Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
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The EU continues to embarrass itself at every opportunity.
News
Not Available in Europe: Apple Edition
I really expected “tech companies withholding the latest and greatest from Europe” becoming a trend (n > 1) would take more than a week. Unintended consequences are a thing, especially if you’re producing insane, useless, and/or uninformed regulation.
The EU’s response suggests they are petty authoritarians who know they lack popular support while telling the regulated it is a no-win game:
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EU Reasserts Status as an Advanced Persistent Threat
The EU commissioners should go first and model the encyption-free life for the rest of us.
Antitrust Incoherence: Don’t Forget Microsoft
To the list of incoherent antitrust doctrines, add “bailing out Benioff’s bad buys”. I guess it is just another form of “Big is Bad”.
Just imagine if Salesforce was actually a software company that could integrate its many acquisitions…
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Antitrust Incoherence: Isn’t Market Division Illegal?, Antitrust Incoherence: Roomba Aftermath Edition, Antitrust Incoherence: Apple Edition, Antitrust Incoherence: Spotify Edition, Antitrust Incoherence: Roomba Edition, The Incoherence Doctrine: The FTC Strikes Again, A New Antitrust Doctrine, The DOJ Play at Home Game
Volkswagen Announces Plan to Create Software: Chapter 87
German car companies and software are matter and anti-matter.
EU Considering Space Markets Act?
Another market where sweeping regulation seems like the only way for the superpower of cheese to ensure “fair and open” markets.
Powerful Ammunition for Gen AI Skeptics
Never a good omen if McKinsey is advocating something…
Dying in Plain Sight
Interesting piece on the Washington Post’s decline. Beyond the media personality inside baseball, it is interesting in multiple dimensions:
- Media decline is always someone else’s fault, in this case laid at the (absentee) doorstep of Jeff Bezos.
- The media suffers no doubts telling others how to run their businesses, but can’t begin to run their own.
- Another example of a very successful entrepreneur not using the playbook that made them successful in their other endeavors (and it isn’t the only Jeff Bezos example — see also Blue Origin).
- Further evidence that vanity media purchases are really not worth the trouble.
- New York Times looks good by comparison (and keeps pushing the “we are a tech company” narrative). The rest of the media should probably be more concerned about competing with the Times than shaking down social media for cash.
The Supreme Court has Ruled
Thin-skinned fractional CEO Elon Musk is no doubt planning to appeal.
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Elon Musk Threatens to Ban Oracle?,
Who’s Getting the GPUs? Elon Shell Game Edition, Platformonomics ClownWatch™: Tesla, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon Musk Part II, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon/Twitter, Company Killed By Its Customers, Elon Cashes in All the Trust He’s Banked with Twitter, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 147, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 148, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 149
Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Microsoft Bing Part II
Why is Microsoft even operating services in West Taiwan? There is no way it is a successful business (and if it ever did become successful, success would create a whole new set of problems). Worse, it requires illiberal compromises and embarrassing kowtowing. And somehow the censorship in West Taiwan keeps bleeding over to the rest of the world. To what end?
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Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Microsoft Bing, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Eric Adams, Elon Musk Part II, The Donald, Jeff Yass, Microsoft Bing, DC Lobbyists Part III, Hollywood, DC Lobbyists Part II, NBA, Warner Bros. Discovery, Germany, DC Lobbyists, Elon/Twitter, The Hugo Awards, Harvard University, Wall Street, Apple
Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Edinburgh
What is this Scottish independence people keep talking about?
