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THE EU HAS an innovation problem. We are living in a time of economic change to rival the industrial revolution, but the growth is being engineered just about everywhere except Europe.
The continent seems to be in a long and terminal decline and, as we see in this week’s launch of an EU antitrust case against Google, the response seems to be more about flailing around like a churlish child than doing something to address the fundamental issues.
The EU is focused on managing its decline. We’re more worried about paying ourselves than earning a living. And when companies like Google rock up, clever tax strategies and all, the EUpean response is to look for a way to drag them down too.
David Galbraith, a partner at venture investment firm Anthemis, told The Guardian late last year that “the combined value of the top three internet companies in the Americas – so, basically, in America – is around $0.75 trillion. In Asia, it’s around $0.5 trillion. In Africa, it’s $50 billion. And in Europe, it’s just $25 billion.”
Meanwhile, as Angela Merkel likes to point out, the EU accounts for about 7% of the world’s population, 25% of its GDP and half of its social welfare spending.
Long before the antitrust case launched this week and concerned at the success and dominance of Google, the EUpeans funded a €298 million project to launch a rival search engine called “Quaero”.
No, I’ve never heard of it either. The name is apparently the Latin for “I seek”. The intention, as one news outlet put it in 2008, was to provide “Google-Killer Funding”.
This cuts right to the heart of how the continental European in particular thinks. Everything comes back to how the state might solve a problem, even though governments tend to be the most inept participant in any venture.
The US has produced Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, PayPal, Tesla (the latter two involving the same guy) and a host of other game changing companies. Most of them have emerged from college campuses, when a couple of people got together to tinker and try something new and innovative.
A lot of companies we’ve never heard of tried the same and didn’t make it. They didn’t get €300 million of government funding upfront to try and do something derivative, and where they did burn through millions it was private venture capital money.
The €300 million is also a paltry sum compared to the $10 billion or so that Google spends on research and development (R&D) each year. Much of this R&D actually goes into products unrelated to research, whence 80% of their revenue comes.
There’s a decent chance that if you are in an autonomous car in 20 years or have a good internet connection in the middle of the Himalayas in five years, Google “moonshot” projects will have had something to do with it.
Success
For all that spending, as sure as the day is long Google will be challenged in one or more of its core competencies in the future. It will be taken on by a 14-year-old who is sitting at home each night teaching him or herself to code.
The company won’t go away, but it will end up like a Microsoft or an Intel; two stalwarts of computer revolution who have not kept up and shown profit warnings and staff cutting plans only this week in recompense.
Let us consider in the meantime the specifics of the problem the EU Commission has with Google: That the company produced a wildly successful mobile operating system and gave it away for free with one or two caveats.
That’s it: They produced a product for mobile devices that, like its search engine with a 90% market share in Europe, is so damn good that too many people want to use it.
The Android operating system took millions of dollars to produce, and continues to take million each year to update. And Google gives it away on an open license to anyone who wishes to use it.
It now powers over 80% of the mobile devices sold, and is used in vanilla formats by many phone manufacturers as well as in custom formats by companies like Amazon; who use it to power their Kindle tablets. The OS powers phones, tablets, smart televisions and even smart home gadgets and fridges.
The Android platform is enabling some of the most interesting leaps forward in tech that have been happening over the past few years. Google has invested in this platform so that it can get more people to use its services in turn.
It is pretty amazing, if you think about it. As the technological revolution picks up ever more pace, ever more devices you use every day become connected and gain access to features that improve your life.
One of the chief enabling platforms for this revolution has been created at great expense and then been given away openly for others to innovate on, for free.
It’s a quid pro quo: Google created the platform enabling all this innovation; and in return, we gravitate towards using Google more.
The EUpeans reckon that Google making it mandatory for device manufacturers to include some of their apps in each device is anticompetitive.
In other words, thanks for the free OS, Google. Please keep producing that, thanks. But you can’t use it to promote your services.
It’s the mindset at the core of this matter that should ring alarm bells in all our minds. Here in Ireland, as you may note from where we emigrate to, we’re more culturally aligned to the British, the Americans, the Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders et al. There is a completely different way of looking at the world to that of our neighbours on the continent that I’m not sure we often stop to appreciate.
Have you ever paused to wonder why the continentals, who have in living memory seen people shipped off in cattle wagons to their deaths, all think that universal ID cards and residents registering with their local police station or city hall is a good idea? They’re a deeply odd bunch who do not universally share our ideas around personal liberty and free markets.
Their response to foreign companies that win massive market share simply by being better than everyone else is to first try and spend millions to compete with them; and subsequently to launch a myriad of antitrust investigations against them.
Meanwhile, Germany-based Volkswagen has made a settlement in the US this week that will see it buying back cars and providing owners with compensation following the emissions scandal. No penalties have been meted out in Europe thus far. Odd, huh?
We need to be able to do business with the Europeans through a free trade association, such as we had before the EEC morphed into the monster it is today. We do not need to be a deeply integrated part of a federal state in decline that lacks the imagination to try and compete and innovate.
In the meantime, if I was in Google HQ I might consider allowing the EUpeans their room to flourish; by switching off my “anti-competitive” services within the union for a couple of days. Let the Commission figure out what happens when you ban the wheel because you didn’t invent it.
Aaron McKenna is a businessman and columnist for TheJournal.ie. You can follow him on Twitter here.
Google weren’t complaining when EU antitrust investigations forced Microsoft to advertise Chrome, were they?
McKenna believes that: “governments tend to be the most inept participant in any venture.”
While Bill Gates who might know a thing or two about tech ventures understands that:
“Since World War II, U.S.-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area. The private sector is in general inept.”
http://usuncut.com/climate/bill-gates-only-socialism-can-save-us-from-climate-change/
So all of the component technologies which make the Smartphone possible such as GPS, the lithium ion battery, LCDs, touch screens, voice recognition software etc were developed through state funded research. Indeed the foundation technology of the Internet itself (TCP/IP) was not developed by private enterprise. It was created by the U.S Dept of defense and assorted other U.S government agencies and universities. After decades of research and development in the public sector, the powerful new communications technology was following market dogma handed over to the private sector to be exploited for profit. In some cases the state’s intellectual property was stolen and taken into the private sector (see Cisco Systems history for example) and they have been profiting massively from it ever since.
The multinational corporates are hugely parasitic on the public sector as demonstrated in the truly vast bailout if the infinitely greedy and corrupt banking & finance sector since 2008 which has resulted in decimated living standards for billions.
And Google are equally adept bloodsuckers as evidenced in their tax dodging strategies aided and abetted by the Irish capitalist class. Google use the nifty accountancy trick of paying massive intellectual property royalties to their own subsidiary to avoid paying tax.
So in 2014 Google Ireland Ltd paid €12.5 billion largely in royalties to Google Ireland Holdings. Conveniently Google Ireland Holdings, despite the name, is tax resident in Bermuda and so has no tax liability in Ireland. This neat arrangement leaves Google Ireland Ltd (who are tax resident in Ireland) with declared profits of only €168 million on which they paid a very modest €18 million in tax.
Hey Presto! €12,500 million in profits vanished in a puff of smoke and so not liable for taxation anywhere. Just one of the many many ways in which big capital uses it’s political, financial, legal and technical might to enrich itself at the expense of the society and workers which sustain them. Meanwhile the mainstream media and vested interest insiders like McKenna howl their approval at this orgy of greed while society crumbles for the majority working class.
Google Ireland has to pay its parent company for the use of its IP.
Of course it does David, and its parent company has to be tax resident in Bermuda because…
I can’t believe it! I actually agree with something Wally has said!
Anti-trust legislation is important for a number of reasons:
(1) if you let a company grow (or through buyouts of competitors) to a size where they have wiped out most competition (ie a monopoly), we end up with no choice, they stop innovating, stop providing a good service/product, and can raise prices as high as they like without fear of losing business to now, non-existent competition
(2) their buying power with suppliers leads to those businesses getting tied in to contracts which can break the business if the big company threatens to drop them as a supplier. We have seen this practice with large retailers who start to engage in unethical practices like demanding money from the suppliers
(3) the “too big to fail” scenario, most notably with big banks. Corporations which become bigger than the government that attempts to regulate them. The company, on threat of withdrawing jobs from a country can influence employment, consumer and environmental legislation . They can also engage in reckless behaviour, knowing that they will not have to pay when it goes wrong- the taxpayer will have to bail them out, for fear of the consequences to the economy of letting them fail
(4) one very large company can effectively keep startups from entering the market by engaging in predatory practices- thereby stifling the innovative capabilities of those startups
Aaron McKenna, I don’t know where you got your economics degree, but no matter how much Trinity there’s in you, Kim Jong-Un studied in Switzerland and look at him now. Bashar al-Assad trained as a doctor in the UK, look at him now. Your whole rant is based on the assumption that of a company does something for free for the people then they shouldn’t be restricted. First of all, nothing in free on the internet. Google makes their money in advertising, and if these is such thing as free, such as the Journal.ie is because they make their profit on advertising (Did you see that Nescafee Expresso ad in the Journal’s front page? That’s what pays your salary), they just need to attract people into their websites. Big multinationals are in it for the money, not to make the world a better place. Second, haven’t you heard of anti monopoly laws? Just because someone releases “free” stuff doesn’t give them the right to be left alone unconditionally.
Juan I completely agree – someone needs to pull this article because it’s not based on fact.
90% of journalist stories today need to be pulled if you want facts
What a silly man you are, Aaron.
A silly and nasty little neo-con. The grooming of the stupid by the stupid.
Was, exactly is the business Arron the trainee neo-con is involved in, anyone?
Was=What
He is the Head of E-Commerce at the Digital Marketing Institute,
Marina House, 11-13 Clarence St, Dun Laoghaire.
Ta. a neo-con with a vested and undeclared interest. Jesus. What a stereotype.
I’d hazard a guess to say Aaron is a big beneficiary from the misuse of the Jobsbridge program.
Lol what the hell, Google ass licking, one sided article did i just read?
Sure there’s no problem at all with having a monopoly in a market as big as the search engine and mobile phone market… no problem at all.
Sure there’s no harm with Google pushing local business listings further and further down the search result pages with their Google+ local pack and deceptive looking ads that nowadays look more like regular search results.
No problem either with sites like Youtube “bouncing” on mobiles when loading to make you click ads..
Sure who needs competition? Let them do as they please.. That way we can soon have every search result page full of ads instead. I wonder how local businesses would react to that?
I have a relative living near Silicon Valley in California. He pays nearly $80 for capped 6mb broadband. He couldn’t believe it when I told him I pay €35 for 120mb, uncapped. The reason is the companies who put in the lines originally do not have to open them to rivals. This reduced competition leaving the US behind in avg bb speeds. In Ireland and the UK we forced BT and Eir to open their exchanges up thus promoting competition.
Comes as no surprise that Aaron wants things done the US way, as per the Hibernia mantra bull he spews here every Saturday morning.
Even if you agree with the premise of this article, the conclusion does not follow. EU taking action against what it sees as a monopoly does not equate to a “contempt for success”, even if the action is misguided.
Tbh We would have had fibre optic broadband a decade ago if the tools in FF had not of rejected an offer by another company to upgrade the entire country.
Referring to Europeans as “EUpeans” doesn’t say much for Mr McKenna’s objectivity – the resemblance to “EU peons” is hardly co-coincidental.
Could TheJournal find contributors who are a little less juvenile?
You really should emigrate to England, your spiritual home. ..
Interestingly they are having a referendum to get out so maybe somewhere off shore would suit
It is about the way they go about their business. The Apps are unable to be deleted, on by default and in many ways is a system of monopolisation. The EU having a go is no different than when the U.S broke up General Electric and the Oil/Gas companies many moons ago.
Also in the U.S when a brand like Aldi or Lidl hits a certain market size they must sell off, to avoid monopolies. Google is not all sweetness and light, they are systematically taking over markets under the guise of “good for search” no good for Google.
Google is not a search company they are taking over market by market, this puts a further squeeze on the SME sector that is already finding it expensive, to gain attention and traction.
Yes, the EU has had some ridiculous stances, but like with anything today you need to have some extremism just to get your head above the noise. We do not want a single colour world, a single tech search choice, the only way is the Google way that is not free enterprise that is encouraging and breeding a monopoly.
That was a profoundly strange article. The author’s reference to identify cards and cattle trucks was bizarre. I would rather deal with the pluralism of Europe than a frankly totally discredited idealism that unfettered markets deliver a better society. For the time being Ireland is safer in the tent than out of it. Imagine what would happen to worker’s rights it Aaron and his type had free rein?
Unfortunately the E.U. is now run for the benefit of the capitalist elites as the Greek people discovered last year when they suffered a de facto economic coup last year at the hands of the Troika. We in Ireland also suffered at the hands of the ECB when it blackmailed Ireland into the Troika bailout (stitch up) under threat of withdrawing liquidity funding to the Irish banks and collapsing our banking system as confirmed in the Trichet letters. Again this was done to protect the interests of capital (bond holders) at the expense of the majority of the people.
At a minimum we need to leave the currency union which is a monetary trap that imposes a false and destructive household budget constraint on us. Sovereign floating currency issuing states e.g. Britain face no budget constraint within their own currency. The only limitation is the availability of real resources (e.g. energy, labour etc) and the question is how best to manage them to meet the needs of the population.
Even if modern monetary theory could potentially work, I wouldn’t trust the Irish government not to be abuse it, given the government we elected from 1997 onwards used all available fiscal tools to inflate an asset bubble.
Modern Monetary Theory is a misnomer really. It’s not a theory at all but is a functional description of how the monetary system and macro economy actually operates. It’s a verifiable fact for example that the U.K. faces no financial constraints within sterling and never needs to obtain the currency which the state issues from private owners of capital.
You’re correct that MMT in itself will not resolve all of our problems. Britain for example has huge socio economic issues but the bulk of those problems are largely an ideological choice of the ruling elite which operate the economy and monetary system in the interests of the capitalist elite at the expense of the majority working class.
For example, a currency-issuing government like Britain always chooses what the unemployment rate will be in their nation. Therefore unemployment in Britain is a policy choice of the elites which suppresses the wage demands of the working class and so increases the gains to capital.
MMT allows us to understand that mass unemployment, slashed social services, housing bubbles and busts, homeless epidemics, privatization of nation infrastructure etc are not driven by economic necessity. There can never be a shortage of a fiat floating currency to fund the solution to these crises. The only concern is the availability of real resources (land, energy, skilled labour etc)
While socialism explains that this assault on our living standards is a political and ideological choice whereby capitalism harnesses the productive resource of society (particularly labour) in the pursuit of private profit and will therefore never meet the needs of the majority and results in the socio economic havoc we see all around us.
So agreed, I would not trust any FF or FG led government to use the monetary freedom of a floating Punt in the interests of the majority working class. Those parties serve the capitalist elite and have done so since the foundation of the state.
Wally – “.. At a minimum we need to leave the currency union which is a monetary trap that imposes a false and destructive household budget constraint on us…. ”
It’s true we should never have formed *this* kind of half baked currency union.
But we are in it, and it is also integrated with the EU treaties. It would create havoc for all, for months to a year or more, for any Eurozone country to leave the Euro and re-introduce a sovereign currency.
Also, politically, it would be a massive retrograde step to re-divide Europe again into competing fiefdoms. The very basis of the EU project was to make serious conflicts pointless and virtually impossible.
Sure, we are a very long way from Europe really co-operating in the interests of citizens, not just elites. The key is people understanding what money really is (it’s *not* a ‘commodity’) and that the Euro fiat currency could be used to ensure unemployment is largely eliminated. Probably not even 1% have that knowledge, but that could change very rapidly.
And at the same time remove the corruption of wealthy interests running our faux democracies. Which we need to do anyway, if we want any future free of the present neoliberal descent to the bottom.
I think we need to at least *try* to reform the EU and Euro system as a next step. The very fact that Google’s monopoly power is being questioned suggests the EU even now has some ability to consider the public interest. The right way forward is surely to build on that, not take steps backwards.
Yanis Varoufakis is trying to do this, and I think his efforts are worth supporting.
This is just more anti EU claptrap – the big US business’s of this world are huge & are playing fast and loose with our privacy laws and our tax laws and our competition laws and this article blames it all on the EU. We have a decision to make about big American companies and it’s a choice – do we regulate them or do they tell us what to do ! The EU is right to insist on enforcing competition legislation and this article is just another platform for an anti EU rant .
Wait….What was the point o this article? Is it suggesting Europe, as a whole, should invest heavily in trying to compete with the tech multi-nationals mentioned or because we just don’t “get it” they should be allowed unfettered.
To compete is simply not possible. Any tech companies that get rolling out side of the well established are snapped up. It is the way it is done and most are set up in the knowledge that you are preparing a product/service to be sold to a conglomerate as much as to the public.
“They’re a deeply odd bunch who do not universally share our ideas around personal liberty and free markets.”
That has to be one of the dumbest sentences I have read in all your articles…
So much different from our continental neighbours? Are you for real Aaron?
Yea because the Scandis, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese never emigrated to Australia, the Americas and other countries now considered “liberal”.
When Putin’s tanks roll, you’ll rue they day you said we should leave the EU.
The EU hasn`t got an integrated standing army, what are they gonna do, slap a ticket on the tank?
EU and NATO are two completely separate entities.
I THINK IF HE DOES THEN THAT WILL BE BECAUSE OF THE E.U. BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO BY OBAMA…
http://www.thelocal.de/20150923/russia-warns-us-off-nuclear-build-up-in-germany
https://www.rt.com/news/316186-germany-us-nukes-upgrade/
And no one can use nukes like France or the U.K. without permission first from the President of the U.S.
And what is NATO but an organisation for the U.S. to sell weapons to?
Colm have you been at Alois Irlmaier predictions again? We live in a world that is split and no one see it because behind each split there is national propaganda being pumped out in sugar coated bull…
Colm, unless Poostain’s tanks are fully amphibious (chitty chitty bang bang style), I somehow doubt Russian armoured divisions will be holding a victory parade down O’Connell street….
But we in Ireland promote failed politicians and dodge civilv servants too massive earnings and vulgar pensions.
The author , however, is correct in his assertion that Europe does not foster innovation, at least in mobile technology. Europe has historically been very good at certain industries, and continues to be very good in certain industries ( think pharmaceuticals ,domestic appliances and aviation for example, where there are a number of French, German and UK brand leaders) . But not in the technology areas he mentions. There is no European Apple, nor is there likely to be. There may well be a certain level of European envy or insecurity about this, which manifests itself in this somewhat odd EU action.
Hear Hear Thomas Keneely, it is odd. I agree we shouldn’t have big American players stoping the EU enforcement of our own community competition laws , but admit that because of the continental approach we’ll never produce an Apple, a Google . SAP, an originally German ERP software firm & damn good / innovative at what it does has completely replatformed from the DAX to the NSDAQ, CEO now based in New York….
Does the journal pay this nutter?
this guy has also links to the TUV in the north btw for your information.
The EU hasn’t published it’s audited accounts in 20 years.
The European Court of Auditors independently audits the budget every single year. Every. Single. Year.
The EU Commission aims for an error rate <2%. This target has yet to be met. This is seized on this while failing to mention two very important facts:
(a) This is a far more stringent audit target and process than the member states themselves sign up to.
(b) The vast majority of these errors are made by the individual member states themselves when it comes to managing the money.
So the EU aims high and gets criticised for not reaching those targets, even though the reason is incompetence by the member states themselves? How does this make any logical sense?
The since it makes is in illustrating how unwieldy, or how out of touch it is in regards to its own capabilities it is. Hence the self adulation you see when any EU spokesman get us to do a PR sound bite.
I’m sorry Martin, I can’t see the logical connection between failing to meet stringent audit standards that its member states don’t even try to meet, and being “out of touch”.
Of all the criticisms of the EU (and there many legitimate ones) this is one of the absolute weakest.
The EU accounts myth needs to die. It has no place in any discussion where facts are valued.
Facts have no place in a journal discussion
The author does know that Android is a linux based operating system which was created for free use by any who want it, and are even allowed to edit it for themselves.
If google released their version for a price not only would it be terrible publicity for them but would quickly be replaced by open source versions.
So google offering it for free is not unexpected.
Europe has many internet research divisions, but mainly looking into the next major phase of the internet known as ‘The Internet of Things’. Tens of thousands of software engineers are sought to be recruited.
It seems to me the author is focusing on a relatively small market section.
Also, almost every car manufacturer is researching driverless cars. And if you will be driving in Europe, it will most likely be using the new European GPS satellites which are more accurate than those of the US military.
I request the author to do more research before making large accusations against the EU. There are some faults with regard to it, but not what he mentions.
OUT OUT OUT EU blood sucking vampiric monster that needs beheading
Are you referring to the EU or Google (could be either)
Ha yes but I def mean the One world super state of the EU bringing us closer to their globalist one world new world order wet dream
so you love multinational corporate companies ….
I get it
and US politicians be they Republican / Democrat support the existence of the EU
EU destroying Europe through its puppet leaders who seem entranced by it even if it means shafting their own people
Stop reading the daily mail and try to think independently
Europe having a go at Google seems theres a want in Brussels to wreck success, if they control it business, someway or another, they wrecked lreland by calling in the money to soon for the bond holders .
” they wrecked lreland by calling in the money to soon for the bond holders .”
Ireland did a fine job wrecking itself. It isn’t “Europe” who told us to unilaterally bail out our banks without consulting anyone. All while boasting about the “cheapest bank bailout in the world”.
Some how remember the mutterings from an EU institution that a bomb would go off if bondholders weren’t bailed, usual tactics played out on Greece too burry it debt till it has no choice..
The EU’s main failing was to let Greece in in the first place with cooked books. Of course any EU oversight or scrutiny of a member state’s budget is seen as an invasion of sovereignty and “bullying” by many. So I guess they can’t win.
“Some how remember the mutterings from an EU institution that a bomb would go off if bondholders weren’t bailed”
Alas I fear “some” are misremembering and confusing the unilateral bailout in 2008, with the pressure applied from that particular “EU Institution” in *2010* to pay off the *remaining* bondholders. This was after we’d happily shelled out 2/3 of the bailout cost, our economy was going down in flames and the ECB was extending €100 billion worth of liquidity to our banks through its ELA programme.
To be fair the problem existed due to the distortion of asset value when-the euro went live and the opening of credit lines based on distorted asset values.
Or shall we blame it on the greed of the Irish people.
The euro has in some regards has been a slight success but in other areas it has been an unmitigated disaster especially for ireland.
That little thing called currency will be the down fall of the human race in a hundred years. We’re all ready half way there with climate change.
“We do not need to be a deeply integrated part of a federal state in decline that lacks the imagination to try and compete and innovate.”
The EU doesn’t resemble a federal state, or a collection of federal states. This is just more noise in a debate that already has a frighteningly low signal-to-noise ratio.
Does MCKenna actually believe what he writes?
I get the feeling (even when I agree with him) that his articles exist, in large part, to generate traffic and tbf they do their job.
Isn’t this the same tool who thinks we should pay for our water twice?
Aaron has missed the first rule of ‘free’ software: “If it’s free, then you’re the product.”
My 2 cents on this is that globalisation has destroyed any sense of CSR corporate social responsibility because companies no longer have to worry about the community in which they operate as they can now sell globally with ease. In the past if a company didn’t pay it’s taxes and didn’t contribute to society it would be run out of town. Now the couldn’t care less about the community/country in which they operate and as a result don’t feel they need to pay taxes and contribute. Technology and materialism has morphed us from citizens with the collectives interest at heart to a very greedy society that only cares about what they can get. America who are effectively the world police and who whether you like them or not set the agenda have ceded all power to the corporate elite by compromising their politicans and the result is the top 1% have flourished while the other 99% desperately try to stay in the rat race and between all the distractions that the modern world throws at us have no real time or energy to comprehend what is happening. For the record Google are only where they are because they were allowed us the internet for free. They didn’t create that. Companies are like people the more successful they become the bigger their ego gets. Just play by the rules Google and stop crying about it. They also use all our data to make money. They never paid us for that. I’ve no time for whining tax cheats
Declan Doyle – I’m not impressed by the article & the quality of the writing either, it has however created an Interesting debate in the comments section here, however the irony of you calling the author a ‘nasty little neo-con’ is not lost on me, labelling is small minded Irish Mirror stuff or ‘The Star’ mentality isn’t it?
“Have you ever paused to wonder why the continentals, who have in living memory seen people shipped off in cattle wagons to their deaths, all think that universal ID cards and residents registering with their local police station or city hall is a good idea? They’re a deeply odd bunch who do not universally share our ideas around personal liberty and free markets.”
Aaron pretty much nails it on the head here when contrasting our attitudes to personal liberty, free speech and the concept of innocent until proven guilty, vs the almost universal application of Napoleonic code & highly centralised authoritarianism that characterises the EUSSRians
If they own it then why can’t they promote themselves???
I’m living in Germany for 5yrs and I agree with the writers assessment of us being different to continentals. Everyday I hear or see something in this country that I simply can’t understand or comprehend. Laws or rules that baffle me. I am not alone on this. I know a large expat community from Ireland or UK who struggle with European behaviour’s, mannerisms and attitudes. A simple task at home can here seem like a minefield of obstacles and challenges. I claim to be no expert on the writers overall view but he is 100% right that we think much more like other English speaking nations than our European half cousins. Before anyone criticises me I realise I’m the square block trying to fit into the round hole. I’ve discussed this and also learnt to accept things here are different and I’m the one who should adapt. Eventually I couldn’t adapt anymore so I’m moving home :)
Darren
As human beings, we are really not different enough to notice in what drives us and how we respond.
So what you are calling ‘cultural differences’ are simply the result of mass media manipulation run along nationalistic lines.
What we should really all do, is to try and think past the propaganda veil and see how society is actually being run, and by what interests.
Google, are those the ones who work for the NSA in the U.S.?
Actually, if Google, Faecesbook et al don’t like operating in Europe, they coukd just fukkkk off back to the US and do their thing there. The point is, they won’t do that because in order to be so ‘successful’ and so obscenely weathy they MUST operate in Europe for tax reasons etc and also to avail of the embedded language capabilities that we take for granted in Europe as one of the unwelcome side-effects of originating from the Anglophone nations , is an almost pathological inability to learn other languages.
P.S.
There might be a bright side to Brexit
Brexit might (at last) wake up the Scottish to see how much the English look down on them.
__ __.__ _________ / \ / \ |__ _____\_____ \ \ \/\/ / | \\__ \ / __/ \ /| Y \/ __ \| | \__/\ / |___| (____ /___| \/ \/ \/
Oops…sorry.
England has the lowest per-capita GDP in Northern Europe.
After 40 years years of North Sea Oil !!!
Good riddance from the EU England.
Nobody in Europe will miss you England.
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