Apple vs the Law

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

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

Competing in category chemicals:

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

Competing in category engineering:

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

Competing in category metals:

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

Competing in category pharma:

Novartis, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Bayer, and others

Competing in category electronics:

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

> any scaling company is instantly hamstrung

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

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

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

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

I do have one concern though.

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

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

So this is what I'd worry about.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HN is sometimes incredibly biased towards consumer tech.

We don't need cars from fascists.

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

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

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

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

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

And if we mention household names then you’d argue

“Those aren’t small companies”

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

———

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the bigger fungicides, herbicides, insecticides.

Catalytic converter components, battery components, cathodes, etc.

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

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

LOL, what?

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

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

You just named 5 companies, that’s competition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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