Comment by fidotron
5 days ago
> There will be a lot more space for homegrown solutions or companies ready to comply if the foreign companies currently profiting decide to leave.
The core of what I'm trying to communicate is this is backwards.
If you took the Europeans out of Apple and Google they'd never have been able to build the iPhone or Android, or their associated stores. (And you could say this about other regions where the staff came from too). Why did those Europeans that helped the US leave the EU to do so? Because the companies in the US rewarded them as they recognized the explosive potential as the market developed.
The underlying problem is EU regulation is shortsighted, and always fighting the previous battle when it's been lost. They had every opportunity to lead this from the start. I namedropped GetJar earlier, but there was Jamster/Jamba and various services which the phone companies would subcontract to to run their own store fronts. I know of several aborted Android app stores and subscription services from the 2010 era, including those from Switzerland, Belgium and a certain large French company, and there are almost certainly more.
The time to address this was 15 years ago. Now their only viable path forward is to effectively fork Android and encourage adoption of their fork, much as the Chinese have. Their problem is they have to leave things like WhatsApp available, or their citizens will go nuts, and they will resist rewarding anyone involved with the technical side of the work, so it won't happen. They just want to punish the americans for having had the foresight that led to their success.
As an example, just look at how the europeans have failed to come up with something equivalent to WhatsApp, Signal or even Telegram. The closest is matrix and element, but again without the associated rewards for working on them they just aren't going to get up to the standards people expect, and so they languish with absolute idealists and those forced to use them.
> Their problem is they have to leave things like WhatsApp available, or their citizens will go nuts
WhatsApp would be displaced in a matter of days if not hours if made unavailable. You are far overestimating the amount of disruption a closure would provoke.
> They just want to punish the americans for having had the foresight that led to their success.
This is not about punishment. The DMA is about setting ground rules for a level playing field in the digital market space. It is at its heart a law about competition.
Europe wants the American companies to stop abusing their dominant positions and the closed markets they built. This is a prerequisite to a competitive market as it's basically impossible to foster competition when a few players have spent a decade entrenching themselves and building barriers to entry.
Thankfully, there are no rules which say American companies should reap unlimited benefits from their market manipulations and the overall laissez-faire attitude of the American regulator.
> As an example, just look at how the europeans have failed to come up with something equivalent to WhatsApp, Signal or even Telegram.
All of them have ready to use Asian competitors which would be more than happy to work with European regulators if American companies won't.