujifilm, etc.

> The problem is that you pass DMA,

Doesn't apply to your medium-sized company

> DSA,

Basically says "customers have the right to not be profiled and are entitled to not be shown algorithmic feeds"

> GDPR

Costs about 0 to implement as long as you only user data as intended, and not sending it off to 2763 "partners" who "respect your privacy".

What "insane regulatory burden" are you talking about?

> can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it.

The only reason these poor poor innocent trillion-dollar supranational corporations fight these laws in court is because they really don't want anyone competing with them, or to respect such minor things as user privacy. Not because the laws are somehow bad or complicated.

Even DMA, the most complex of them all, can be understood by anyone.

If a company is so small and weak that they can't support GDPR etc., then that company should not exist.

I don't care about any companies like Americans do with American business centric laws that hurts normal people. Life isn't about lowest price at any cost model. Buy from china (as everyone is doing but try to hide it) if you want low cost. I don't give a damn if all those companies die for not complying GDPR, fuck them.

Even in Europe, small companies can often (not always) get away with not following regulations or only following them in spirit but missing the details, simply because they are small and do not attract attention. Some laws have escalating requirements based on business size. GDPR isn't one of those, but a lot of small businesses still don't follow it.

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