The EU takes money from the Microsoft ATM with one hand, and then invests it in a sure-to-fail “Google Killer” with the other. Of course, I’m stretching the facts here to make a point. The EU is simply allowing the French and German governments to make these investments with their own taxpayer’s money. There is no direct link between Microsoft fines and these subsidies. But the point is the same – the EU is not willing to let free markets determine winners and losers. The winners must be home grown, at any cost. And US companies that have too much success in Europe seem to face a bleak choice – massive fines or government-backed competitors. It’s absurd. And it’s no wonder that many of the best European entrepreneurs keep coming to the US to start companies.

i hate european industrial policy. so misguided.
2015-03-04: europe continues to be run by morons.

Just 1 week after the American government voted to enforce net neutrality, the European Union is considering plans allowing the opposite, permitting internet providers to create a tiered internet service with paid fast lanes.

2015-12-17: europe is working very hard to retain its top spot for the dumbest tech policies.

New European data protection rules would see companies require parental consent to handle data of those under 16, effectively blocking them from social media

2016-05-26:

But the much more concerning stuff involves the regulation of the internet. Now, yes, the EU Commission basically tries to bend over backwards to say that this isn’t about creating new regulations for the internet. And also to claim that they’re not changing the “intermediary liability” regime as laid out in the E-Commerce Directive that is a decent, if unfortunately weaker, version of US intermediary liability protections, saying that platforms aren’t responsible for actions of their users. But… there’s a big “but” after those claims, and it basically undermines those claims. You can read the following and see them swearing no new regulations and no changes, but the 4 bullet points and the details buried in them suggest something entirely different

one wishes that brexit happens so that the EU doesn’t have time for nonsense like this.
2018-09-18: how the latest internet nonsense coming out of the EU will only end up harming the EU.

If regulators, EU or otherwise, truly want to constrain Facebook and Google — or, for that matter, all of the other ad networks and companies that in reality are far more of a threat to user privacy — then the ultimate force is user demand, and the lever is demanding transparency on exactly what these companies are doing. To that end, were I a regulator concerned about user privacy, my starting point would not be an enforcement mechanism but a transparency mechanism. I would establish clear metrics to measure user privacy — types of data retained, types of data inferred, mechanisms to delete user-generated data, mechanisms to delete inferred data, what data is shared, and with whom — and then measure the companies under my purview — with subpoena power if necessary — and publish the results for the users to see.

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