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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Who Should Buy Chrome?
Lots of names getting thrown around as potential buyers: Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Perplexity, DuckDuckGo, Bravo, Opera, Firefox, Broadcom, and more.
But the answer is obvious: The European Union should buy Chrome.
There is no better path for the Cookie Consent Continent to realize its dream of cementing cookie management as the highest form of human endeavor. They could rebrand it ChromEU (presumably with some kind of French pronunciation).
Chrome has 3.45 billion users, which would give the Superpower of Cheese a global technology footprint dwarfing the existing, aggregate presence of all European technology (they could rewrite the browser in ABAP to get the Germans on board). More importantly, Chrome would give the EU its much-coveted platform to regulate globally. Instead of their current strategy of random edicts and fines, they would step into the realm of “code as law”.
The EU has plenty of money to buy Chrome, with over 8 billion Euros in fines from Google alone.
Most importantly, at a time when the EU faces deep existential challenges and Mario Draghi is imploring Europe to become digitally competitive, this is an opportunity for the EU to take a big step up the technology value chain. Today, the EU plays monomaniacal feature PM, a role where you don’t have to make tradeoffs or worry about the impact of your narrow product decisions (i.e. regulatory edicts) on overall product viability. By taking product ownership, the EU can demonstrate they have the end-to-end product chops to compete on the global stage. The Eurocrats all believe they are the equals of Big Tech — this is their chance to show it.
(Note that ChromEU doesn’t have an address bar. The EU goal is to reduce the browser experience to its most vital essence: the cookie consent dialog. This also lets the EU deprecate the rendering engine, which frankly would be a lot of work).
Previous:
Existential Corner: The European Union, EU Insanity: Thierry’s Termination Tizzy, 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), The European Union is STILL an Advanced Persistent Threat, BREAKING: European Union Designated an Advanced Persistent Threat
NVIDIA Q3 Customers
I’ve lost track of who is who.
Winnie-the-Pooh Has Schizophrenia
West Taiwan’s General Secretary and President-for-Life (seen above) pleads to uphold the international order (never mind the time he spends trying to tear it down):
The primary objective for Xi Jinping during two global summits in South America was apparently to push for fewer trade barriers so he can focus on reviving China’s economy. In more than a dozen meetings with world leaders over the span of a week, the Chinese premier repeatedly sought to win assurances that nations would uphold the international free trade system. But his pleas may have been drowned out by the actions of others. His pitch came as Donald Trump prepares to turbocharge the trade war he started six years ago with 60% tariffs on Chinese goods. And Xi’s case also wasn’t helped by his ally Vladimir Putin, who shook markets by removing some guardrails on the use of nuclear weapons in his war on Ukraine. “Xi’s message is that China supports economic globalization and the current international order while the US is a disruptor that will damage the world economy,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
China’s internal imbalance between consumption and investment is the world’s biggest problem. Can this problem be solved from afar or are we in for another round of beggar-thy-neighbor?
Previous:
Heresies, Vexing Questions, and Unsolicited Advice, Don’t Lecture Winnie-the-Pooh on Economics, One, Two, Three, Four: We Want a Meme War, Xi Jinping Thought on Wall Street Running Dogs, The Perils of Working for a Cult of Personality, Press Releases We’d Like to See, Best Nickname for Emmanuel Macron, Winnie-the-Pooh: Lover of Honey, Champion of Freedom, Missing the (Bamboo) Forest for the (Apple) Trees
The Sarah Silverman Conundrum
Silverman is one of many rent-seekers arguing copyright law clearly anticipates they should be paid if an LLM vectorizes their prose. And paid a lot. I’ve resisted the urge to weigh in with 6,000 words on the absurdity of this argument (aspiring tech company, cookie colossus and puzzle purveyor The New York Times is, of course, making that argument too).
But there is a bigger problem with Silverman’s lawsuit:
1.) ChatGPT is notoriously unfunny.
2.) A comedienne complains ChatGPT is unduly influenced by her book
Is ChatGPT not funny because it read Silverman’s book? Or was it not influenced by her (funny?) book?
Live stream the cross examination!
