This decision was needed because the EU was about to ban end-to-end encryption. It’s not the EU commission, but a judge that ruled. AFAIK Commission can still ignore this.
As it is Ylva Johansson, the hater of freedom of speech and the champion of scanning software companies, speaking in this document, here is her background:
Obviously not. There are tons of large companies, many of which are often misread as American, because they are listed on the Nasdaq or another US exchange.
Many EU companies have far higher revenues than their US counterparts (Airbus, Volkswagen, Alstom), are boring but crucial (Heidelberg, DTE) or not easily recognised (Novo Nordisk, Unilever).
Even in tech, there's a lot of interesting ones: Booking.com, elastic search, takeaway (aka GrubHub), Adyen, for example are all Dutch. There's or was, Spotify, Skype, SoundCloud, Zalando, Mojang, Shazam and so on.
Just be a bit more curious and less preoccupied and you'll see there's plenty going on in Europe. And don't forget that companies can be great and big and multinationals even if they aren't present in the US.
The EU's entire modern tech industry does not even measure up to that of one US company.
Dismissals of the EU's inability to compete in tech is why EU citizens have missed out on literally tens of trillions of dollars in economic growth post-2000s.
The EU's lack of ability to innovate is becoming a serious problem for the progress of our species as a whole.
Valuation and innovation could be related and could be not depending on the company, industry, fraud, etc.
> The EU's lack of ability to innovate
Modern American tech products are made of so many different parts, of which a significant portion is made (and designed) in EU, rest in US, Japan, Korea, China, etc.
US valuations are simply insane. Oligarchs money looking for an investment vessel inflate share prices. In most cases it has nothing to do with actual value of the companies or their revenue.
In US empty company can be "worth" billions for a time.
That's what happens when there's no social system for pensions. In the US everyone and his dog has to "invest" in the stock market for their older days. In Europe this is happening more and more too, but there's also still a reasonable pension system in most countries that serves this purpose for individuals.
There are simply far more investers putting money in already inflated assets in the US than in Europe.
Take Tesla vs Volkswagen (or Porsche if you want). VW sells magnitudes more cars worldwide than TSL, even just the electric ones. Their ROI is much higher. And both their innovation is just as flakey at times (compared to e.g. Volvo who remain strong leader in all automotive innovation).
Anyone who looks at the solid figures, sees that VW is simply the stronger and more boring company. Yet people bet on the future, in which TSL promises to overtake VW. And then inflates the already inflated bubble some more, praying for that promise to be delivered on.
Praying, however, is not a good way to innovate an economy.
Over 70% is invested in equities, the rest mostly in fixed income (bonds). Not a whole lot different than an average 401k invested in a target date fund.
But the real zinger: over 33% of the total is invested in US equities alone, with a whopping 47% of all investments being in the US. 11.2% of total investments are in the US technology sector vs a mere 1.6% in European (including non-EU countries like Russia) technology. Truly humbling.
Norway doesn't seem to share your opinion on US equities.
All investment involves some gambling. Putting 1/3 into US stocks is not a bet on health and creativity of US conpanies. It's a bet on the assumption that the biggest casino on Earth will keep attracting the rich that don't have other places to go. Fairly safe bet I'd say.
Regardless, it only reinforces that the notion that US stock market doesn't reflect true worth of US companies because it's flooded with capital from pension funds. Not only US ones but from the whole world.
I, in my delusion have near zero influence on European economy, so if it's in fact falling behind, which it probably isn't, there must be other reason.
Not really. That happens when you have concetration of capital in few hands that can do with it whatever they want but there's really not much to do with it.
US stock market is analogue of Chinese real estate market. It's full of overpriced crumbling units and overt scams waiting to be exposed.
In Europe this capital is dispersed and more often serves the purpose of building infrastructure, increasing prosperity and well being of societies as a whole and developing large number of smaller businesses priced realistically. It's less flashy, but healthier.
The European economy is not healthy at all, and is facing an upcoming demographic crisis with a lot of issues with high unemployment and low wages causing brain drain.
I mean FFS the damn Euro literally almost became worthless because of the Greek debt crisis. Did people forget how close Europe came to abandoning its own currency?
Can you recommend some reading on the subject? I don't recall any ideas about abandoning Euro by anyone else but the Greeks, who probably just wanted to print more which would be devastating for them in anything but the short term.
Spotify, King, DICE and Mojang are some commercial software successes. All from Sweden.
If you don't think the entertainment industry counts for much, I might remind you Linux was originally made in Finland. (Linus Torvalds is half Swede half Finn iirc)
Spotify was made up of 75% US employees since the moment it validated its value.
DICE is a failed studio. Battlefield 2042 was one of the worst AAA video game launches of all time (with Cyberpunk 2077 by Polish studio CD Projekt Red being another) after a rocky Battlefield V launch and there is no reason to believe they will come back from it.
King makes low quality micro-transaction-riddled games for addicts.
Facebook is just scams and intervenes with elections. Google is just privacy hell that sells your data for ads. Amazon is in the business of abusing its workers. Point being, it was asked for success. Not if people like the company or not.
What a cynical interpretation. These companies have QoL for billions, directly and indirectly. You are just normalized to it now.
For some reason I don't see you blaming Cambridge Analytica - the actual company running the interference by exploiting APIs - for the interference itself.
Did the point go above your head? Because my point was that the EU companies mentioned also have earned money and been used by billions of people, no matter if the other commenter likes them or not.
