Re:Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral
by fvdessen on Wednesday February 28, 2024 @08:25AM
(#39537555)
Regulations are not a problem, it's the lack of a big common market. Expanding from let's say Belgium to Germany is almost as difficult as expanding to the USA. That's why the two countries that have a big tech scenes (US/China) are the ones that have big unified markets.
Re:Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral
by zeroCalories on Wednesday February 28, 2024 @12:24PM
(#39541016)
Regulation is what makes that hard.
Re:Europe probes Microsoft's €15M stake in AI upstart Mistral
by ljm on Wednesday February 28, 2024 @04:00PM
(#39543351)
Not really. Regulation serves the interest of the consumer, rather than the kind of deregulation that serves the interest of the shareholder.
In the US you build your app and everything is in English. You can launch that across all of the states as-is.
In Europe (not even the EU specifically) you’re gonna need i18n, particularly with B2B. If you want to launch in Germany, for example, you’ll be expected to provide an interface in German. You can’t presume everyone speaks English, because they don’t. Expect multilingual support too.
Then you have payment. Different countries have different cultural norms, so what people are used to using in the Netherlands is unlikely to be supported generically elsewhere. It’s not gonna be enough to just support Stripe and card payments or PayPal for B2C.
Regulation doesn’t mandate any of this. It’s effectively conducting business internationally.
It’s not just investment capital which usually grows out of exits but also the whole ecosystem of services and consultants and experts and law firms specializing in the sector. All of it.
The EU doesn’t have enough routes to exit due to both regulation and a way more conservative business climate. As a result you don’t get a big tech ecosystem and most exits result in the whole thing being pulled into the US orbit.