It means a few US companies have the power to just turn off European payment systems, and frankly China probably as well, before and after this effort and there's nothing the ECB can do about it. And that means, they can't stop Trump from doing it.
What was the sole purpose of introducing this again? Preventing that. This doesn't help.
And EU countries have already demonstrated ... they had a near-monopoly on everything really. On chips, interconnects, cell phones, cars, optics, planes, satellite internet, ... but they traded it for a bit of money. If they want it back, it's of course going to cost EU states a lot of money, which they're not willing to do.
So why do they say they're going to do this? They, as in the rest of the EU organization, is not willing to put in the effort. In the short term it's slightly cheaper to have Google and Apple do this, and the ECB will have to live with the fact that if Trump decides all EU payments stop ... they stop. Funny how the US has never done that unilaterally, always through the UN, and the ECB has done that, without asking anyone (to Greece, and to Italy, and if we're brutally honest, to a bunch of African states too).
So I don't feel particularly sorry for the ECB here.
But I must ask: given that this doesn't make 1 mm progress towards their stated goal ... qui bono?
> What was the sole purpose of introducing this again? Preventing that. This doesn't help.
False.
Aside from the way the announced new payment system works with cards and doesn't actually need, merely also supports, apps…
Consider the MVP of a house: walls, door, roof.
Walls without a roof, without a door but simply a hole where a door might go, will let animals (or thieves) wander in, and be cold at night and not keep the sun off you in the day.
A door without walls or a roof is, what, an art installation?
A roof, supported by pillars without any walls or door, will keep you dry and will keep the sun off, but not keep the wind out, nor animals, nor thieves.
What the EU has done here is like any one of those three: necessary, not sufficient.
(Probably most like the roof given cards work without apps, but this was just the first analogy that came to mind, roll with it).
If the institutions of the EU ordered the creation of handsets (it doesn't have the power to do so, it's much closer to being a glorified free trade agreement with a light sprinkle of democratic self-updating to the rules of that FTA, than to being a federal government), but forgot to make a payment system, this would also still fail.
Collectively we also have to make office software and email systems, as demonstrated by the result of USA sanctions against ICC judges.
> And EU countries have already demonstrated ... they had a near-monopoly on everything really. On chips, interconnects, cell phones, cars, optics, planes, satellite internet, ... but they traded it for a bit of money.
Oh god no. We never had anything like a monopoly on most of those things, and still have one on some others.
We had — still have — decent players in aerospace; for space specifically it's more that SpaceX has outcompeted everyone worldwide including other USA companies than like the EU being behind. The EU's planes are still going fine, but Europe was never a monopoly there in the first place. Pre-Starlink satellite internet was always a joke (or emergency fallback), but the players were never monopolists. ASML and Zeiss are still even now major supply-chain players, but that's the closest the EU has ever been to a monopoly on this stuff (Zeiss more than ASML).
You could say we had and lost leads in interconnects though. Perhaps, though it's borderline, early mobile phones.
> In the short term it's slightly cheaper to have Google and Apple do this, and the ECB will have to live with the fact that if Trump decides all EU payments stop ... they stop.
Or this is one of several independent steps, it only works when all are ready, and they are willing to spend the money.
> Funny how the US has never done that unilaterally, always through the UN,
> Or this is one of several independent steps, it only works when all are ready, and they are willing to spend the money.
This is the step they can do for free (without eating any government budgets). The other steps are really expensive. One does not lead to the other.
This is like let's make a new Google and "already implementing the sorting algorithm". While undoubtedly important, it does not actually advance you towards your goal.
Which is exactly what the EU did a few years back of course. Try to force the creation of a new Google. What did they come up with?
Trovaprezzi.it
Kelkoo.co.uk
Yes, really. Visit those sites and decide for yourself how close they are to replacing Google. There were 10 or so others, even worse (by which I mean much worse scam sites). Don't worry, the EU kept the damages for their own budget and did not give them to those companies to actually try to build a new Google.
> This is like let's make a new Google and "already implementing the sorting algorithm". While undoubtedly important, it does not actually advance you towards your goal.
Google, the search engine?
A search engine is just a sorting algorithm for the query over the data. This is what Page Rank is. Also, the Page Rank patent has expired.
What made Google Inc. (and later Alphabet) a big player in the world was the money from the adverts. Their excuse for the prices they charge for those adverts comes from their analytics. The analytics are worryingly invasive, hence GDPR and the consent popups.
> Kelkoo.co.uk
Kelkoo is a European price comparison service founded in France in 1999.[1]
In 2000 Kelkoo merged with Zoomit, Dondecomprar and Shopgenie. The company was bought by Yahoo! on 26 March, 2004.[2] and was subsequently sold by Yahoo to Jamplant, a British private equity firm, in 2008.
…
Initial funding of $3 million was provided by Banexi Ventures and Innovacom
That's not even trying to be Google. Nor is it an example of the EU trying to force the creation of a new Google. Even if you can find EU funding despite evidence of this not being listed in the wiki page nor in, ahem, *Google's own* AI Overview, in that era a better question would be "was this the EU jumping on the dot.com bandwagon?"
You might be able to put it in a similar role as eBay or Amazon, but only if I could also categorise Kaufland's website that way. But not Google.
That's my point. Not even remotely close, and 100x as scammy as Google. The EU commission claimed these companies were the European competition for Google (and then kept the money they got from Google that was supposed to let them build their companies)
Which is exactly what the EU did a few years back of course. Try to force the creation of a new Google. What did they come up with?
Except they were not the EU "Try[ing] to force the creation of" anything, nor were they "a new Google", meaning the only parts of that sentence you get to keep are the spaces.
Kelkoo did its thing before Google did shopping. Google is the mimic here.
Kelkoo *pre-dates* Google's shopping search system, by a few years (Google's one first launched as Froogle in Dec 2002).
> The EU commission claimed these companies were the European competition for Google (and then kept the money they got from Google that was supposed to let them build their companies)
1. When did the EU commission get money from Google, for any purpose or reason, including fines? Was it around fifteen years after Kelkoo was bought and sold by Yahoo!?
And therefore would have needed a time machine to be involved in the creation of Kelkoo?
2. The actual reality is that Kelkoo joined in a lawsuit against Google for monopoly abuse[a], claiming to have been damaged by Google manipulating search results to favour its own products.
Important: The US courts have also found Google guilty of antitrust violations[b].
If you try to insist that this case — which is the closest I can even find to your phrasing, you've not cited anything — can use any of the words "forcing", "creating", or the sentence "and then kept the money they got from Google that was supposed to let them build their companies", then you have to also apply this to the US courts.
It's incorrect to use those words and phrases to describe the US case against Google, it's incorrect to use those words and phrases to describe the EU case against Google.
The case was not brought by the EU, it was brought at the EU. These companies sued Google for antitrust violations, at the EU who immediately stole all the spotlight, but technically it was those companies, not the EU directly. So the EU put out press releases that these antitrust violations were why these companies had not become full-fledged search engines. Why we didn't have an EU search engine. That's why I stated that they claimed stuff like kelkoo could replace Google if only given the chance. That's what they did claim.
It was, and is, a completely absurd claim, that the goal was to have an EU search engine, that goal, of course, totally failed, and that it is very weird where the money went. You know, given the goal. Given what they supposedly wanted to achieve.
Well, perhaps I should really clarify. I'm sure that what happened to the money is totally legal, but that it is going to achieve exactly nothing for the stated goal, and just happens to go to the budget of the politicians involved. Totally unrelated, I must say, the Berlaymont building, where these people work, has a nice restaurant. Well, multiple. I especially love the foamed milk with imported praline on a stick with just a drop of ... I forgot. It's whiskey, basically, but some Belgian version. Oh and you want to recognize EU commissioners there? They're the little mean guys with 20 security guards around them, eating in a huge separate space in the back, because some of them are so popular they've been attacked by their own EU personnel. And you'd think that would be an excuse to use security guards as servants, but actually no, I was somewhat near one incident. They really were attacked by their own workers. Rumor is some security guards joined in the attack.
What was the sole purpose of introducing this again? Preventing that. This doesn't help.
And EU countries have already demonstrated ... they had a near-monopoly on everything really. On chips, interconnects, cell phones, cars, optics, planes, satellite internet, ... but they traded it for a bit of money. If they want it back, it's of course going to cost EU states a lot of money, which they're not willing to do.
So why do they say they're going to do this? They, as in the rest of the EU organization, is not willing to put in the effort. In the short term it's slightly cheaper to have Google and Apple do this, and the ECB will have to live with the fact that if Trump decides all EU payments stop ... they stop. Funny how the US has never done that unilaterally, always through the UN, and the ECB has done that, without asking anyone (to Greece, and to Italy, and if we're brutally honest, to a bunch of African states too).
So I don't feel particularly sorry for the ECB here.
But I must ask: given that this doesn't make 1 mm progress towards their stated goal ... qui bono?