Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
Get Platformonomics Updates By Email
Fun week!
News
An Even More Nuclear-Powered Cloud
Previous:
EU Insanity: Thierry’s Termination Tizzy
Failed French “tech” executive and aspiring global hall monitor Thierry Breton is now a former Superpower of Cheese busybody.
But once an over-reaching (and humorless) European regulator who likes to meddle beyond his jurisdiction, always an over-reaching (and humorless) European-regulator:
Previous:
EU Insanity: Experts Agree, EU Insanity: EU Goes Too Far, Even for EU, Move Fast and Regulate Things: Welcome to the Morning After, Move Fast and Regulate Things (You Don’t Understand), When “Move Fast and Regulate Things” Breaks Down, AI Regulation: Move Fast and Regulate Things, EU Insanity: Regulating Blue Checks, EU Tweets While Ukraine Burns, EU Insanity: AI Regulatory Suicide, EU Insanity: Mistral Edition, The EU Will Continue to Fiddle While Rome Burns, EU Insanity: AI Energy Suicide, EU Insanity: AI Energy Suicide (Part Deux)
Apple Wins Another EU “Struggle Session”
The EU Digital Markets Act is an open-ended excuse to rummage around US Big Tech companies, finding endless new “illegal” behaviors, as Eurocrats indulge their product management fantasies.
These struggle sessions will continue until Europe has a tech industry (i.e. don’t hold your breath) even as the beleaguered continent ignores its existential economic, energy and geopolitical challenges.
Google Also Gets EU “Struggle Session”
At least they don’t have a lot of other regulatory and judicial issues on their plate…
Previous:
Antitrust Incoherence: Breaking Up Google, Antitrust Incoherence: Google Verdict,
Antitrust Incoherence: Competitive Harassment Edition, Antitrust Incoherence: Don’t Forget Microsoft, 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
Not Available in Europe: Coming Soon to a Continent Near You
The emerging response to EU insanity is simply not to bring your most advanced technology to Europe. The beauty of this strategy is you don’t have to worry about losing customers to local competitors. It will be amusing when the Eurocrats find themselves ordering (begging really) companies to bring to Europe technologies they’ve tried so hard to outlaw.
EU fights cultural imperialism in order to ensure their their culture is excluded from the frontier models. Smart!
“There’s an art to this kind of horseshit, and Benioff is its Michelangelo”
It is festival season, as people escape their ordinary lives to seek creativity, inspiration and spiritual growth with a like-minded community. Burning Man. Austin City Limits. Dreamforce.
Your annual refresher about the spectacle that is Dreamforce:
This year, at “the largest and most magical AI event ever”, Will.i.am and Jane Goodall share their insights about the future of AI!
Benioff is back to talking a lot of smack about Microsoft. He must know he’s not going to win a technology battle with anyone, so he’s focused on what is most important to him: defending Salesforce’s mascot army against a potentially resurgent Clippy.
Previous:
The Hard Thing About “Hard Pivots”, Thought Leadership (in Mascots), Salesforce Rallies Its Deep Bench of AI Experts (and Cartoon Characters), Bluster, Bombast and Bullshit: Just Another Day at Salesforce, Salesforce’s Shamelessness is Staggering, Salesforce Gonna Salesforce, The Spectacle that is Dreamforce, Antitrust Incoherence: Don’t Forget Microsoft
Nothing to re:Invent?
One interpretation is they’re STILL only three steps into the AI ultramarathon, and want to manage media accordingly. Not the move of a company about to pull ahead of the pack.
Previous:
Still No Compression Algorithm for Experience, 326 Features into a 10k Race, Existential Corner: How Many Steps into the 10K are We?, Team Primitives: What Sayest Thou?, Amazon Desperately Seeks Compression Algorithm for Experience, Most Greatest AI Company in Entire Universe Makes Major Strategy Pivot, SEC Embraces Platformonomics ClownWatch™, Warns Amazon and IBM, The AWS Generative AI Soap Opera, The Amazon AI Inferiority Complex
Living in a Glass House: Pet Bereavement Accommodations Edition
They really do want to be a tech company! What better way to show that than to have absurd benefits even Google doesn’t have?
But can’t a tech team just implement trigger warnings in the database? (that’s two SQL jokes in a row)
Previous:
Living in a Glass House: It’s a Union Shop, Living in a Glass House: Inflation Numbers, Existential Corner: What is the New York Times? Living in a Glass House: The New York Times On Tech, Living in a Glass House: What is the New York Times?, Dying in Plain Sight, Aspiring Technology Company Neither Interested in Technology Nor Understands Technology
Larry the Lawnmower
Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn – you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think “oh, the lawnmower hates me” – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.
— Bryan Cantrill (via Simon Willison)
Previous:
Oracle’s Data Center Difficulties: FY25 Q1,
Oracle’s Data Center Difficulties, Oracle Still Can’t Build Data Centers, Why Can’t Oracle Build Data Centers?, Follow the CAPEX: The Clown Car Race Checkered Flag, Pollyanna Showdown, Follow the CAPEX: The Clown Car Race Checkered Flag, Follow the CAPEX: Cloud Table Stakes 2023 Retrospective, “Bronny” Ellison Named Chairman, CEO of Paramount, Filling Big Shoes
The IBM Patent Troll is Back
You can see how IBM could think their “busloads of manual labor” business model would read on Farmville.
