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A comment on Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed EU copyright law. Parent comment

Re:Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed ... by pmontra on Wednesday July 04, 2018 @06:45PM (#17459832)
As a single European datapoint: I know Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Dropbox, AirBnB and used all of them except AirBnB. I never used any of Asos, Zalando, Flixbus, Klarna, Xing, Spotify, Auto1. I know Flixbus and Spotify. I probably heard about Zalando. Asos, Xing, Klarna, Auto1 are totally new to me. I googled them and actually I knew Xing and forgot it, it's hard to compete with LinkedIn. Klarna moved to Columbus, Ohio.
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Re:Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed ... by ivan_gammel on Wednesday July 04, 2018 @11:26PM (#17460674)
I'm not surprised people on HN don't know popular fashion brands or German used-car matketplaces, but if you are not sure they are big, check their revenues. Zalando is bigger than AirBnB or Instagram, Auto1 and Asos earn more than Dropbox. Brand recognition is not the only sign of success.
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Re:Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed ... by eyko on Wednesday July 04, 2018 @11:39PM (#17460715)
ASOS is my Amazon for cheap fashion. I've heard of Zalando (and have used them once) but they sort of compete for the same audience, and I just gravitate to what I'm used to.

I don't think Google could've been built in Europe, but as a European I certainly would love more European products in tech: one advantage is that Europeans think in localisation by default, and some American products start our being very USA centric.

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Re:Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed ... by ivan_gammel on Wednesday July 04, 2018 @11:50PM (#17460742)
Yandex is quite successful despite not being American, so a local search engine business in Western Europe would not be impossible (www and mp3 are European inventions, so could be the PageRank algorithm). Europe is more open to competition and American rivals usually have much more money for a blitzkrieg. It's more like competition of financial markets, than technology or business model.
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Re:Spanish Wikipedia also shuts down in protest at proposed ... by krfsm on Thursday July 05, 2018 @05:01AM (#17461808)
Klarna Inc. is a subsidiary. The parent company is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.
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