The GDPR being meant to spite Google (rather than, you know, protecting privacy) is an unfounded conspiracy theory. Claiming the EU tried to support a US company by harming its (European) competition doesn't even deserve that level.
Apparently those supporting GDPR would rather have the EU fine Google than to ensure small businesses can survive and be productive with technology, even when the fine to Google is a small amount compared to how much Google makes in the EU. Makes perfect sense, no?
I’ve had discussions with people working in ads at Google that are basically, “so GDPR is the EU’s attempt to kill off all our competition and presently entrench us in the marketplace.”
Though the gdpr doesn't really do that; see one-stop-shop and all. It's transparently aimed at American companies.
NB: I don't necessarily disagree with the EU deciding to break Google and FB's business models; but pretending that's not what is happening is silly. It would have been helpful if FB hadn't basically told EU privacy regulators to DIAF.
Don't know why you are downvoted. This outcome was obvious from the beginning. Europe’s GDPR enforcers do not have the capacity to investigate Big Tech, just small fishes.
Google and Facebook love the GDPR, they have the resources and lawyer to circumvent the spirit of the GDPR. Their smaller concurrents do not.
I think the EU government would be in more trouble than either Google or Facebook if both companies decided to stop servicing all EU citizens. I think the only reason big companies aren't threatening that is because GDPR gives them a massive advantage over small businesses and basically permanently solidifies their positions on top of the tech world in those countries.
EU has a GDPR problem. GDPR treats common people like unthinking automatons, unable to exercise agency when it comes to data privacy online. If I think that Google is collecting too much data (I can read their terms, or read articles other people write about the terms), I will stop using Google's services. It's only because the calculus returns a net positive for me that I continue.
If EU really cares about human rights, they should remove GDPR and embark upon an awareness campaign. Tell people that the only way to pay for free online services is with their private data. If people still opt to do that, it's up to them.
You think GDPR is good? It entrenches the monopolies of the Googles and makes it harder for a startup in a garage in Berlin.
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I am sure there are some people who clearly enjoy pressing on the cookie popups when they travel to Europe like popping zits. Maybe it is the Eurocrats in Brussels.
I'm in europe and I agree to a certain extent. There are also european representatives that genuinely push for privacy, but I consider the GDPR a joke in its implementation by each local countries institutions, which everyone turns a blind eye toward, unless that local institution can use the GDPR as an excuse to not do something, which they take whenever they can. And then the EU turns around and uses the same regulations to go after Meta or Google Analytics. I'm way more worried that public employees in random government entities can look me up willy nilly than Facebook knowing I bought a pencil on Amazon.
Europe has had data protection laws long before Facebook and Google we’re a thing. The concept of GDPR wasn’t invented because the EU were angry at American companies; it exists because there is a need for it. Just as previous incarnations of data protection laws existed in the EU before the web was a thing too.
Also I resent being told that anyone who works in tech gets their salary from eroding peoples privacy. I can guarantee you that hasn’t been the case for any of the jobs I’ve had in my career.
While I agree with other commenters that this is kind of hypocritical on its face, there is a strongman interpretation that’s more generous. It would probably go something more like this:
The US crafts regulations that work with businesses while the EU crafts them and is OK to sacrifice businesses. Additionally, the EU crafts regulations that can accomplish nothing but increase costs and reduce quality without helping the end goal. For example, all the cookie banners that have pervaded the internet. They don’t actually help reduce tracking, they make the web less usable, and they’ve made compliance more complicated, and building a website is more expensive as you have to add these banners. Sure GDPR has strengths but the cookie aspect is a miss. In fact, the EU is as easily bamboozled as the US considering that Google had a huge hand in shaping GDPR legislation.
I 'm all for the EU trying to enact protectionist measures against the US invaders, but I'd rather they would do it in a straightforward, china-firewall way, than with these firework-like regulations that don't benefit the EU at all y (I mean, let's admit it after 20 years, EU just can't compete). On the one hand, GDPR has not reduced my ad revenue (Nor google's), despite not having tracked ads (which reinforces my belief that tracking is marketed as way more effective than it is). Now, this directive will not deprive Google of any revenue, while it will actively hurt the eu publishers big time (which google will drop).
It was pretty clever of the EU to pass GDPR, as it provides them with a continuous revenue stream of fines from American companies, while being effectively impossible to comply with. I worked at a company that completely rewrote their policies and stack to comply and they still get hit with fines.
As someone from the EU, with no money or anuthing coming in from the UK, why would I even care about this?
The GDPR has teeth only because the EU is big enough to make companies care. It is a watered down version from some privacy rights compared to the old laws in my country. But the old laws were ignorde by US tech because why wouldn't they.
So as the UK left the EU, they are now a small country in the computer world. I'll ignore its laws just as I ignore Afghan laws requiring women to stay at home or whatever country's laws to forbif gays from existing.
Exactly this is the reason. Google and Facebook as companies based in USA are blatantly ignoring/stepping over/workarounding the GDPR while EU based companies follow the law. And exactly due to EU tracking businesses the EU commission (and they are complaining) will be forced to do something about it. Which is actually great.
Anyway, lowering profit for EU based tracking/ads businesses while Google and FB prosper, doesn't mean that the GDPR is bad. It just means that Google and FB are criminal enterprises.
Between the broad nature of the GDPR and now this, it seems like the EU is really just pursuing legislation that disproportionately affects foreign tech companies and making up reasons as they go. Obviously that's entirely conjecture but it's hard to take the justifications for these measures at face value when EU specific scandals like the Volkswagen fiasco result in slaps on the wrist by comparison.
Oh, no doubt. They've 100% been gambling that they could get away with it. The GDPR has deviated increasingly from what their leadership assumed would be a reasonable position (it continues to drift from the American centroid belief on who owns what data; for Americans, the notion that you can use other people's computers without them keeping records of how you used their computers is kinda weird, and Americans lack the direct historical experience to have the kinds of concerns about mass-citizen-tracking that Europe does).
My prediction is that as things move forward, they're going to find it isn't worth their money to offer Analytics for European customers if the GDPR continues to make that more onerous (especially since the monetization story of Analytics for Google is so threadbare) and just offer it for customers in other countries while Europe does its own thing. Win-win.
Why do Americans always read backroom politics into everything.
How does the GDPR help EU tech companies? I hope you're not about to tell me it's a ploy to bundle up resources for compliance in US companies or it levels the ground for the EU to be able to compete somehow. It caused enough headaches for us too.
Sometimes a good thing is just a good thing. The US supposedly was a country that had laws made without sinister corporatism at work at one point too.
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