As a European this angers me also. We have smart and hardworking people, we could be succesful. Instead every bit of ambition gets regulated into the ground and we yoink money from tech giants instead of getti g things done ourselves.
all these big tech companies should stop providing services to anything that means EU/European countries governments, basically a ban. ALL: google, x, meta, amazon, ai companies, other services providers, 3rd parties, etc. losing money? fk it, they will make more after. EU countries have no tech giants, no alternatives. This way maybe europe will learn that they aren't the rulers of the world and 18th century finished long ago.
Whilst it sounds like a lot of money, the fine is roughly the revenue Google makes in two weeks just for displaying beauty ads targeting vulnerable teenage girls.
Europe is basically an economic graveyard masquerading as a developed continent because their only real industry now is regulatory extortion against companies they cannot even dream of inventing. It is honestly pathetic seeing them run the infinite money glitch of slapping fines on tech giants instead of fostering a single shred of actual innovation which is exactly why the US market is the only place where real capital goes to multiply. You have these bureaucratic dinosaurs in the EU gutting their own energy sector to the point of suicide while their immigration policy just accelerates the decay ensuring they will never see a decent return on investment ever again. The US keeps ripping to the moon because investors know exactly where the smart money belongs far away from a continent that treats success like a crime and prefers to tax its way into total obscurity while the rest of the world moves on without them.
Reddit is full of radical leftists. You can insult and falsely claim anything but the moment you say anything that may be the slighest against migrants you are the devil and need to be purged. Crazy lefists, even more funny they gather in a gambling reddit fueled by capitalism. Cucks
This is not a big deal when you can just raise you CPC 1 cent for 1 day, and you get all your money for this fine. Google can literally print money, and own pretty much all online marketing.
record fine sounds scary until you do the math, $4.7b is about two and a half weeks of alphabet profit. that's not a punishment, that's the eu invoicing them for a decade of android
The infinite loop, I'm a company owner in EU (BE).
There are so many rules and administrative work, documentation, legal requirements, it's not only that you need to comply with them, you need to actually do work and ask things to administration and actively send them documents through obscure means. Failing to do any of them puts you at risk of massive fines and problems.
Trying to export to another EU country as a EU company is just worthless, the countries are very small and will instantly cripple you with even more strenious adminstrative work and rules, and delays etc... it's not always clear what is the correct way to do things right, so you can expect fines in the future.
The countries are 10M inhabitants usually, to achieve a market size of US, you'd basically cripple yourself in admin over 20 countries or so, with massive legal, account and adminsitrative fees; basically a fully fledged legal department in your company.
Now a US company coming to EU doesn't have to deal with any of that, the rules are only valid or enforced for local companies.
You cannot grow a EU company to the size of a US company, the EU and its members put rules in place to ensure it will never ever happen, at the size of a small company you'll need to deal with overhead that will absolutely cripple you, it's impossible to grow like US companies.
We will never get a Google, Uber, Amazon, Tesla, Aliexpress, OpenAI etc... in EU. Never.
important edit: Not saying these companies are good or bad, I'm saying that EU will never have a giga corp from within that they can properly regulate, all giga corps will always be outside entities doing whatever their parent country allows them todo and EU trying to somehow fine them while the majority of their operations stays entirely outside of enforceable EU actions.
Amazon destroying retail in EU can't be regulated by EU, it's a netloss for EU in terms of revenue. As a EU ecomm company you can't compete with Amazon because you simply have more rules taxes and overhead to follow while you're significantly smaller.
An italian company tried to compete with OpenAI in the early chat days, their government and EU rapidly took the lead and fined them massively then proceeded to impose tons of things and audit they should obey, the company was still a small startup, it died instantly. Now almost all AI providers are outside EU.
It's fine that EU regulates for the greater good but at the end of the day, if all local companies die and you end up depending on outside unregulated companies, did your action really benefit your cause ?
Most governments in EU use American companies for almost all of their services, they don't even pretend.
Yes although it has similarly become much more difficult in the US in the past 20 years to become “the next Amazon”. Antitrust laws have been enforced, M/A’s blocked, states can effectively regulate/tax sales even without physical presence etc. Predatory growth strategies like undercutting market prices by using profits from other divisions are now frowned on. For your one recent example (OpenAI) as this is entirely a digital product I don’t see what would have prevented the same growth strategy of paying top dollar salaries to build a superior product and targeting the US market first.
At somepoint there are people whose entire carreer and future is bureacracy, you can expect them to innovate in there.
Every single person or department is trying to make changes for the better, in a mega ultra fragmented region & governments and you get nice results.
They all work for the the better in isolation, from their bureaucracy and focused on bureaucratic results, only when you consider that bureaucracy only adds up and each new person or elected wants to leave a mark, then it's a never ending cycle of adding things.
Please tell me this is sarcasm because you can't seriously suggest hundreds of millions of EU citizens will happily switch off from google services lol
Im not sure i fully understood why it's easier for a company outside of the EU to export to multiple countries within the EU, than for a business within the EU to do the same.
So far as i know Brexit has ruined a lot of British exports to the mainland.
from what I understand, its because US companies can grow and then have the option operate within the EU when ready, as a side quest. So when they decide to do it, they are more more successful, and maybe not add things the EU won't agree with and keep is US only (I'm imagining certain US-only tech features that would be cool to have but break GDPR or something). You can't take risks within the EU, you get spawn camped by EU laws.
So the EU don't have exemptions for Small and Medium companies, and basically actively cripple itself before the sme can even become successful?
This is dumb and putting ideology before practicality. China don't give a shit about any of this which is how they are able to grow massively. EU is like a trust fund baby living off of its inheritance while making really self-sabotaging decisions.
The core issue is that the population is extremely happy when new regulations come out, they fail to realize that said regulation only can applies in most cases to local companies and Google/Meta/Apple or whatever will continue their business as usual.
SME now have not only new regulations but also new periodic admin work that generally has to be done or finalized by a consultant/lawyer/accountant to avoid fines, irrespective of following the rules, all EU companies have a new fine they need to constantly pay.
There are many exemptions, but to qualify you need to follow through with paper work, it's expensive and extremely time consuming, lawyer or consultants need to be involved and you need to periodically prove that you still apply. It's unsure if it's cheaper in the end to get the exemption.
Lastly all helps and exemptions require massive capital to deploy with consultants and take months to have results (speaking 5k-50k€ upfront). When I was starting I couldn't afford that, I only started to get help and some exemptions / rebates when I could afford. The companies that can't deploy 10-20k€ like that will just have to play the hard game or hoping nothing happens.
Just this week, I've received a small fine because I didn't declare that I wasn't using copyrighted pictures. Yeah there is a new periodic yearly requirement to do so, no reminder nothing, you just receive an email that looks just like your most basic spam leading to the shadiest platform know to man. Asked my accountant if his account had been hacked and he told me it's legit.
There are so many individual things like that all over the place, every single country, ministry, department, person create their own rules with their own protocol and ways to comply, everything is independent.
The issue is they are barely catching up to US electric car companies,and in that industry the Chinese companies are leagues ahead ,China used to be the second biggest market for the VW group,now they are as relevant there as Elon turd's,and it's a big issues because we want a green future,the main issue is basically we don't have any real giga company that we could regulate and be better for our consumers than Amazon,Google,Microsoft and whatnot ,heck I would put BYD,Alibaba,Tencent and Samsung in this category too a simple solution would be less regulation or at least more straight-forward regional regulation at least for our start-ups and medium sized companies. Thank God for ASML,but otherwise we are too reliant on legacy companies
Euro car makers are fucked, there's no doubt about it. I just pointed out that tesla is really nothing special. It's a what 20 year old car company that produces less than 2 million cars per year and their sales stalled (in 2025 they sold less cars than in 2024). It should have valuation of Mazda.
Rotfl. how do you even find this buried comment in a 4 day old thread?
Do you guys get paid to dig any realistic comments about Tesla and make sure to respond with some bulshit about gambling on it?
Nah, mate. I said it should, I didn't say it would be any time soon, market irrational, liquidity and all that.
I'm not going to gamble on the market as a whole to realise that a two decade old car company with stagnant sales is not some scrappy new startup with a wonderful growth potential.
Many of us here are (multi) millionaires. Cope and seethe europoor lmao
(Saying that as an ex europoor moving my company to the US precisely because of the reasons listed here. Your attitude is ruining our awesome continent)
Except when it's anti-monopoly regulation which is literally designed so that one monopoly can't destroy competition by undercutting them long enough for them all to go bankrupt and then jacking up the prices.
Me when the competition is putting industrial waste into UK rivers https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/ofwat-fines-thames-water-nearly-123m-following-two-investigations-into-the-company/
tards gonna tard. this is how the irish potato famine happened. the successful farmers that were able to cultivate large yields of potatoes became rich. the absolutely brain dead retard population saw that and thought "NO MORE RICH FARMERS" and literally murdered them and that led to a famine where the europoors died en masse. and now you have the stupidest people on earth that use google search every single fcking day yell that they should remove google; the real tragedy is that they dont realize how stupid and hypocritical their opinions are
That's certainly a take on a famine mostly caused by the rich land owners deciding it's most profitable to sell crops for profit while starving the population.
I get that we're on WSB, but do you really not see that in Musk's Mars cities you will be serf at best and slave at worst with a shock collar aroudn your neck?
Seems odd that you didn't even mention anything about potato blight, or food exports out of a subjugated country in the midst of a famine.
No, instead you made the racist assertion that the Irish population was "absolutely brain dead retards" who murdered successful farmers because they were rich, and then that (through unexplained means) led to the famine. None of those things you said look like facts at all.
u really this stupid that ur entire research is a google ai search. why do you think the blight spread as badly as it did you fucking idiot. its cause the competent farmers were pushed out/killed. the retard population could have been anyone. u really this dumb that basic things need to be spoon fed to you?
I really don't think any of the farmers in Ireland, especially the absentee landlords, had any idea of how to manage Phytophthora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans before the famine started. How would they know? The pest wasn't in Europe at all before then, as far as we know.
If you are this confident in the narrative you have laid out here, can you show me a legitimate source that lays out the argument for it? So far, all I have seen is your foul-mouthed and poorly spelled rantings.
so you have a feeling thats your facts? while u ignore actual history....im not gonna hold your hand to your local library to show you what irish historical books say....you are willingly blind so you fit well with the current retard population- hurr durr google bad amirite? lmao
you start by attacking me with your horseshit and now that you got fcked in an argument u wanna run away? cmon buddy lets go lets talk about your opinion on google im sure its original lmao
the ones that they over-regulated and then nearly bankrupted resulting in them going from clear global leaders to being left at a serious disadvantage compared to imports.
They just released info showing a +25% increase in deliveries, and Q1'26 showed +16% YoY automotive revenue and +42% YoY FSD et al increase. Gross margin ~21%, FCF ~1.4B. Q2'26 is coming out soon, market is pricing it to do well too.
They are most definitely profitable, and spending almost 10% of total revenue (!!!) on R&D for FSD, Cybercab, Optimus, etc., i.e. they aren't done growing yet (hence the high PE etc., they behave like a startup still!)
Hate is blinding you. Also no subsidies is helping Tesla, and hurting other automakers, not the other way around.
As a software engineer who has a remote career, I'm enjoying that benefit from the free market. Silicon Valley is also the place of highest economic mobility in the entire country for the average person.
Blocking frontier model access, direct government investment in failing tech companies with consumers on the hook, banning any and all chinese vehicles including Polestar who aren’t even chinese, blocking gpu exports to china
Bro is happy to have his life controled by stake holders of big companies. The brain washing does not exist in the US hur durr.
Americans are lapdogs for billionaires at this point. ofc if you are a billionaire your comment makes sense but other wise you are special kind of cuck buddy
You do know that operating cash flow is AFTER all costs right? You're comparison is crooked. A median salary of 64k doesn't have a operating cash flow of 64k. It's maybe 2-5k.
Comparing revenue with operating cashflow smh
EDIT: Why does this pickle guy get upvoted lmao. Math not mathing guys
Yes, that's actually correct bc taxation is in the domain of a country and we know politicians are whores easy to be bribed play favourites (khm khm Ireland)
The fact that this is normalised for some people is the problem. Antitrust laws exist for a reason, competition is good. You expecting this and thinking it’s okay is the issue.
The ones running the ecosystem and the ones selling products on the ecosystem are usually different. Precisely to avoid issues like this where the ecosystem will favour in-house products and remove competition. Think of a grocery store, sure home brand products are becoming more common (which is concerning for the same reasons) but typically the food you buy is created by a separate company to the actual grocer. This is a good thing. The EU still enforces these fairly normal laws, but US tech companies think they’re above them.
Lol hard to believe but there was a time that this was not expected behavior. This creates market inefficiency, putting inferior or overpriced products into people's hands because you own the street. That's literally what antitrust law is designed to curb. Every economics but shows capitalism is only efficient with equal opportunity competition. Same reason you can't buy up all the restaurants in town and then triple the price of food.
Don't put words in my mouth. I was responding to someone saying the EU does specifically this, fining Google/tech companies, to enrich itself. Corrupt politicians are everywhere, I would never deny that.
Rather than not preinstalling, they should let users fully uninstall apps they don't want unless absolutely critical, which something like chrome is not.
Some apps like YouTube have a disable option but not full uninstall. It's possible it's Samsung that doesn't let you uninstall them on my phone but idk
Why do you think the EU should be telling a company how to do business on their own platform? How about not buying a Google OS phone if you don’t like it? There are other alternatives.
“We can’t make our own money or design our own tech so we will sue you in our courts to force you to pay so we don’t get left behind.”
Your examples aren’t equivalent. The user buying the phone has choices. They don’t have to choose Google. The issues arises that someone is choosing Google and then is telling Google what they have to do, including things that hurt Google!
Just because the EU has rules doesn’t mean they’re good or fair. One day a company will call the EUs bluff, and the whole house of cards will come down. Good luck.
> One day a company will call the EUs bluff, and the whole house of cards will come down.
You are saying that Google may decide to get out of the EU rather than accepting to not preinstall Chrome and Search?
Go ahead, and I will sue mgmt the next day for violating their fiduciary duty to us shareholders. They are there to make money, not to push ideological agendas lol.
> The user buying the phone has choices
What are you talking about? Yeah the user has a choice, but the manufacturer doesn't, if they want the Play Store. Did you read what happened or just the headline?
If Apple puts their apps on the phone, nobody cares, it's their phone. The issue is that Google uses the Play Store to fight competition in the Browser/Search Engine market. This is what regulators are after.
Sorry if I'm regarded but what's the logic here. Wouldn't this also imply that Apple can't preinstall their own apps on an iphone then? The play store is literally right there and you can side load whatever APK you have.
So if I buy a new Android phone in Europe and I just want to open a browser to literally open this subreddit, I can't even do it because I don't even have one installed. All simply the euro regards believe Google who created android is making this a monopoly by installing their own browser?
Your issue here is that you’re trying to introduce logic and reason to the illogical.
Europe is the worst continent for Big Tech when it comes to legislation. They can’t extract money from these companies in too many ways, so often times it’s done through litigation.
Meta and Apple have had similar paths and the reason the stock price barely moves is due to notion that this is all widely accepted as “cost of doing business”.
I feel like most of you people just don't know how markets are regulated.
> If you own the OS, in a free market, you’d have the opportunity to preload software
First, the market is not free, and never has been.
Most of the market is let free because this serves the consumers, not because of some philosophical position. Whenever the market left on its own stops benefiting consumers, it gets fixed by regulators.
If in some area there is a market failure, the regulators will make sure that this doesn't allow anti competitive practices, this is what happened with Google and the Play Store, and with Google and Android.
Yes, in the US consumer protections are weaker, but the EU has no issues with it. US companies know the laws and jurisprudence of the EU, and still decided to operate there.
Google complaining about this fine is like Disney showing a movie with the face of Mohammed in Saudi Arabia and complaining about getting fined. Yeah, that's not how it works at home, but you knew that in the other country these things don't fly.
About time someone put Goooglless in it's place. Worst browser out there.
ReplyDeleteGoogle could counter attack by reducing the free data cap on gmail from 15GB down to 10GB only within the EU.
ReplyDeleteEu makes most of their money by taxing big tech
ReplyDeleteAs a European this angers me also. We have smart and hardworking people, we could be succesful. Instead every bit of ambition gets regulated into the ground and we yoink money from tech giants instead of getti g things done ourselves.
ReplyDeleteThe EU is such a welfare state. They suckle the United States tit hard.
ReplyDeleteBwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha get fucked
ReplyDeleteWhy is it the U.S. sues these tech companies for MILLIONS and Europe for BILLIONS . What am I missing?
ReplyDeleteThe former does nothing to a company of this size. Hell, in this thread there's people arguing the latter also does nothing.
Deleteall these big tech companies should stop providing services to anything that means EU/European countries governments, basically a ban. ALL: google, x, meta, amazon, ai companies, other services providers, 3rd parties, etc. losing money? fk it, they will make more after. EU countries have no tech giants, no alternatives. This way maybe europe will learn that they aren't the rulers of the world and 18th century finished long ago.
ReplyDeleteLynch said it best, US innovates, China imitates, and EU legislates
ReplyDeleteOh nose! 4.7 billion dollars?! Cost of doing business and will just be written off. Google doesn’t care
ReplyDeleteBut Google spends 21 billion yearly to be the main search bar in safari.
ReplyDeleteEU fines needs to escalate with the tech world.
Still pissed that Nokia OS is not our universe
ReplyDeleteWhilst it sounds like a lot of money, the fine is roughly the revenue Google makes in two weeks just for displaying beauty ads targeting vulnerable teenage girls.
ReplyDeletehttps://imgur.com/a/KY7R8CG
ReplyDeleteHoly shit lol, the amount of bots that come out whenever the EU is mentioned anywhere is ridiculous and terrifying at the same time
ReplyDeleteEurope is basically an economic graveyard masquerading as a developed continent because their only real industry now is regulatory extortion against companies they cannot even dream of inventing. It is honestly pathetic seeing them run the infinite money glitch of slapping fines on tech giants instead of fostering a single shred of actual innovation which is exactly why the US market is the only place where real capital goes to multiply. You have these bureaucratic dinosaurs in the EU gutting their own energy sector to the point of suicide while their immigration policy just accelerates the decay ensuring they will never see a decent return on investment ever again. The US keeps ripping to the moon because investors know exactly where the smart money belongs far away from a continent that treats success like a crime and prefers to tax its way into total obscurity while the rest of the world moves on without them.
ReplyDeleteIf the infinite money glitch works then why change what works?
DeleteExactly, you don’t see parasites trying to become self-sufficient. That would be madness!
Deleteshut google servers down in EU and see how that goes.
ReplyDeleteMan my portfolio is 🪦
ReplyDeleteEU fining successful companies is the only economic opportunity in Europe
ReplyDelete4,7 billion dollar fine vs 23 trillion dollar economy
DeleteSuccessful companies that need to do more and more predatory and anti consumer practices to stay afloat, yeah, I’d be proud of them too /s
DeleteWhat has your country created lately EuroCuck?
DeleteSo changing the subject plus insults. You must really be out of ideas. We were talking about Google predatory practices.
DeleteCreate nothing of value. Take from those that do. Nice.
DeleteOf the 8 billion people in the world how many could find you on a map?
So long Eurocuck
Give us your money ameriburgers. We europoors need it desperately to fund more shitty politics in our countries and waste it all
ReplyDeleteM-m-m-money, money.
ReplyDeleteGoogle also ”won” a case in Sweden yesterday. Hence, they only had to pay their competitor 1,4 billion € (14 B sek) out of the 7B+ demanded.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair
ReplyDeletehttps://imgur.com/a/TlwPTl6
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteLet the reddit booklicking of the EU begin.
"FoLlOw ThEiR LaWs!!"
Imagine being such a self loathing American cuck that you willing to defend EU shakedowns despite your 401k and retirement being looted.
Reddit is full of radical leftists. You can insult and falsely claim anything but the moment you say anything that may be the slighest against migrants you are the devil and need to be purged. Crazy lefists, even more funny they gather in a gambling reddit fueled by capitalism. Cucks
DeleteDamp it so I can buy 🙏
ReplyDeletegoogle gonna find that in the couch cushions
ReplyDelete$20 billion profit per year, so essentially an additional 25% surtax
Delete(*july 4th noises intensify)
they made 132 billion in 2025
Deleteyou mean 20 billion times 8...
DeleteThat means they have to bend over and get fucked in the ass
DeletePeanuts.
ReplyDeleteAt this point, regulatory fines are the only thing keeping the EU’s sluggish economy afloat.
ReplyDeleteso much cope
DeleteSure, a $4,7 billion dollar fine is keeping a $23 trillion economy afloat.
DeleteAnd downn we go
ReplyDeleteWhy don’t they just shut down their European businesses
ReplyDeleteEuropoors will beg them to return
This is why you'll never own a successful business.
DeleteSure, leave the second biggest market. Theses companies break the rules because they know it’s still far more profitable to pay the fines.
DeleteSeems like the rule is "give us money" and they're following the rules. I don't see any principle being uniformly applied.
DeleteThis is not a big deal when you can just raise you CPC 1 cent for 1 day, and you get all your money for this fine. Google can literally print money, and own pretty much all online marketing.
ReplyDeleterecord fine sounds scary until you do the math, $4.7b is about two and a half weeks of alphabet profit. that's not a punishment, that's the eu invoicing them for a decade of android
ReplyDelete2 weeks of profit is 4% of annual profit.
Delete"that's the eu invoicing them for a decade of android"
DeleteYou mean a year of it. It hasn't even been a year since their last 'fine'.
Ok chatgpt
DeleteI feel like more than half of reddit posts and comments are made by AI. Still getting lots of upvotes.
DeleteEven worse when someone just decides to dump paragraph after paragraph of an AI output, without even attempting to summarises or rephrase.
DeleteI'd much rather read my own AI generation if thats what's on offer, im not reading someone else's
And honestly, that's scary to think about
DeleteThat's not scary, that's terrifying
DeleteSo....calls?
ReplyDeleteThe infinite loop, I'm a company owner in EU (BE).
ReplyDeleteThere are so many rules and administrative work, documentation, legal requirements, it's not only that you need to comply with them, you need to actually do work and ask things to administration and actively send them documents through obscure means. Failing to do any of them puts you at risk of massive fines and problems.
Trying to export to another EU country as a EU company is just worthless, the countries are very small and will instantly cripple you with even more strenious adminstrative work and rules, and delays etc... it's not always clear what is the correct way to do things right, so you can expect fines in the future.
The countries are 10M inhabitants usually, to achieve a market size of US, you'd basically cripple yourself in admin over 20 countries or so, with massive legal, account and adminsitrative fees; basically a fully fledged legal department in your company.
Now a US company coming to EU doesn't have to deal with any of that, the rules are only valid or enforced for local companies.
You cannot grow a EU company to the size of a US company, the EU and its members put rules in place to ensure it will never ever happen, at the size of a small company you'll need to deal with overhead that will absolutely cripple you, it's impossible to grow like US companies.
We will never get a Google, Uber, Amazon, Tesla, Aliexpress, OpenAI etc... in EU. Never.
important edit: Not saying these companies are good or bad, I'm saying that EU will never have a giga corp from within that they can properly regulate, all giga corps will always be outside entities doing whatever their parent country allows them todo and EU trying to somehow fine them while the majority of their operations stays entirely outside of enforceable EU actions.
Amazon destroying retail in EU can't be regulated by EU, it's a netloss for EU in terms of revenue. As a EU ecomm company you can't compete with Amazon because you simply have more rules taxes and overhead to follow while you're significantly smaller.
An italian company tried to compete with OpenAI in the early chat days, their government and EU rapidly took the lead and fined them massively then proceeded to impose tons of things and audit they should obey, the company was still a small startup, it died instantly. Now almost all AI providers are outside EU.
It's fine that EU regulates for the greater good but at the end of the day, if all local companies die and you end up depending on outside unregulated companies, did your action really benefit your cause ?
Most governments in EU use American companies for almost all of their services, they don't even pretend.
" An italian company tried to compete with OpenAI in the early chat days" Hahahahaha okay come on though.
DeleteYes although it has similarly become much more difficult in the US in the past 20 years to become “the next Amazon”. Antitrust laws have been enforced, M/A’s blocked, states can effectively regulate/tax sales even without physical presence etc. Predatory growth strategies like undercutting market prices by using profits from other divisions are now frowned on. For your one recent example (OpenAI) as this is entirely a digital product I don’t see what would have prevented the same growth strategy of paying top dollar salaries to build a superior product and targeting the US market first.
DeleteI knew EU was beaureucratic but just didn't know how bad
DeleteAt somepoint there are people whose entire carreer and future is bureacracy, you can expect them to innovate in there.
DeleteEvery single person or department is trying to make changes for the better, in a mega ultra fragmented region & governments and you get nice results.
They all work for the the better in isolation, from their bureaucracy and focused on bureaucratic results, only when you consider that bureaucracy only adds up and each new person or elected wants to leave a mark, then it's a never ending cycle of adding things.
Tldr?
DeleteEU regulates
DeleteEU companies dies
EU forced to use US companies
EU regulates even harder
EU only uses US companies and regulates no one
Yeah the most cancerous companies of the last decades, we will survive without Uber and Google dont worry.
DeleteYou will still have Uber and Google, just no EU companies who can compete with them.
DeleteBolt exists btw
DeleteWe dont need them 🤷
DeleteYou're literally on fucking reddit. If you want to fix the EU, start acknowledging problems instead of denying them.
DeleteMost Europeans need Google, Uber, and everything else.
We dont need any of that to live out lifes. I would argue only Microsoft matter in the big tech at this point.
DeletePlease tell me this is sarcasm because you can't seriously suggest hundreds of millions of EU citizens will happily switch off from google services lol
DeleteIm not sure i fully understood why it's easier for a company outside of the EU to export to multiple countries within the EU, than for a business within the EU to do the same.
DeleteSo far as i know Brexit has ruined a lot of British exports to the mainland.
from what I understand, its because US companies can grow and then have the option operate within the EU when ready, as a side quest. So when they decide to do it, they are more more successful, and maybe not add things the EU won't agree with and keep is US only (I'm imagining certain US-only tech features that would be cool to have but break GDPR or something). You can't take risks within the EU, you get spawn camped by EU laws.
DeleteSo the EU don't have exemptions for Small and Medium companies, and basically actively cripple itself before the sme can even become successful?
DeleteThis is dumb and putting ideology before practicality. China don't give a shit about any of this which is how they are able to grow massively. EU is like a trust fund baby living off of its inheritance while making really self-sabotaging decisions.
The core issue is that the population is extremely happy when new regulations come out, they fail to realize that said regulation only can applies in most cases to local companies and Google/Meta/Apple or whatever will continue their business as usual.
DeleteSME now have not only new regulations but also new periodic admin work that generally has to be done or finalized by a consultant/lawyer/accountant to avoid fines, irrespective of following the rules, all EU companies have a new fine they need to constantly pay.
There are many exemptions, but to qualify you need to follow through with paper work, it's expensive and extremely time consuming, lawyer or consultants need to be involved and you need to periodically prove that you still apply. It's unsure if it's cheaper in the end to get the exemption.
Lastly all helps and exemptions require massive capital to deploy with consultants and take months to have results (speaking 5k-50k€ upfront). When I was starting I couldn't afford that, I only started to get help and some exemptions / rebates when I could afford. The companies that can't deploy 10-20k€ like that will just have to play the hard game or hoping nothing happens.
Just this week, I've received a small fine because I didn't declare that I wasn't using copyrighted pictures. Yeah there is a new periodic yearly requirement to do so, no reminder nothing, you just receive an email that looks just like your most basic spam leading to the shadiest platform know to man. Asked my accountant if his account had been hacked and he told me it's legit.
There are so many individual things like that all over the place, every single country, ministry, department, person create their own rules with their own protocol and ways to comply, everything is independent.
"We will never get a Google, Uber, Amazon, Tesla, Aliexpress, OpenAI etc... in EU. Never."
DeleteGood?
Looking at the insidious, illegal and straight up evil things corporations you listed do... I'm glad.
"Tesla"
Also ... rotfl. You do know EU has two of the five biggest car companies (VW Group & Stellantis) ... right?
The issue is they are barely catching up to US electric car companies,and in that industry the Chinese companies are leagues ahead ,China used to be the second biggest market for the VW group,now they are as relevant there as Elon turd's,and it's a big issues because we want a green future,the main issue is basically we don't have any real giga company that we could regulate and be better for our consumers than Amazon,Google,Microsoft and whatnot ,heck I would put BYD,Alibaba,Tencent and Samsung in this category too a simple solution would be less regulation or at least more straight-forward regional regulation at least for our start-ups and medium sized companies. Thank God for ASML,but otherwise we are too reliant on legacy companies
DeleteEuro car makers are fucked, there's no doubt about it. I just pointed out that tesla is really nothing special. It's a what 20 year old car company that produces less than 2 million cars per year and their sales stalled (in 2025 they sold less cars than in 2024). It should have valuation of Mazda.
Delete"It should have valuation of Mazda."
DeleteShort and post positions if you're so sure
Rotfl. how do you even find this buried comment in a 4 day old thread?
DeleteDo you guys get paid to dig any realistic comments about Tesla and make sure to respond with some bulshit about gambling on it?
Nah, mate. I said it should, I didn't say it would be any time soon, market irrational, liquidity and all that.
I'm not going to gamble on the market as a whole to realise that a two decade old car company with stagnant sales is not some scrappy new startup with a wonderful growth potential.
One reason I love your mentality is that it so many Europeans agree, and this ensures US prosperity will continue.
DeleteLol. What prosperity?
DeleteThe ownership and operation of air conditioning, for one.
DeleteI'll take lower infant mortality and longer life expectancy, thanks. I can buy the AC :)
DeleteEuropoor eurocope
DeleteI bet I have more euros than you do though :P
Delete
DeleteThat's why you drive a Cupra.
Many of us here are (multi) millionaires. Cope and seethe europoor lmao
(Saying that as an ex europoor moving my company to the US precisely because of the reasons listed here. Your attitude is ruining our awesome continent)
Many of us here are (multi) millionaires
DeleteRight, but in dollars. I still have more euro than you do :P
That is more than likely true.
DeleteI appreciate the banter, but hope you find out a better way to live than that. The EU is not your friend.
Neither is USA, unless you're telling the truth and you are a multi-millionaire. In which case - enjoy!
Deleteblogs moment kind reddit moments
DeleteThen EU will always depend on US companies no matter how much "Buy European" or "Choose European" slogans are parroted...
DeleteThey could always look to the east...
DeleteYou really think eu has more ethical companies? They are the same just much less profitable.
DeleteNo. I think they are better regulated though.
DeleteI will never understand why people have such a hard on for regulation. It only makes for less competition.
DeleteExcept when it's anti-monopoly regulation which is literally designed so that one monopoly can't destroy competition by undercutting them long enough for them all to go bankrupt and then jacking up the prices.
DeleteMe when the competition is putting industrial waste into UK rivers
Deletehttps://www.ofwat.gov.uk/ofwat-fines-thames-water-nearly-123m-following-two-investigations-into-the-company/
UK famously left EU, in part because too much regulation. So I guess they can now have as much poluted rivers as they want.
Delete"I will never understood why people have such a hard on for vaccines, it only makes my hospital bill more expensive."
Deletetards gonna tard. this is how the irish potato famine happened. the successful farmers that were able to cultivate large yields of potatoes became rich. the absolutely brain dead retard population saw that and thought "NO MORE RICH FARMERS" and literally murdered them and that led to a famine where the europoors died en masse. and now you have the stupidest people on earth that use google search every single fcking day yell that they should remove google; the real tragedy is that they dont realize how stupid and hypocritical their opinions are
DeleteThat's certainly a take on a famine mostly caused by the rich land owners deciding it's most profitable to sell crops for profit while starving the population.
DeleteI get that we're on WSB, but do you really not see that in Musk's Mars cities you will be serf at best and slave at worst with a shock collar aroudn your neck?
We get it, you're still in college.
DeleteNope. I just know how to read lol.
Deletehttps://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
yea thats the tricky part because its ultimately a balancing act
DeleteWow, someone had to work hard to put this many shitty ideas into your brain on this one subject.
Deletehistorically known facts are now "shitty ideas"? stupid syrup is your honey
DeleteSeems odd that you didn't even mention anything about potato blight, or food exports out of a subjugated country in the midst of a famine.
DeleteNo, instead you made the racist assertion that the Irish population was "absolutely brain dead retards" who murdered successful farmers because they were rich, and then that (through unexplained means) led to the famine. None of those things you said look like facts at all.
u really this stupid that ur entire research is a google ai search. why do you think the blight spread as badly as it did you fucking idiot. its cause the competent farmers were pushed out/killed. the retard population could have been anyone. u really this dumb that basic things need to be spoon fed to you?
DeleteI really don't think any of the farmers in Ireland, especially the absentee landlords, had any idea of how to manage Phytophthora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans
Deletebefore the famine started. How would they know? The pest wasn't in Europe at all before then, as far as we know.
If you are this confident in the narrative you have laid out here, can you show me a legitimate source that lays out the argument for it? So far, all I have seen is your foul-mouthed and poorly spelled rantings.
so you have a feeling thats your facts? while u ignore actual history....im not gonna hold your hand to your local library to show you what irish historical books say....you are willingly blind so you fit well with the current retard population- hurr durr google bad amirite? lmao
DeleteMy opinion of you is dropping post by post. Have a nice day.
Deleteyou start by attacking me with your horseshit and now that you got fcked in an argument u wanna run away? cmon buddy lets go lets talk about your opinion on google im sure its original lmao
DeleteLook, one more try. Name one book you liked about the subject. Seriously. Name one book and I will read at least 100 pages of it.
Deletefifty shades of gray
DeleteLOL. OK, see you later.
Deletebye bye baby boy
DeleteYou are a retard
Deletedam bro u triggered
Delete0/10
Deletewhy u so mad bro
Deletethe ones that they over-regulated and then nearly bankrupted resulting in them going from clear global leaders to being left at a serious disadvantage compared to imports.
DeleteBoth VW and Stellantis are significantly more profitable then Tesla. Renault is about on par.
DeleteI had to look it up; this is not true at all. Tesla has been more profitable than Stellantis for at least the past two years.
DeleteAlso, VW just announced 100,000 job cuts. The Euro auto makers are struggling dude, this is well known
Teslas car business isn't profitable.
DeleteThe company was profitable with subsidies and accounting shenanigans.
VW well-known for not participating in any shenanigans
DeleteAlso definitely not subsidized...
They just released info showing a +25% increase in deliveries, and Q1'26 showed +16% YoY automotive revenue and +42% YoY FSD et al increase. Gross margin ~21%, FCF ~1.4B. Q2'26 is coming out soon, market is pricing it to do well too.
DeleteThey are most definitely profitable, and spending almost 10% of total revenue (!!!) on R&D for FSD, Cybercab, Optimus, etc., i.e. they aren't done growing yet (hence the high PE etc., they behave like a startup still!)
Hate is blinding you. Also no subsidies is helping Tesla, and hurting other automakers, not the other way around.
byd/geely
Deletei never said tesla
Maybe that is the point? I don't want more billionaires
DeleteEuropoor mindset. The whole world gonna make money for themselves and Europe is going to try to leech on them while being left behind.
DeleteIf you carry on like this, maybe Musk will give you a pat on the head.
DeleteIt’ll trickle down any day bro i promise bro just one more trillionaire bro please
DeleteAs a software engineer who has a remote career, I'm enjoying that benefit from the free market. Silicon Valley is also the place of highest economic mobility in the entire country for the average person.
DeleteI mean I work for a SF based company in the EU so I can both siphon cash from tech and enjoy a higher standard of worker protections
Delete$200k base with equity isn’t what “trickling down” means
We're benefiting from free markets that encourage investments and risk taking. That really is what it means.
DeleteBlocking frontier model access, direct government investment in failing tech companies with consumers on the hook, banning any and all chinese vehicles including Polestar who aren’t even chinese, blocking gpu exports to china
DeleteSuper free market man
Bro is happy to have his life controled by stake holders of big companies. The brain washing does not exist in the US hur durr.
DeleteAmericans are lapdogs for billionaires at this point. ofc if you are a billionaire your comment makes sense but other wise you are special kind of cuck buddy
"stake holders of big companies." you, the customer (and maybe employee!) are also a stake holder
DeleteYou will get another entity like East India trading company, or become like south Korea now being controlled by 3 corporations
DeleteBut we are creating more billionaires - just not in the EU.
DeleteGood, pay your taxes while continuing to layoff and destroy our jobs.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't care less about EU jobs. If they don't like it, then don't?
DeleteI agree, pay the fucking taxes and even more so being a $4T company; but google haven't had much/any layoffs, right?
DeleteIt's always Meta, MSFT, Amzn; never nvidia, google or apple
They're not cutting jobs? That must mean they're getting too big and must be taxed.
DeleteOh no! That’s a whopping 3% of operating cashflow lmao
ReplyDeleteit sets a precedent...
DeleteIf you make median salary in the USA, $64,000, an equivalent fine would be $1,920.
DeleteYou do know that operating cash flow is AFTER all costs right? You're comparison is crooked. A median salary of 64k doesn't have a operating cash flow of 64k. It's maybe 2-5k.
DeleteComparing revenue with operating cashflow smh
EDIT: Why does this pickle guy get upvoted lmao. Math not mathing guys
Just eu things, more taxes and fines, lovely
ReplyDeleteOh no global tech companies having to follow the law like poor people. The horror.
DeleteComment has been removed
DeleteThe laws are public, why didn't google comply if it wanted to operate in these countries?
DeleteThey make way more money breaking the law, then try to weasel out of it by hiring a legal team.
DeleteUK poor here. In 5 years time, there will still be no EU alternative and they will fine Google again.
ReplyDeleteWhere is the problem? Just make the fine Niger and bigger and start tax them
DeleteDuck Duck Go is a very good alternative
DeleteEvery time they need money they slap a fine on US companies.
DeleteSome of the rules even exculde smaller size companies, so that they only apply to the big US companies.
EU Makes more from fining the big american tech companies than collecting in taxes from their largest tech companies
DeleteYes, that's actually correct bc taxation is in the domain of a country and we know politicians are whores easy to be bribed play favourites (khm khm Ireland)
DeleteSo in comes mama Ursula 🤠
You want to do business in the EU, you play by our rules. It worked like that for ages, and works the other way around as well.
DeleteThat's not exactly what this is about. they are accused of pushing their own apps above others
DeleteOn their own ecosystem that they created?! The audacity.
DeleteWhat a joke. The EU solely does this to enrich itself on the backs of US tech companies.
^ There are people that genuinely think like this
DeleteGoogle is using the World Wide Web that was invented in Europe.
DeleteMaybe the EU should use "their ecosystem" and kick out Google?
The fact that you don't even see the problem is amazing.
DeleteHoly fuck the ignorance
DeleteYes, companies using their dominant ecosystems to give them an advantage in other ecosystems is actually a bad thing.
DeleteGood goy
DeleteThe fact that this is normalised for some people is the problem. Antitrust laws exist for a reason, competition is good. You expecting this and thinking it’s okay is the issue.
DeleteThe ones running the ecosystem and the ones selling products on the ecosystem are usually different. Precisely to avoid issues like this where the ecosystem will favour in-house products and remove competition. Think of a grocery store, sure home brand products are becoming more common (which is concerning for the same reasons) but typically the food you buy is created by a separate company to the actual grocer. This is a good thing. The EU still enforces these fairly normal laws, but US tech companies think they’re above them.
Lol hard to believe but there was a time that this was not expected behavior. This creates market inefficiency, putting inferior or overpriced products into people's hands because you own the street. That's literally what antitrust law is designed to curb. Every economics but shows capitalism is only efficient with equal opportunity competition. Same reason you can't buy up all the restaurants in town and then triple the price of food.
DeleteI 100% agree but I gotta admit that losing google maps integration in google search was infuriating for a while
DeletePoor US companies, feel bad for them as they always get cheated :/
DeleteSuuuuure buddy. EU isn't the US.
DeleteIf you dont think the EU is corrupt too, I got a bridge to sell ya
DeleteDon't put words in my mouth. I was responding to someone saying the EU does specifically this, fining Google/tech companies, to enrich itself. Corrupt politicians are everywhere, I would never deny that.
DeleteI know what you were responding to, and yes this is exactly why they keep doing these fines. To enrich themselves. Because they are also corrupt
DeleteNothing wrong with that.
DeleteWhat do you mean there is no alernative?
DeleteThe alternative is not preinstalling google apps on the android phone, and let users pick apps of their choice
Gonna fine apple for pre installing the apple App Store, stocks, wellness, etc apps next?
DeleteRather than not preinstalling, they should let users fully uninstall apps they don't want unless absolutely critical, which something like chrome is not.
Delete> they should let users fully uninstall apps they don't want
DeleteIsn't this already possible? (Just asking because I have a different kind of phone)
Some apps like YouTube have a disable option but not full uninstall. It's possible it's Samsung that doesn't let you uninstall them on my phone but idk
DeleteAh got it
DeleteWhy do you think the EU should be telling a company how to do business on their own platform? How about not buying a Google OS phone if you don’t like it? There are other alternatives.
Delete“We can’t make our own money or design our own tech so we will sue you in our courts to force you to pay so we don’t get left behind.”
Your examples aren’t equivalent. The user buying the phone has choices. They don’t have to choose Google. The issues arises that someone is choosing Google and then is telling Google what they have to do, including things that hurt Google!
DeleteJust because the EU has rules doesn’t mean they’re good or fair. One day a company will call the EUs bluff, and the whole house of cards will come down. Good luck.
> One day a company will call the EUs bluff, and the whole house of cards will come down.
DeleteYou are saying that Google may decide to get out of the EU rather than accepting to not preinstall Chrome and Search?
Go ahead, and I will sue mgmt the next day for violating their fiduciary duty to us shareholders. They are there to make money, not to push ideological agendas lol.
> The user buying the phone has choices
What are you talking about? Yeah the user has a choice, but the manufacturer doesn't, if they want the Play Store. Did you read what happened or just the headline?
If Apple puts their apps on the phone, nobody cares, it's their phone. The issue is that Google uses the Play Store to fight competition in the Browser/Search Engine market. This is what regulators are after.
Sorry if I'm regarded but what's the logic here. Wouldn't this also imply that Apple can't preinstall their own apps on an iphone then? The play store is literally right there and you can side load whatever APK you have.
DeleteSo if I buy a new Android phone in Europe and I just want to open a browser to literally open this subreddit, I can't even do it because I don't even have one installed. All simply the euro regards believe Google who created android is making this a monopoly by installing their own browser?
Your issue here is that you’re trying to introduce logic and reason to the illogical.
DeleteEurope is the worst continent for Big Tech when it comes to legislation. They can’t extract money from these companies in too many ways, so often times it’s done through litigation.
Meta and Apple have had similar paths and the reason the stock price barely moves is due to notion that this is all widely accepted as “cost of doing business”.
Ok bootlicker
DeleteWow very harsh.
DeleteBootlicker because I support free trade in the U.S.?
Prove me wrong.
DeleteHow is it free trade in the US?
The issue is that Google was forcing manufacturers to preinstall Google apps on phones sold in Europe.
Point to where you see free trade in the US being involved
If you own the OS, in a free market, you’d have the opportunity to preload software. Apple does it with the App Store, Maps, Safari, etc….
DeleteMy issue with the way Europe handles this is the absolute irony since it’s a tale as old as time.
Here’s another version from 8 years ago
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/07/10/eu-hits-alphabet-google-with-android-antitrust-fine.html
I feel like most of you people just don't know how markets are regulated.
Delete> If you own the OS, in a free market, you’d have the opportunity to preload software
First, the market is not free, and never has been.
Most of the market is let free because this serves the consumers, not because of some philosophical position. Whenever the market left on its own stops benefiting consumers, it gets fixed by regulators.
If in some area there is a market failure, the regulators will make sure that this doesn't allow anti competitive practices, this is what happened with Google and the Play Store, and with Google and Android.
Yes, in the US consumer protections are weaker, but the EU has no issues with it. US companies know the laws and jurisprudence of the EU, and still decided to operate there.
Google complaining about this fine is like Disney showing a movie with the face of Mohammed in Saudi Arabia and complaining about getting fined. Yeah, that's not how it works at home, but you knew that in the other country these things don't fly.
You cant force a 🐴 to 💦
DeleteThere goes my 1 singular leap
ReplyDeletestock is still up today
DeleteIt’s green today and the last three days in a row…
Deletethe 4.7 billion just sounds like a random number ngl
Delete