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Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by tingol on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:01AM (#17132448)
But there's no way to way to fight back for Europe unless EU countries get even more homogeneous laws concerning running a multi-national (basically any online) business.

It's easy in the US because they have a large, wealthy and boundary free market with almost no access cost beyond marketing.

Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by akie on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:21AM (#17132553)
Also, they all speak the same language. That's huge.
Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by rusk on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @05:27AM (#17132586)
Pretty much everyone in Europe that operates in any kind of a pan-European business space speaks English. Kind of ironic these days really ...
Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by pjmlp on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @08:07AM (#17133419)
Additionally all young Europeans that are used to travel across Europe speak fluently three languages on average.

English, their mother tongue and the language of the country where they are actually living on.

A few speak even more.

Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by usrusr on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @08:01AM (#17133372)
B2C is still wildly localized. In the earliest days of the commercial web (and before), this wasn't the case and it felt like a truly level playing field (the general lack of transactions involving the real world fulfillment certainly helped as well).

Only when the giants started translating their offerings to reach an even wider audience in non-anglophone countries did end users start to expect a web in their home language and the potential audience of non-anglophone-based companies dropped (because they usually address their home language first).

Now the most inhibiting cost of multi-language offerings is usually not the act of translation itself, but the resulting quality which is rarely high.

Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by Drakim on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @07:16AM (#17133131)
Is it? The same could be said for Americans speaking an European language.
Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by rusk on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @07:36AM (#17133240)
I just mean with Brexit and all ... if the English leave, English will be deprecated as an official language, yet it will still be the lingua franca of European Business. It's just a kind of a funny, and slightly ironic situation I think.

EDIT: I think actually it speaks very much to how european unity is about so much more than just the EU. By extension how culture and national identity is about so much more than what the Westphalian paradigm provides.

Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by Rattled on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @09:13AM (#17133857)
It is ironic, but there are still a couple of member states that rely on English. I think it's unlikely to be deprecated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_Brexit_on_the_Euro...
Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by dkns on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @11:17AM (#17134817)
UK leaving EU doesn't mean it's leaving Europe. It still is and will be a huge business partner, travel destination etc. so I seriously doubt English will deprecate as an official language.
Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by rusk on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @11:25AM (#17134875)
It'll never happen ...
Re:Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today by Fnoord on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @10:22AM (#17134394)
> if the English leave

The Brits.