The UK need to maintain adequacy with the EU in relation to GDPR. If it were to lose that it would be a nightmare for all businesses who operate internationally. Hard to update legislation much when you need to please the EU on the side.
Comment on Why US tech giants are threatening to quit the UK
mannycalavera@feddit.uk 1 year ago
“There’s a clear message here - the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business than the United Kingdom,” raged chief executive Brad Smith. The CMA has since re-opened negotiations with Microsoft.
This is especially damning because the EU is also introducing strict rules in the same vein - but it is collectively a much larger and therefore more valuable market.
Tricky one this. The UK is making its own decisions regarding regulations in this sector no doubt spurred on by belief in “Brexit freedoms” and it just so happens that they don’t align with the deregulation that US tech companies want. They also coincidentally look a lot like the regulation the EU is pushing through but minus the market share. Not exactly a win win situation.
Maybe the lesson here is that smaller states / markets need fewer regulations to be competitive? Or perhaps the opposite: larger states / markets can afford to apply more regulation. The UK has opted to select the worst of both options: smaller market higher regulations.
seacocker@lemmy.world 1 year ago
stevecrox@kbin.social 1 year ago
From a business perspective, you need to assess the impact of the regulation on your profitabiity and then consider if investing business funds elsewhere would lead to greater profitability.
WhatsApp have a single product and have market dominance due to first mover advantage (e.g. everyone is on WhatsApp, so everyone uses WhatsApp). Due to the nature of the business pulling out doesn't make sense unless they only have a limited development team and having them work on UK legal requirements prevents them working on EU requirements, however they are largely similar...
Many 'BigTech' products were developed by small teams, the biggest barrier for entering the market isn't technology but user adoption (KBin, Mastodon, PeerTube & Lemmy demonstrate this, all were developed by 1-2 people in their spare time).
So a 'BigTech' company exiting would be giving up the market in that country and any profit and creating an opportunity for a new small company to grow and eventually compete with them. For example is Facebook pulled out, I'm guessing people would switch to NextDoor.
The US Technology sector is filled with Libretarians who get upset at the idea of regulation. I'm not sure Shareholders/Venture Capitalists would react well to them being irrational.