> In 2024, Google ran a set of tests of user interest in news content in Denmark and several other countries, concluding that removing such content had “no measurable impact” on search ad revenue. Those findings — along with the testing itself — have come under harsh criticism from Danish lawmakers.
I'm not really sure what Denmark is complaining about? It sounds like Google decided that removing Danish media and news from their services would have no impact on their finances whatsoever, therefore they are firm on their negotiating position since it's basically "take it or leave it".
And Denmark is also somehow trying to force Google to list and index their media, and at their price.
Because "business" isn't just "business" in Denmark and many other countries. Journalism for example, isn't just about the financial bottom-line, journalism has a societal role, and also the move could be seen as trying to avoid paying publishers under EU rules designed to support a free press.
I think a lot of friction between businesses and countries in Europe can be better understood if we better understood the difference in how countries treat things like "business" and other stuff. I understand in the US it's different, money basically rules, you can fire people whenever you want and so on, but in many places in the world, people have a different relationship to businesses, it's not just about money there.
Particularly when it comes to journalism. From reading news from Denmark about it, politicians been repeatedly argued that Google's framing reduces journalism to a revenue input, ignoring its democratic function.
If journalism really weren't just about the financial bottom line in Denmark, then why are they quibbling over what Google will pay them at all? It sounds like they'll be happy with just Google listing and driving traffic to their content for free.
In this context "journalism" usually refers not to a crowd of Mothers Teresas seeking to improve society in voluntary contradiction to their own market (or guild/class/whatever) interests, but a bunch of business entities which were born out of printed newspapers, feeling uncertain about their revenues after changes in technology of information delivery ruined their niche. And trying to leverage their established relations with politicians to extract more profit. It's not like Google is offending little pixies here. After all, there are youtube channels which have a societal role too, and search engines too I guess can make a similar claim.
Other commenter's note about national security issue is more on point but then I doubt that bailing out failing news platforms would make them as influential as they used to be in the bygone era.
This does not support freedom of the press. This policy is essentially a tax on web indexers (in practice, Google) that is paid directly to the news companies. This means that they are entirely dependent on government authority for their revenue, which is the opposite of freedom of the press. On top of that, only companies that are defined as "news outlets" by the government are eligible for forced indexing and payment. So not only is the government setting itself up as the revenue source, but it gets to choose who gets the money.
It sounds to me like Denmark's media and news isn't very valuable from an ad sales perspective. So Google has set their price reflecting what they think that value is: not much. And Denmark is now getting their lawmakers involved because they think it's worth a lot more and they want to force Google to buy it for a lot more.
Honestly, it doesn't sound like a lot of these EU countries are interested in digital sovereignty or developing their own services. They just want to force the American companies to sell their services at rates favorable to them by getting their regulators involved.
Yeah it seems like if they were really struggling to break up then they wouldn't be trying to force Google or Meta to the negotiating table. They would be simply kicking them out and not utilizing their services at all.
But it's actually the opposite. They are trying to get their lawmakers to force Google and Meta to provide them their services at below market value!
People who are capable of building things don't go into government. "Bureaucracy" has a connotation of where creativity and innovation goes to die for a reason. The personality type that goes into bureaucracy thinks about this like "why would I put in the effort to build something when I could just use the state monopoly on violence to shake down the suckers who already did all that hard work for me?" Of course they lie to the public, and most importantly to themselves, that they have higher motives, but that is the underlying logic.
The criticism was that Google have a dominant position on search market, Google selected 1% of their users to run the experiment on, but without informing them. That is users didn’t know that their search results were manipulated and articles they would otherwise have found didn’t show up.
So the argument presented by Danish authorities and media companies were that information should flow freely in a democracy and by doing a huge experiment like this without informing users is against the rights of Danish citizens.
"Manipulated" is a loaded and meaningless term here. All results are generated by algorithm, so that means 99% see the output of algorithm A and 1% see the output of algorithm B. Neither is more "manipulated" than the other.
First it is not manipulation please read the terms of service and user consent on this issue. Second this is standard practice A/B testing is universal and companies do a holdout experiment all the time it is also called Withholding test.
The Dutch national government mandated login system relies on technologies and hosting of a private company that was in conversation with an American counterpart about a possible acquisition.
Doesn't really doesn't matter what it cost to do. You should still do it. Of course, within reason, there may be some software that it's just intractable to reproduce.
US tech companies are taking up middlemen roles to extract wealth from developed nations, while not adding a lot of value on their own. Their moat is not that big, and there are mature viable alternatives.
One does not need google in their lives to be exposed to advertisements to a local brand. Or pay a percentage fee to paypal or visa if you buy a local product.
US tech companies lose much more from a decoupling than Europe does.
It depends on more than just that. Mindshare, network effects, and the state of a technological art all matter.
The moat crossing isn't in competing with the likes of Google or Paypal directly. The moat crossing is in accumulating enough capital to build the thing that leapfrogs them. Being a middleman allows you to accumulate a lot of money while expending fairly little of it. Then, you focus on the next thing, be it AI or whatever, while collecting middleman fees.
This has a collective effect on a nation's economy. You could tell the American companies to go kick rocks and develop your own local alternatives, but then you're expending your capital on developing a local alternative, not developing the Next Big Thing (TM), and the Americans are. The risk is that your economy becomes less competitive overall while becoming more competitive with one segment of the American economy.
If they are not adding any value, then the content companies can decline to be indexed. They have always had that right, but they do not exercise it which is a clear signal that indexing adds value. So they are getting a service that adds value for free, and not only are they not grateful for that, they are actually so greedy that they want Google to pay them.
i would take a 50% pay cut (FAANG) to move to denmark (with an accelerated path to perm residency) to work on whatever thing they want. any takers? actually any EU nation...
Edit: with all of the negativity under this comment I'm reminded of a hilarious experience I had when I first interned at FB during grad school: I was on some online game with a friend of mine and his friend (whom I'd never met) and we were on voice chat. My buddy asks me how the internship is going and I gave the standard "it's hard but I'm learning a lot" response. Afterwards the third guy chimes in and asks if me I don't feel ashamed (or whatever) about working for FB. It was literally my first tech internship so I said something equivocal. Then I asked the guy what he did/where he worked. I shit you not the guy was literally a radar engineer for the US army. The irony was clearly lost on him and he even went as far as insisting he (as opposed to me) was doing very good/valuable work.
How about instead of taking the easy way out and preserving your wealth you stay in the US and take up your generational responsibility and figure out how to fix the situation that you and your fellow citizens have created?
Same feeling from me. I also disliked his framing of moving his FAANG wealth to outcompete EU workers on jobs and housing, then making it sound like he's doing Europeans a favor with this.
"Yeah guys, I got enough blood money now from ad targeting people in the US, so to clear my conscience I can come give you guys a hand to fight the evil guys I had no issue with when they were paying me big money, but only IF you pay me 50% of what they pay me."
How about thanks but no thanks. We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help". Enjoy your money somewhere else.
The average person has almost no way of making any serious impact on society, especially in this time period. Besides that, the US was founded by people taking "the easy way out" and leaving another country, so it's only fitting.
Though the commenter mentioned working at a FAANG, so maybe they're far more culpable in this situation than the average person. If that's the case, I'd have to agree with you.
It's not generational responsibility. Everyone has at least some responsibility to defend the democratic values, traditions, and nation that have enabled them to live freely and peacefully.
For someone who has greatly benefited from the opportunities the nation afforded them, it's insulting for such a person to behave as if they possess no responsibility to defend the values, tradition, and nation that enabled them to succeed.
It's hard for me to escape how strongly I feel about this. As a European, I don't wish for such sorts of people to immigrate here. They can go back.
LOL my family immigrated to this country from a "shithole" when i was a kid and i've managed to claw my way out of immigrant poverty. i have exactly zero "generational responsibility".
Nope. Its much easier to carry over bloated wealth/income from a higher CoL country to a lower CoL country to live like kings by gentrifying the locals and creating the same kind of problem that caused him to escape from his country.
That is how the US was screwed up in the first place - the internal inequality and gentrification created all the problems the US is in today, including the social conflicts. People like him are literally helping to export those problems by exporting the misery to other countries.
Translation: "Die fighting in a civil war and maybe we'll grant you a visa".
This is, of course, stupid. You're arguing that if a tyrant king comes around, all of his neighbors should work tirelessly and for free to make sure the tyrant king's subjects remain under their control, so that the tyrant king still has materiel to invade you with. Most people are not in a position to individually resist or rebel against the system. Revolution is a collective concept, and the fish rots from the head. There's no causal link between denying someone a path to emigrate from their hellhole and them actually fixing their broke-ass society. They just wind up becoming a tool for that society to throw at you.
Think of every society like a building made of sentient bricks. If the bricks decide to leave, the building falls apart. But if the bricks are prohibited from leaving, then the building remains standing. Even if America doesn't actually restrict people from leaving (in fact, Trump kinda wants that), offering them no place to go is about the same thing as not letting them leave.
And, to be clear, the rot didn't start with Trump. It started with neoliberalism and the destruction of America's welfare system creating a permanent underclass of scammable peons. That same rot is present in much of the EU for the same reasons. America just succumbed to it first. You're watching a preview of what will happen in your country soon if you do not take immediate corrective action to fix the problem.
We are responsible for your nation's failure to be competitive in this industry? There are many European companies that operate freely in the US, so it is not our laws that are getting in your way. The only thing the US could do to help you here is to use force against your government to remove its self defeating policies, and I don't think you would actually like that very much. Actions have consequences. Every choice is a tradeoff. You will never get anywhere with that blame other people for your problems attitude.
If you can self employ (and find housing, but if you have cash from a FAANG job you can probably pay cash), the Dutch American Friendship Treaty is a popular choice.
Sure. Money isn't everything. A broader concern is that many european countries have similar problems like housing costs and a rising far-right without any better solution. And besides, these sky-high wages won't last for long with a state intent on isolating itself and starving its consumer base of wages.
Personally, I'm looking at east asia and latin america.
> The publishers say that their industry is bleeding out while they wait for a deal that may never come.
If your industry cannot sustain itself without checks from tech companies for using content as LLM training data that is quite a precarious situation. What was the economic situation for the news industry in Denmark prior to 2021?
And they created a powerful cartel which can pressure politicians to benefit the cartel:
The Danish Press Collective Management Organization (DPCMO), formed in 2021, now represents what CEO Karen Rønde calls a “99 percent mandate” of the entire industry.
I don’t think it will be a struggle for long. When you have a face to face meeting with your most powerful enemy and they tell you that they WILL conquer you (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/greenland-and-denma...), how can you stay coupled? This is going to accelerate the experiments started in Germany to move to open source software, etc. And I think Europe will pursue a heavy pivot to both grow local startups and couple to other powers like India or China.
At least for the next 50 years or so, the memory of this Trump administration will undermine any coupling to America. In the interim, I am not sure why these countries are even wasting time talking to American companies or representatives - they are absolutely not going to be a trustworthy long term partner:
> Rønde described the “Kafkaesque” experience of negotiating with local representatives who appear to have no actual authority.
I suspect there is going to be a flood of money in the EU for the creation of replacements for any US-based technology any of the EU countries are dependent upon (e.g., https://www.joindns4.eu). The real questions are whether there will be regulatory reform in the EU to facilitate this and will the money NOT flow to the usual dinosaurs. My impression is that Trump has sufficient pissed off EU governments such that there is some (small) hope for both. EC bureaucrats and MEPs might do well to read https://berthub.eu.
US tech workers believe their own lies and think they have some sort of magic sauce. For decades they've enjoyed government welfare and US-friendly regulation in many countries, which kept non-US competition small. An influx of non-US talent to US tech companies helped them stay innovative.
It is a courtesy that citizens from free countries pay US tech companies a middleman fee over various ways. What US tech workers fail to realize is that
- nobody needs Facebook to chat with their family
- nobody needs Visa, Paypal or Mastercard to pay in a local shop
- nobody needs Netflix subscription to watch a movie created by a non-US entity
- nobody needs to pay 50€ per month for privilege of Microsoft spying on your PC
- nobody needs their emails/pictures held hostage by Apple or Google
- nobody needs Uber in order to order a Taxi
So many of these things were done due to convenience and convention, making US tech workers richer and richer. I feel people are realizing what kind of pricks not only the management of US tech companies but also the US tech workers themselves are. Especially on HN these affluent workers from US tech companies run around and parrot the most stupid talking points while thinking their wealth comes from some sort of special skill.
We made them rich. They looted our data and poisoned our societies with fake news. They show no respect towards our systems or culture.
I just can't see it happening. The United States benefits from decades of compounding advantages compared to the EU: elite research universities, talent pipelines, mature capital markets, and tons of integrated industries (fintech).
This is obvious in the recent AI race. EU-headquartered companies remain rare compared to their US/Chinese counterparts.
NATO allies like Germany are sending troops to protect their ally nation along with Denmark. This isn’t a fight Trump is prepared for. If he somehow decides to move forward - we are all going to have to face a hard choice.
I've said it before - about MS. But if you move enough Danes off American IT the rest will follow, I think once you have a 30-40 percent move then within less than a year a landslide, maybe quicker as it is now tied up with patriotism.
Denmark is not alone here and it is also not just due to Trump
threatening to enslave all Greenlanders by military junta force either. That is just part of the military complex being tied to "business" - and happened in the past too, by the way. Trump just makes it "more official".
The whole TechBro mafia structure behind Trump has again and again
threatened damage against Europeans. A good example was Vance trolling
on the security conference in Munich, where he complained how the ultra
right are silenced in Europe. This showed that the new agenda that the
TechBros in the USA do, is actively hostile - this in addition to Trump
acting as agent Krasnov buddy for Putin. So, any more money that goes
into the USA, is ultimately money that goes against Europe. In many ways
Canadians understand this problem MUCH better than many governments in
Europe - just look at the german government. They are absolutely unwilling
to stop being so obedient to the USA. Denmark at the least understands the
problem - why is Germany so strange?
idk, If I was in control of a country in the EU I would realize, unfortunately for pretty much everyone on the planet, that we have made a drastic miscalculation by relying on the US so heavily for defense.
However, that is not something that can be reversed meaningfully in less than a decade. So for now, I would play the long game like Germany while working to get the EU to build up a military force large enough to significantly reduce our dependence on the US.
It's not as if the US hasn't repeatedly requested that European nations invest in their defense for the past few decades.
Looking at it dispassionately as a European living in the US, if you wanted to foment the sort of mistrust many Americans have of Europe, I don't think you could have created a more invidious policy.
It can be reversed in a year. In 1941 the US increased its production of tanks by 7x. In 1942 it increased production again by 4x. This idea that building industry takes decades needs to die a painful death.
Its because you people still keep blaming 'external factors' for homegrown problems that you have those problems. Both Trump and the forces behind Trump have been there long before any current head of state around the world entered politics for the first time.
> just look at the german government. They are absolutely unwilling to stop being so obedient to the USA. Denmark at the least understands the problem - why is Germany so strange?
Denmark doesnt 'understand' anything either - it agreed to set up a 'working group' for Greenland, which basically means they agreed to give Trump what he wants. The island may nominally remain in Danish ownership, but it will likely be effectively controlled by the US.
It's not that hard to create your own search engine, office suite, and school ecosystem. I mean, no single one of google's services isn't replaceable, especially if a country sets its mind to it. Just do that if you're worried about it.
> In 2024, Google ran a set of tests of user interest in news content in Denmark and several other countries, concluding that removing such content had “no measurable impact” on search ad revenue. Those findings — along with the testing itself — have come under harsh criticism from Danish lawmakers.
I'm not really sure what Denmark is complaining about? It sounds like Google decided that removing Danish media and news from their services would have no impact on their finances whatsoever, therefore they are firm on their negotiating position since it's basically "take it or leave it".
And Denmark is also somehow trying to force Google to list and index their media, and at their price.
Because "business" isn't just "business" in Denmark and many other countries. Journalism for example, isn't just about the financial bottom-line, journalism has a societal role, and also the move could be seen as trying to avoid paying publishers under EU rules designed to support a free press.
I think a lot of friction between businesses and countries in Europe can be better understood if we better understood the difference in how countries treat things like "business" and other stuff. I understand in the US it's different, money basically rules, you can fire people whenever you want and so on, but in many places in the world, people have a different relationship to businesses, it's not just about money there.
Particularly when it comes to journalism. From reading news from Denmark about it, politicians been repeatedly argued that Google's framing reduces journalism to a revenue input, ignoring its democratic function.
If journalism really weren't just about the financial bottom line in Denmark, then why are they quibbling over what Google will pay them at all? It sounds like they'll be happy with just Google listing and driving traffic to their content for free.
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In this context "journalism" usually refers not to a crowd of Mothers Teresas seeking to improve society in voluntary contradiction to their own market (or guild/class/whatever) interests, but a bunch of business entities which were born out of printed newspapers, feeling uncertain about their revenues after changes in technology of information delivery ruined their niche. And trying to leverage their established relations with politicians to extract more profit. It's not like Google is offending little pixies here. After all, there are youtube channels which have a societal role too, and search engines too I guess can make a similar claim.
Other commenter's note about national security issue is more on point but then I doubt that bailing out failing news platforms would make them as influential as they used to be in the bygone era.
This does not support freedom of the press. This policy is essentially a tax on web indexers (in practice, Google) that is paid directly to the news companies. This means that they are entirely dependent on government authority for their revenue, which is the opposite of freedom of the press. On top of that, only companies that are defined as "news outlets" by the government are eligible for forced indexing and payment. So not only is the government setting itself up as the revenue source, but it gets to choose who gets the money.
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It sounds to me like Denmark's media and news isn't very valuable from an ad sales perspective. So Google has set their price reflecting what they think that value is: not much. And Denmark is now getting their lawmakers involved because they think it's worth a lot more and they want to force Google to buy it for a lot more.
Honestly, it doesn't sound like a lot of these EU countries are interested in digital sovereignty or developing their own services. They just want to force the American companies to sell their services at rates favorable to them by getting their regulators involved.
Yeah it seems like if they were really struggling to break up then they wouldn't be trying to force Google or Meta to the negotiating table. They would be simply kicking them out and not utilizing their services at all.
But it's actually the opposite. They are trying to get their lawmakers to force Google and Meta to provide them their services at below market value!
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People who are capable of building things don't go into government. "Bureaucracy" has a connotation of where creativity and innovation goes to die for a reason. The personality type that goes into bureaucracy thinks about this like "why would I put in the effort to build something when I could just use the state monopoly on violence to shake down the suckers who already did all that hard work for me?" Of course they lie to the public, and most importantly to themselves, that they have higher motives, but that is the underlying logic.
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The criticism was that Google have a dominant position on search market, Google selected 1% of their users to run the experiment on, but without informing them. That is users didn’t know that their search results were manipulated and articles they would otherwise have found didn’t show up.
So the argument presented by Danish authorities and media companies were that information should flow freely in a democracy and by doing a huge experiment like this without informing users is against the rights of Danish citizens.
"Manipulated" is a loaded and meaningless term here. All results are generated by algorithm, so that means 99% see the output of algorithm A and 1% see the output of algorithm B. Neither is more "manipulated" than the other.
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Of course they wouldn't tell users if they're in the control group or experimental group. It would destroy the validity of the experiment.
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First it is not manipulation please read the terms of service and user consent on this issue. Second this is standard practice A/B testing is universal and companies do a holdout experiment all the time it is also called Withholding test.
Meanwhile, the Netherlands seems intent to sell its national login service to an American company.
https://nltimes.nl/2026/01/15/dutch-experts-warn-us-takeover...
There is much more nuance to it: https://ibestuur.nl/markt-en-overheid/digitale-infrastructuu...
“The Netherlands” isn’t selling anything.
The Dutch national government mandated login system relies on technologies and hosting of a private company that was in conversation with an American counterpart about a possible acquisition.
Bad? Yes
The Netherlands selling their login service? No
The local campaign related to this is Danmark Skifter (Denmark Changes): https://danmarkskifter.dk/en/
Doesn't really doesn't matter what it cost to do. You should still do it. Of course, within reason, there may be some software that it's just intractable to reproduce.
US tech companies are taking up middlemen roles to extract wealth from developed nations, while not adding a lot of value on their own. Their moat is not that big, and there are mature viable alternatives.
One does not need google in their lives to be exposed to advertisements to a local brand. Or pay a percentage fee to paypal or visa if you buy a local product.
US tech companies lose much more from a decoupling than Europe does.
It depends on more than just that. Mindshare, network effects, and the state of a technological art all matter.
The moat crossing isn't in competing with the likes of Google or Paypal directly. The moat crossing is in accumulating enough capital to build the thing that leapfrogs them. Being a middleman allows you to accumulate a lot of money while expending fairly little of it. Then, you focus on the next thing, be it AI or whatever, while collecting middleman fees.
This has a collective effect on a nation's economy. You could tell the American companies to go kick rocks and develop your own local alternatives, but then you're expending your capital on developing a local alternative, not developing the Next Big Thing (TM), and the Americans are. The risk is that your economy becomes less competitive overall while becoming more competitive with one segment of the American economy.
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If they are not adding any value, then the content companies can decline to be indexed. They have always had that right, but they do not exercise it which is a clear signal that indexing adds value. So they are getting a service that adds value for free, and not only are they not grateful for that, they are actually so greedy that they want Google to pay them.
i would take a 50% pay cut (FAANG) to move to denmark (with an accelerated path to perm residency) to work on whatever thing they want. any takers? actually any EU nation...
Edit: with all of the negativity under this comment I'm reminded of a hilarious experience I had when I first interned at FB during grad school: I was on some online game with a friend of mine and his friend (whom I'd never met) and we were on voice chat. My buddy asks me how the internship is going and I gave the standard "it's hard but I'm learning a lot" response. Afterwards the third guy chimes in and asks if me I don't feel ashamed (or whatever) about working for FB. It was literally my first tech internship so I said something equivocal. Then I asked the guy what he did/where he worked. I shit you not the guy was literally a radar engineer for the US army. The irony was clearly lost on him and he even went as far as insisting he (as opposed to me) was doing very good/valuable work.
How about instead of taking the easy way out and preserving your wealth you stay in the US and take up your generational responsibility and figure out how to fix the situation that you and your fellow citizens have created?
Same feeling from me. I also disliked his framing of moving his FAANG wealth to outcompete EU workers on jobs and housing, then making it sound like he's doing Europeans a favor with this.
"Yeah guys, I got enough blood money now from ad targeting people in the US, so to clear my conscience I can come give you guys a hand to fight the evil guys I had no issue with when they were paying me big money, but only IF you pay me 50% of what they pay me."
How about thanks but no thanks. We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help". Enjoy your money somewhere else.
Edit: sorry I sound so mean, but it's how I feel.
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Moving to another continent isn't a particularly easy way out. It's also more than 99% of people are prepared to do.
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The average person has almost no way of making any serious impact on society, especially in this time period. Besides that, the US was founded by people taking "the easy way out" and leaving another country, so it's only fitting.
Though the commenter mentioned working at a FAANG, so maybe they're far more culpable in this situation than the average person. If that's the case, I'd have to agree with you.
> generational responsibility
It's not generational responsibility. Everyone has at least some responsibility to defend the democratic values, traditions, and nation that have enabled them to live freely and peacefully.
For someone who has greatly benefited from the opportunities the nation afforded them, it's insulting for such a person to behave as if they possess no responsibility to defend the values, tradition, and nation that enabled them to succeed.
It's hard for me to escape how strongly I feel about this. As a European, I don't wish for such sorts of people to immigrate here. They can go back.
LOL my family immigrated to this country from a "shithole" when i was a kid and i've managed to claw my way out of immigrant poverty. i have exactly zero "generational responsibility".
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Nope. Its much easier to carry over bloated wealth/income from a higher CoL country to a lower CoL country to live like kings by gentrifying the locals and creating the same kind of problem that caused him to escape from his country.
That is how the US was screwed up in the first place - the internal inequality and gentrification created all the problems the US is in today, including the social conflicts. People like him are literally helping to export those problems by exporting the misery to other countries.
Translation: "Die fighting in a civil war and maybe we'll grant you a visa".
This is, of course, stupid. You're arguing that if a tyrant king comes around, all of his neighbors should work tirelessly and for free to make sure the tyrant king's subjects remain under their control, so that the tyrant king still has materiel to invade you with. Most people are not in a position to individually resist or rebel against the system. Revolution is a collective concept, and the fish rots from the head. There's no causal link between denying someone a path to emigrate from their hellhole and them actually fixing their broke-ass society. They just wind up becoming a tool for that society to throw at you.
Think of every society like a building made of sentient bricks. If the bricks decide to leave, the building falls apart. But if the bricks are prohibited from leaving, then the building remains standing. Even if America doesn't actually restrict people from leaving (in fact, Trump kinda wants that), offering them no place to go is about the same thing as not letting them leave.
And, to be clear, the rot didn't start with Trump. It started with neoliberalism and the destruction of America's welfare system creating a permanent underclass of scammable peons. That same rot is present in much of the EU for the same reasons. America just succumbed to it first. You're watching a preview of what will happen in your country soon if you do not take immediate corrective action to fix the problem.
We are responsible for your nation's failure to be competitive in this industry? There are many European companies that operate freely in the US, so it is not our laws that are getting in your way. The only thing the US could do to help you here is to use force against your government to remove its self defeating policies, and I don't think you would actually like that very much. Actions have consequences. Every choice is a tradeoff. You will never get anywhere with that blame other people for your problems attitude.
If you're a US citizen you should probably pick a different European country. USA is not very popular here in Denmark. Likely wont be for a while.
Here in Denmark I hold no animosity toward Americans and none of my circle do. The current US administration on the other hand…
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If you can self employ (and find housing, but if you have cash from a FAANG job you can probably pay cash), the Dutch American Friendship Treaty is a popular choice.
Would you work in Europe for a 5 figure salary?
Median salary for a dev is about $130,000 according to https://www.prosa.dk/raad-og-svar/loenstatistik-2025 (assumes 37 hour work week, 5 weeks of vacation).
Sure. Money isn't everything. A broader concern is that many european countries have similar problems like housing costs and a rising far-right without any better solution. And besides, these sky-high wages won't last for long with a state intent on isolating itself and starving its consumer base of wages.
Personally, I'm looking at east asia and latin america.
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As a freelancer you can easily still earn 6 figures
Many people do!
Dreadful weather but otherwise a nice country.
For me, Copenhagen Atomics would be ideal.
> The publishers say that their industry is bleeding out while they wait for a deal that may never come.
If your industry cannot sustain itself without checks from tech companies for using content as LLM training data that is quite a precarious situation. What was the economic situation for the news industry in Denmark prior to 2021?
This reads like they are trying to force American tech companies to subsidize their local news and journalism industries.
The question is, if they want it so bad, why don't they just establish a state fund for news and journalism so they can subsidize it themselves?
It honestly just feels like a shakedown.
And they created a powerful cartel which can pressure politicians to benefit the cartel:
I don’t think it will be a struggle for long. When you have a face to face meeting with your most powerful enemy and they tell you that they WILL conquer you (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/greenland-and-denma...), how can you stay coupled? This is going to accelerate the experiments started in Germany to move to open source software, etc. And I think Europe will pursue a heavy pivot to both grow local startups and couple to other powers like India or China.
At least for the next 50 years or so, the memory of this Trump administration will undermine any coupling to America. In the interim, I am not sure why these countries are even wasting time talking to American companies or representatives - they are absolutely not going to be a trustworthy long term partner:
> Rønde described the “Kafkaesque” experience of negotiating with local representatives who appear to have no actual authority.
I suspect there is going to be a flood of money in the EU for the creation of replacements for any US-based technology any of the EU countries are dependent upon (e.g., https://www.joindns4.eu). The real questions are whether there will be regulatory reform in the EU to facilitate this and will the money NOT flow to the usual dinosaurs. My impression is that Trump has sufficient pissed off EU governments such that there is some (small) hope for both. EC bureaucrats and MEPs might do well to read https://berthub.eu.
US tech workers believe their own lies and think they have some sort of magic sauce. For decades they've enjoyed government welfare and US-friendly regulation in many countries, which kept non-US competition small. An influx of non-US talent to US tech companies helped them stay innovative.
It is a courtesy that citizens from free countries pay US tech companies a middleman fee over various ways. What US tech workers fail to realize is that
So many of these things were done due to convenience and convention, making US tech workers richer and richer. I feel people are realizing what kind of pricks not only the management of US tech companies but also the US tech workers themselves are. Especially on HN these affluent workers from US tech companies run around and parrot the most stupid talking points while thinking their wealth comes from some sort of special skill.
We made them rich. They looted our data and poisoned our societies with fake news. They show no respect towards our systems or culture.
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Investment would be great, but the tech already exists. From Suse linux, hetzner, fairphone, to LibreOffice and OnlyOffice.
One simply needs to start using them. Investment can be focused on integration work and bug fixing.
My tax money is on the fact that it's going to go again to the dinosaurs. I cannot see them do any quick and adaptive change in the short term.
I can see ways that could be really effective, though trying to get a sane word out to these bureaucrats nowadays seems impossible.
I just can't see it happening. The United States benefits from decades of compounding advantages compared to the EU: elite research universities, talent pipelines, mature capital markets, and tons of integrated industries (fintech).
This is obvious in the recent AI race. EU-headquartered companies remain rare compared to their US/Chinese counterparts.
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NATO allies like Germany are sending troops to protect their ally nation along with Denmark. This isn’t a fight Trump is prepared for. If he somehow decides to move forward - we are all going to have to face a hard choice.
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I've said it before - about MS. But if you move enough Danes off American IT the rest will follow, I think once you have a 30-40 percent move then within less than a year a landslide, maybe quicker as it is now tied up with patriotism.
it would be so incredibly trumpian if he announces "Greencards For Greenland!"
surely, surely someone has already brainstormed it...
Only if you cough up enough green
So, once again, Stallman is proved right?
Denmark is not alone here and it is also not just due to Trump threatening to enslave all Greenlanders by military junta force either. That is just part of the military complex being tied to "business" - and happened in the past too, by the way. Trump just makes it "more official".
The whole TechBro mafia structure behind Trump has again and again threatened damage against Europeans. A good example was Vance trolling on the security conference in Munich, where he complained how the ultra right are silenced in Europe. This showed that the new agenda that the TechBros in the USA do, is actively hostile - this in addition to Trump acting as agent Krasnov buddy for Putin. So, any more money that goes into the USA, is ultimately money that goes against Europe. In many ways Canadians understand this problem MUCH better than many governments in Europe - just look at the german government. They are absolutely unwilling to stop being so obedient to the USA. Denmark at the least understands the problem - why is Germany so strange?
idk, If I was in control of a country in the EU I would realize, unfortunately for pretty much everyone on the planet, that we have made a drastic miscalculation by relying on the US so heavily for defense.
However, that is not something that can be reversed meaningfully in less than a decade. So for now, I would play the long game like Germany while working to get the EU to build up a military force large enough to significantly reduce our dependence on the US.
It's not as if the US hasn't repeatedly requested that European nations invest in their defense for the past few decades.
Looking at it dispassionately as a European living in the US, if you wanted to foment the sort of mistrust many Americans have of Europe, I don't think you could have created a more invidious policy.
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It can be reversed in a year. In 1941 the US increased its production of tanks by 7x. In 1942 it increased production again by 4x. This idea that building industry takes decades needs to die a painful death.
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> for Putin
Its because you people still keep blaming 'external factors' for homegrown problems that you have those problems. Both Trump and the forces behind Trump have been there long before any current head of state around the world entered politics for the first time.
> just look at the german government. They are absolutely unwilling to stop being so obedient to the USA. Denmark at the least understands the problem - why is Germany so strange?
Denmark doesnt 'understand' anything either - it agreed to set up a 'working group' for Greenland, which basically means they agreed to give Trump what he wants. The island may nominally remain in Danish ownership, but it will likely be effectively controlled by the US.
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It's not that hard to create your own search engine, office suite, and school ecosystem. I mean, no single one of google's services isn't replaceable, especially if a country sets its mind to it. Just do that if you're worried about it.
Building it is easy , selling , adopting and migrating to it is hard