> In 2024, Google ran a set of tests of user interest in news content in Denmark and several other countries, concluding that removing such content had “no measurable impact” on search ad revenue. Those findings — along with the testing itself — have come under harsh criticism from Danish lawmakers.
I'm not really sure what Denmark is complaining about? It sounds like Google decided that removing Danish media and news from their services would have no impact on their finances whatsoever, therefore they are firm on their negotiating position since it's basically "take it or leave it".
And Denmark is also somehow trying to force Google to list and index their media, and at their price.
Because "business" isn't just "business" in Denmark and many other countries. Journalism for example, isn't just about the financial bottom-line, journalism has a societal role, and also the move could be seen as trying to avoid paying publishers under EU rules designed to support a free press.
I think a lot of friction between businesses and countries in Europe can be better understood if we better understood the difference in how countries treat things like "business" and other stuff. I understand in the US it's different, money basically rules, you can fire people whenever you want and so on, but in many places in the world, people have a different relationship to businesses, it's not just about money there.
Particularly when it comes to journalism. From reading news from Denmark about it, politicians been repeatedly argued that Google's framing reduces journalism to a revenue input, ignoring its democratic function.
If journalism really weren't just about the financial bottom line in Denmark, then why are they quibbling over what Google will pay them at all? It sounds like they'll be happy with just Google listing and driving traffic to their content for free.
You're missing the point. I speak American so I can translate. He's basically saying journalism is about National Security. It needs to be done correctly to a high level at all costs, much like education. Google (Silicon Valley) is messing with it.
Hmm, they're not 'messing with' journalism or national security. They just don't care enough to index denmark journalism. I'm also not sure how denmark can strongarm google et. al. into doing anything at all. Is this incorrect, is there some sort of path forward here for denmark to get what they want?
This does not support freedom of the press. This policy is essentially a tax on web indexers (in practice, Google) that is paid directly to the news companies. This means that they are entirely dependent on government authority for their revenue, which is the opposite of freedom of the press. On top of that, only companies that are defined as "news outlets" by the government are eligible for forced indexing and payment. So not only is the government setting itself up as the revenue source, but it gets to choose who gets the money.
lol only on this forum can you construe the government regulating big tech as an anti freedom stance.
Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon are society destroying companies. They are Walmart times a trillion. Any country that is not directly taxing these wildly profitable companies are leaving free money on the table.
The criticism was that Google have a dominant position on search market, Google selected 1% of their users to run the experiment on, but without informing them. That is users didn’t know that their search results were manipulated and articles they would otherwise have found didn’t show up.
So the argument presented by Danish authorities and media companies were that information should flow freely in a democracy and by doing a huge experiment like this without informing users is against the rights of Danish citizens.
I’ve been part of multiple clinical trials and consent was always there. The control group exists. They know they’re in the study but they may not know they’re the control group.
"Manipulated" is a loaded and meaningless term here. All results are generated by algorithm, so that means 99% see the output of algorithm A and 1% see the output of algorithm B. Neither is more "manipulated" than the other.
It sounds to me like Denmark's media and news isn't very valuable from an ad sales perspective. So Google has set their price reflecting what they think that value is: not much. And Denmark is now getting their lawmakers involved because they think it's worth a lot more and they want to force Google to buy it for a lot more.
Honestly, it doesn't sound like a lot of these EU countries are interested in digital sovereignty or developing their own services. They just want to force the American companies to sell their services at rates favorable to them by getting their regulators involved.
People who are capable of building things don't go into government. "Bureaucracy" has a connotation of where creativity and innovation goes to die for a reason. The personality type that goes into bureaucracy thinks about this like "why would I put in the effort to build something when I could just use the state monopoly on violence to shake down the suckers who already did all that hard work for me?" Of course they lie to the public, and most importantly to themselves, that they have higher motives, but that is the underlying logic.
Yeah it seems like if they were really struggling to break up then they wouldn't be trying to force Google or Meta to the negotiating table. They would be simply kicking them out and not utilizing their services at all.
But it's actually the opposite. They are trying to get their lawmakers to force Google and Meta to provide them their services at below market value!
It seems like Google and Meta are using their dominant position to take as big a part of ad revenue as they possibly can, and if that means independent news companies where actual journalism is conducted can’t survive, then they don’t really care.
Danish media are trying to survive, as high quality journalism is necessary for democracy to function. They can’t avoid being on the big platforms, as Google and Meta have this dominant gatekeeper position in the market - this is where the media pull new users into their sites.
The Dutch national government mandated login system relies on technologies and hosting of a private company that was in conversation with an American counterpart about a possible acquisition.
It's not that hard to create your own search engine, office suite, and school ecosystem. I mean, no single one of google's services isn't replaceable, especially if a country sets its mind to it. Just do that if you're worried about it.
> The publishers say that their industry is bleeding out while they wait for a deal that may never come.
If your industry cannot sustain itself without checks from tech companies for using content as LLM training data that is quite a precarious situation. What was the economic situation for the news industry in Denmark prior to 2021?
Doesn't really doesn't matter what it cost to do. You should still do it. Of course, within reason, there may be some software that it's just intractable to reproduce.
US tech companies are taking up middlemen roles to extract wealth from developed nations, while not adding a lot of value on their own. Their moat is not that big, and there are mature viable alternatives.
One does not need google in their lives to be exposed to advertisements to a local brand. Or pay a percentage fee to paypal or visa if you buy a local product.
US tech companies lose much more from a decoupling than Europe does.
It depends on more than just that. Mindshare, network effects, and the state of a technological art all matter.
The moat crossing isn't in competing with the likes of Google or Paypal directly. The moat crossing is in accumulating enough capital to build the thing that leapfrogs them. Being a middleman allows you to accumulate a lot of money while expending fairly little of it. Then, you focus on the next thing, be it AI or whatever, while collecting middleman fees.
This has a collective effect on a nation's economy. You could tell the American companies to go kick rocks and develop your own local alternatives, but then you're expending your capital on developing a local alternative, not developing the Next Big Thing (TM), and the Americans are. The risk is that your economy becomes less competitive overall while becoming more competitive with one segment of the American economy.
On the other hand, you can’t develop a technology if you have no knowledge of its inner workings.
This is an issue the US finds itself in now as it tries to onshore manufacturing again after allowing someone else to play middle man for decades.
Yes, the US has plenty of capital resources but that doesn’t directly translate into production when you have to setup not just a single factory but an entire supply chain.
I've said it before - about MS. But if you move enough Danes off American IT the rest will follow, I think once you have a 30-40 percent move then within less than a year a landslide, maybe quicker as it is now tied up with patriotism.
i would take a 50% pay cut (FAANG) to move to denmark (with an accelerated path to perm residency) to work on whatever thing they want. any takers? actually any EU nation...
How about instead of taking the easy way out and preserving your wealth you stay in the US and take up your generational responsibility and figure out how to fix the situation that you and your fellow citizens have created?
Same feeling from me. I also disliked his framing of moving his FAANG wealth to outcompete EU workers on jobs and housing, then making it sound like he's doing Europeans a favor with this.
"Yeah guys, I got enough blood money now from ad targeting people in the US, so to clear my conscience I can come give you guys a hand to fight the evil guys I had no issue with when they were paying me big money, but only IF you pay me 50% of what they pay me."
How about thanks but no thanks. We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help". Enjoy your money somewhere else.
lol where are you getting all this from? first of all there are 3 letters in FAANG which don't do ads, second of all i didn't express anywhere that i felt i was doing anyone any favors, third of all are you aware that US citizens are double taxed no matter where they live, where they earn their money, fourth of all are you aware there's an exit tax on your total net worth if you renounce citizenship?
y'all are extra spicy on this topic seemingly.
EDIT:
> We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help"
i wasn't virtue signalling anything - that's why i said money is still an important part of the calculus. i was literally just curious if there were such accelerated pathways for SWEs...
> there are 3 letters in FAANG which don't do ads,
FAANG is Facebook(Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google(Alphabet) right?
Facebook and Google are heavy on ads, Amazon has ads all over their shopping experience and in their video product; AWS isn't connected with ads though, Netflix has an ads tier in their video product too, I opted out of Apple so I don't know what ads look like on their products but I think they have a small ads product?
I'm not quite sure why the negative responses to your offer though. Sure, it's a bit mercenary, but it's an offer. Personally, I don't think it's really about personnel though, recruiting FAANG employees to Europe wouldn't generate European FAANGs; Europe needs to look at the business conditions that spawn these kinds of companies and see what they can change to encourage the kinds of companies they want. Why did Apple survive while early computer companies from Europe all folded and also where have all the European handset makers gone; where are the online megaretailers for Europe and why didn't they consider selling their surplus computing resources; why haven't Euro television companies developed a cross border streaming service; maybe something about search engines, maybe what stopped Europe from playing in the search engine wars before Google became dominant.
I think the point is more that 50% of senior FAANG total comp is still a lot more than you get at most European places.
100-120k net is considered quite a good salary and is unattainable even for most as a contracted employee. You do get benefits like healthcare and pensions which work differently. You can get higher rates if you are good at marketing, but then you need to insure your unemployment and pension yourself as well.
My latest info on Silicon Valley compensation (Google, Netflix, and Twitter) was that 400k/year gross before tax and RSU was typically achievable with even higher regular occurrences. 50% of that is still way over what you typically find here. (Switzerland excluded but all prices are inflated in Switzerland.)
<rolls eyes> alright i'm totally responsible for the trumpocalypse because somewhere someone in my company is running some kind of ads service </rolls eyes>.
> then posturing like a anti-FANG freedom fighter for 50% cut, which might rub some people the wrong way as being a by hypocritica
The only place I was posturing was in your imagination. I guess you're salty about FAANG salaries in the US (and that's what has you tilted) but I was literally just asking about comparable salary and accelerated immigration pathways. The comment is very short - I don't know where you're getting all of this content from.
Nobody said you're responsible for ads, but people have an issue with you accepting to take the big FANG money which you knew comes from ads and other nefarious monopolistic anti consumer things FANGs do, and then wanting to be a anti-FANG freedom fighter but only if you can maintain 50% of FANG money, which might rub some people the wrong way as being a by hypocritical.
The average person has almost no way of making any serious impact on society, especially in this time period. Besides that, the US was founded by people taking "the easy way out" and leaving another country, so it's only fitting.
Though the commenter mentioned working at a FAANG, so maybe they're far more culpable in this situation than the average person. If that's the case, I'd have to agree with you.
LOL my family immigrated to this country from a "shithole" when i was a kid and i've managed to claw my way out of immigrant poverty. i have exactly zero "generational responsibility".
I don’t see what’s wrong with someone wanting to return to their home country instead of staying and risking a middle of the night policy change resulting in their residency status being cancelled and ICE dragging them and their children out of bed at night.
If one must point fingers, a better target is those actually in power.
you're never gonna be able to convince me that i owe some debt to a country/nation that barely ever tolerated me to begin with, you understand this right? also "i'm leaving" isn't "fuck you" in the least, it's just "i'm leaving".
If you can self employ (and find housing, but if you have cash from a FAANG job you can probably pay cash), the Dutch American Friendship Treaty is a popular choice.
We've stopped hiring US citizens becuase they pose a national defense risk to the energy sector. I don't think anyone has any animosity toward US citizens here either though, but I do think you'd find some if you went to a local pub.
Sure. Money isn't everything. A broader concern is that many european countries have similar problems like housing costs and a rising far-right without any better solution. And besides, these sky-high wages won't last for long with a state intent on isolating itself and starving its consumer base of wages.
Personally, I'm looking at east asia and latin america.
I think you have the causation wrong. The far right is rising mostly due to social media which is full of fake news and propaganda. People working at US tech companies nurture this "engagement" in order to get rich while poisoning our societies.
Well, that may be true, although I didn't intend to imply any causal relationship at all. My point is I don't see the general situation in Europe (or the anglosphere) as much improved, just.... less advanced.
In Europe they have an issue with the economic refugees from Muslim countries. And in Denmark has the counter example of Sweden where they cause trouble. That's why the far right gets people's votes. Of course, all they do is point to the migrants. The far right won't be solving any issues, it will just create new ones.
Denmark is not alone here and it is also not just due to Trump
threatening to enslave all Greenlanders by military junta force either. That is just part of the military complex being tied to "business" - and happened in the past too, by the way. Trump just makes it "more official".
The whole TechBro mafia structure behind Trump has again and again
threatened damage against Europeans. A good example was Vance trolling
on the security conference in Munich, where he complained how the ultra
right are silenced in Europe. This showed that the new agenda that the
TechBros in the USA do, is actively hostile - this in addition to Trump
acting as agent Krasnov buddy for Putin. So, any more money that goes
into the USA, is ultimately money that goes against Europe. In many ways
Canadians understand this problem MUCH better than many governments in
Europe - just look at the german government. They are absolutely unwilling
to stop being so obedient to the USA. Denmark at the least understands the
problem - why is Germany so strange?
idk, If I was in control of a country in the EU I would realize, unfortunately for pretty much everyone on the planet, that we have made a drastic miscalculation by relying on the US so heavily for defense.
However, that is not something that can be reversed meaningfully in less than a decade. So for now, I would play the long game like Germany while working to get the EU to build up a military force large enough to significantly reduce our dependence on the US.
It's not as if the US hasn't repeatedly requested that European nations invest in their defense for the past few decades.
Looking at it dispassionately as a European living in the US, if you wanted to foment the sort of mistrust many Americans have of Europe, I don't think you could have created a more invidious policy.
I don’t think it will be a struggle for long. When you have a face to face meeting with your most powerful enemy and they tell you that they WILL conquer you (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/greenland-and-denma...), how can you stay coupled? This is going to accelerate the experiments started in Germany to move to open source software, etc. And I think Europe will pursue a heavy pivot to both grow local startups and couple to other powers like India or China.
At least for the next 50 years or so, the memory of this Trump administration will undermine any coupling to America. In the interim, I am not sure why these countries are even wasting time talking to American companies or representatives - they are absolutely not going to be a trustworthy long term partner:
> Rønde described the “Kafkaesque” experience of negotiating with local representatives who appear to have no actual authority.
I suspect there is going to be a flood of money in the EU for the creation of replacements for any US-based technology any of the EU countries are dependent upon (e.g., https://www.joindns4.eu). The real questions are whether there will be regulatory reform in the EU to facilitate this and will the money NOT flow to the usual dinosaurs. My impression is that Trump has sufficient pissed off EU governments such that there is some (small) hope for both. EC bureaucrats and MEPs might do well to read https://berthub.eu.
US tech workers believe their own lies and think they have some sort of magic sauce. For decades they've enjoyed government welfare and US-friendly regulation in many countries, which kept non-US competition small. An influx of non-US talent to US tech companies helped them stay innovative.
It is a courtesy that citizens from free countries pay US tech companies a middleman fee over various ways. What US tech workers fail to realize is that
- nobody needs Facebook to chat with their family
- nobody needs Visa, Paypal or Mastercard to pay in a local shop
- nobody needs Netflix subscription to watch a movie created by a non-US entity
- nobody needs to pay 50€ per month for privilege of Microsoft spying on your PC
- nobody needs their emails/pictures held hostage by Apple or Google
- nobody needs Uber in order to order a Taxi
So many of these things were done due to convenience and convention, making US tech workers richer and richer. I feel people are realizing what kind of pricks not only the management of US tech companies but also the US tech workers themselves are. Especially on HN these affluent workers from US tech companies run around and parrot the most stupid talking points while thinking their wealth comes from some sort of special skill.
We made them rich. They looted our data and poisoned our societies with fake news. They show no respect towards our systems or culture.
What also has been true the whole time is that nobody has been stopping companies in other countries from creating social media sites, electronic wallets, movie streaming, operating systems, image hosting, or food delivery services. You are right, creating these companies does not come from some special skills only found in the US. Not sure why you are mad at US for creating these services, especially because, like you said, nobody is forcing you to use them. And nobody in the US is going to be upset if an EU company creates a new fun or convenient web service.
I recommend you read "careless people", the book about Facebook, where it is documented that Facebook illegally installed spyware alongside the Facebook app on the smartphones of their users. They monitored the apps their users where running alongside Facebook, which allowed Facebook to not only monitor all competitors but also see the rise of WhatsApp, which ultimately led to the "surprise" acquisition of WhatsApp.
Not to mention that Facebook and Google unknowingly ingested phone contact lists from smartphones of their users on a massive scale. So their "advantage" was extremely unethical behavior, which today would be considered an illegal crime.
So yes, it is literally Apple and Google stopping my European company to do the same, because they make it really hard to leech user data from their platforms.
> nobody is forcing you to use them
Do you remember internet.org? There's an interesting section in "careless people" about how Zuckerberg was working on bundling Facebook with smartphone contracts so people can use it for free. One country rolled out Facebook for free and it resulted in the Rohingyan Genocidg because Facebook enabled unchecked fake news along religious divides, while over years ignoring all warnings about the problem.
The problem is that convenience trumps everything.
- It is convenient to use Facebook to chat with family
- It is convenient to use credit cards to pay the local shop
- It is convenient to use Netflix to watch movies
- It is convenient to pay a (lower) monthly fee than a (higher) purchase price for MS products
- It is convenient to have Apple / Google take care of email
- It is convenient to use Uber instead of a taxi
The golden cage of convenience is why nothing will change in the US -- we prize convenience above all else.
Sorry to be blunt, but it is extremely inconvenient to be force-exposed to internal politics of some religious shithole country which twice votes against their own interests. Where people don't believe in healthcare but accept school shootings. Where society cares about body positivity until Ozempic arrives. A country which talks bigly about geopolitics and ignores agreements they have signed.
It is inconvenient to buy a Tesla to help save the planet and then see emerald nepo baby Elon Musk doing hitler salutes, and US citizens downplaying it due to their special understanding of freedom of speech.
Or a sweaty Peter Thiel morphing from startup evangelist to religious nut babbling about the antichrist.
Or a Jeff Bezos who ships stuff from china to europe being so unhappy with his life that he needs to marry the wife of his neighbor.
On top of this there's this still unresolved child sexual abuse scandal that basically implicates all of US upper class including senior leadership of US tech companies, who suddenly come out of retirement like Sergey Brin because they keep being mentioned in the Epstein files.
For more and more non-US people the inconvenience of seeing all this outweighs the benefit of being able to use some sort of web application. We have survived before on Nokia phones and TomTom navigation systems, and we'll be able to do so again.
US tech companies had US government support and helpful non-US regulatory environment to capture value from our countries. In their core, they are rent-seeking middlemen, parasitic to our economies.
The parasite needs a host, but the host can always find a new parasite.
I just can't see it happening. The United States benefits from decades of compounding advantages compared to the EU: elite research universities, talent pipelines, mature capital markets, and tons of integrated industries (fintech).
This is obvious in the recent AI race. EU-headquartered companies remain rare compared to their US/Chinese counterparts.
AI race is a very good example, because Microsoft customers in the EU pay significantly increased Microsoft license fees so that Microsoft can give that money to OpenAI. Without Microsoft having non-US customers as a cash cow the AI valuations would not be anywhere where they are today. In return non-US Microsoft customers get a useless copilot slapped into all UIs and have to throw away all their computers and buy new ones just because of Windows 11 software update.
The other things you list are weak arguments:
- With mature capital markets you mean they plan to dismantle the Fed autonomy? Did you see the powell video?
- Concerning "elite research universities": are you aware that they significantly cut research funding for US universities, prompting many researchers to move outside the country?
- With talent pipeline do you mean top graduates from EU and other non-US regions who bring innovation to US tech companies?
I think the delusion among US tech workers is immense. The moat is not that big.
If other countries stop sharing your idea of copyright and software patents there is not much you can do.
NATO allies like Germany are sending troops to protect their ally nation along with Denmark. This isn’t a fight Trump is prepared for. If he somehow decides to move forward - we are all going to have to face a hard choice.
> In 2024, Google ran a set of tests of user interest in news content in Denmark and several other countries, concluding that removing such content had “no measurable impact” on search ad revenue. Those findings — along with the testing itself — have come under harsh criticism from Danish lawmakers.
I'm not really sure what Denmark is complaining about? It sounds like Google decided that removing Danish media and news from their services would have no impact on their finances whatsoever, therefore they are firm on their negotiating position since it's basically "take it or leave it".
And Denmark is also somehow trying to force Google to list and index their media, and at their price.
Because "business" isn't just "business" in Denmark and many other countries. Journalism for example, isn't just about the financial bottom-line, journalism has a societal role, and also the move could be seen as trying to avoid paying publishers under EU rules designed to support a free press.
I think a lot of friction between businesses and countries in Europe can be better understood if we better understood the difference in how countries treat things like "business" and other stuff. I understand in the US it's different, money basically rules, you can fire people whenever you want and so on, but in many places in the world, people have a different relationship to businesses, it's not just about money there.
Particularly when it comes to journalism. From reading news from Denmark about it, politicians been repeatedly argued that Google's framing reduces journalism to a revenue input, ignoring its democratic function.
If journalism really weren't just about the financial bottom line in Denmark, then why are they quibbling over what Google will pay them at all? It sounds like they'll be happy with just Google listing and driving traffic to their content for free.
You're missing the point. I speak American so I can translate. He's basically saying journalism is about National Security. It needs to be done correctly to a high level at all costs, much like education. Google (Silicon Valley) is messing with it.
"We need journalism to be done 'correctly' as a matter of national security" sounds like something that the CCP would say.
Hmm, they're not 'messing with' journalism or national security. They just don't care enough to index denmark journalism. I'm also not sure how denmark can strongarm google et. al. into doing anything at all. Is this incorrect, is there some sort of path forward here for denmark to get what they want?
[delayed]
This does not support freedom of the press. This policy is essentially a tax on web indexers (in practice, Google) that is paid directly to the news companies. This means that they are entirely dependent on government authority for their revenue, which is the opposite of freedom of the press. On top of that, only companies that are defined as "news outlets" by the government are eligible for forced indexing and payment. So not only is the government setting itself up as the revenue source, but it gets to choose who gets the money.
lol only on this forum can you construe the government regulating big tech as an anti freedom stance.
Google, Meta, Apple, and Amazon are society destroying companies. They are Walmart times a trillion. Any country that is not directly taxing these wildly profitable companies are leaving free money on the table.
The criticism was that Google have a dominant position on search market, Google selected 1% of their users to run the experiment on, but without informing them. That is users didn’t know that their search results were manipulated and articles they would otherwise have found didn’t show up.
So the argument presented by Danish authorities and media companies were that information should flow freely in a democracy and by doing a huge experiment like this without informing users is against the rights of Danish citizens.
Of course they wouldn't tell users if they're in the control group or experimental group. It would destroy the validity of the experiment.
You still should have to consent to be studied.
I’ve been part of multiple clinical trials and consent was always there. The control group exists. They know they’re in the study but they may not know they’re the control group.
"Manipulated" is a loaded and meaningless term here. All results are generated by algorithm, so that means 99% see the output of algorithm A and 1% see the output of algorithm B. Neither is more "manipulated" than the other.
It sounds to me like Denmark's media and news isn't very valuable from an ad sales perspective. So Google has set their price reflecting what they think that value is: not much. And Denmark is now getting their lawmakers involved because they think it's worth a lot more and they want to force Google to buy it for a lot more.
Honestly, it doesn't sound like a lot of these EU countries are interested in digital sovereignty or developing their own services. They just want to force the American companies to sell their services at rates favorable to them by getting their regulators involved.
People who are capable of building things don't go into government. "Bureaucracy" has a connotation of where creativity and innovation goes to die for a reason. The personality type that goes into bureaucracy thinks about this like "why would I put in the effort to build something when I could just use the state monopoly on violence to shake down the suckers who already did all that hard work for me?" Of course they lie to the public, and most importantly to themselves, that they have higher motives, but that is the underlying logic.
Yeah it seems like if they were really struggling to break up then they wouldn't be trying to force Google or Meta to the negotiating table. They would be simply kicking them out and not utilizing their services at all.
But it's actually the opposite. They are trying to get their lawmakers to force Google and Meta to provide them their services at below market value!
It seems like Google and Meta are using their dominant position to take as big a part of ad revenue as they possibly can, and if that means independent news companies where actual journalism is conducted can’t survive, then they don’t really care.
Danish media are trying to survive, as high quality journalism is necessary for democracy to function. They can’t avoid being on the big platforms, as Google and Meta have this dominant gatekeeper position in the market - this is where the media pull new users into their sites.
Meanwhile, the Netherlands seems intent to sell its national login service to an American company.
https://nltimes.nl/2026/01/15/dutch-experts-warn-us-takeover...
There is much more nuance to it: https://ibestuur.nl/markt-en-overheid/digitale-infrastructuu...
“The Netherlands” isn’t selling anything.
The Dutch national government mandated login system relies on technologies and hosting of a private company that was in conversation with an American counterpart about a possible acquisition.
Bad? Yes
The Netherlands selling their login service? No
The local campaign related to this is Danmark Skifter (Denmark Changes): https://danmarkskifter.dk/en/
It's not that hard to create your own search engine, office suite, and school ecosystem. I mean, no single one of google's services isn't replaceable, especially if a country sets its mind to it. Just do that if you're worried about it.
Building it is easy , selling , adopting and migrating to it is hard
> The publishers say that their industry is bleeding out while they wait for a deal that may never come.
If your industry cannot sustain itself without checks from tech companies for using content as LLM training data that is quite a precarious situation. What was the economic situation for the news industry in Denmark prior to 2021?
This reads like they are trying to force American tech companies to subsidize their local news and journalism industries.
The question is, if they want it so bad, why don't they just establish a state fund for news and journalism so they can subsidize it themselves?
It honestly just feels like a shakedown.
Doesn't really doesn't matter what it cost to do. You should still do it. Of course, within reason, there may be some software that it's just intractable to reproduce.
US tech companies are taking up middlemen roles to extract wealth from developed nations, while not adding a lot of value on their own. Their moat is not that big, and there are mature viable alternatives.
One does not need google in their lives to be exposed to advertisements to a local brand. Or pay a percentage fee to paypal or visa if you buy a local product.
US tech companies lose much more from a decoupling than Europe does.
It depends on more than just that. Mindshare, network effects, and the state of a technological art all matter.
The moat crossing isn't in competing with the likes of Google or Paypal directly. The moat crossing is in accumulating enough capital to build the thing that leapfrogs them. Being a middleman allows you to accumulate a lot of money while expending fairly little of it. Then, you focus on the next thing, be it AI or whatever, while collecting middleman fees.
This has a collective effect on a nation's economy. You could tell the American companies to go kick rocks and develop your own local alternatives, but then you're expending your capital on developing a local alternative, not developing the Next Big Thing (TM), and the Americans are. The risk is that your economy becomes less competitive overall while becoming more competitive with one segment of the American economy.
On the other hand, you can’t develop a technology if you have no knowledge of its inner workings.
This is an issue the US finds itself in now as it tries to onshore manufacturing again after allowing someone else to play middle man for decades.
Yes, the US has plenty of capital resources but that doesn’t directly translate into production when you have to setup not just a single factory but an entire supply chain.
I've said it before - about MS. But if you move enough Danes off American IT the rest will follow, I think once you have a 30-40 percent move then within less than a year a landslide, maybe quicker as it is now tied up with patriotism.
So, once again, Stallman is proved right?
i would take a 50% pay cut (FAANG) to move to denmark (with an accelerated path to perm residency) to work on whatever thing they want. any takers? actually any EU nation...
How about instead of taking the easy way out and preserving your wealth you stay in the US and take up your generational responsibility and figure out how to fix the situation that you and your fellow citizens have created?
Same feeling from me. I also disliked his framing of moving his FAANG wealth to outcompete EU workers on jobs and housing, then making it sound like he's doing Europeans a favor with this.
"Yeah guys, I got enough blood money now from ad targeting people in the US, so to clear my conscience I can come give you guys a hand to fight the evil guys I had no issue with when they were paying me big money, but only IF you pay me 50% of what they pay me."
How about thanks but no thanks. We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help". Enjoy your money somewhere else.
Edit: sorry I sound so mean, but it's how I feel.
lol where are you getting all this from? first of all there are 3 letters in FAANG which don't do ads, second of all i didn't express anywhere that i felt i was doing anyone any favors, third of all are you aware that US citizens are double taxed no matter where they live, where they earn their money, fourth of all are you aware there's an exit tax on your total net worth if you renounce citizenship?
y'all are extra spicy on this topic seemingly.
EDIT:
> We don't need this kind of fake virtue signaling "help"
i wasn't virtue signalling anything - that's why i said money is still an important part of the calculus. i was literally just curious if there were such accelerated pathways for SWEs...
> there are 3 letters in FAANG which don't do ads,
FAANG is Facebook(Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google(Alphabet) right?
Facebook and Google are heavy on ads, Amazon has ads all over their shopping experience and in their video product; AWS isn't connected with ads though, Netflix has an ads tier in their video product too, I opted out of Apple so I don't know what ads look like on their products but I think they have a small ads product?
I'm not quite sure why the negative responses to your offer though. Sure, it's a bit mercenary, but it's an offer. Personally, I don't think it's really about personnel though, recruiting FAANG employees to Europe wouldn't generate European FAANGs; Europe needs to look at the business conditions that spawn these kinds of companies and see what they can change to encourage the kinds of companies they want. Why did Apple survive while early computer companies from Europe all folded and also where have all the European handset makers gone; where are the online megaretailers for Europe and why didn't they consider selling their surplus computing resources; why haven't Euro television companies developed a cross border streaming service; maybe something about search engines, maybe what stopped Europe from playing in the search engine wars before Google became dominant.
I think the point is more that 50% of senior FAANG total comp is still a lot more than you get at most European places.
100-120k net is considered quite a good salary and is unattainable even for most as a contracted employee. You do get benefits like healthcare and pensions which work differently. You can get higher rates if you are good at marketing, but then you need to insure your unemployment and pension yourself as well.
My latest info on Silicon Valley compensation (Google, Netflix, and Twitter) was that 400k/year gross before tax and RSU was typically achievable with even higher regular occurrences. 50% of that is still way over what you typically find here. (Switzerland excluded but all prices are inflated in Switzerland.)
> first of all there are 3 letters in FAANG which don't do ads
They all do ads. Apple is about to add them to their Maps.
https://advertising.amazon.com
https://ads.apple.com
https://advertising.netflix.com/en-us
https://business.google.com/us/google-ads/
https://business.meta.com
https://ads.microsoft.com
<rolls eyes> alright i'm totally responsible for the trumpocalypse because somewhere someone in my company is running some kind of ads service </rolls eyes>.
> then posturing like a anti-FANG freedom fighter for 50% cut, which might rub some people the wrong way as being a by hypocritica
The only place I was posturing was in your imagination. I guess you're salty about FAANG salaries in the US (and that's what has you tilted) but I was literally just asking about comparable salary and accelerated immigration pathways. The comment is very short - I don't know where you're getting all of this content from.
Nobody said you're responsible for ads, but people have an issue with you accepting to take the big FANG money which you knew comes from ads and other nefarious monopolistic anti consumer things FANGs do, and then wanting to be a anti-FANG freedom fighter but only if you can maintain 50% of FANG money, which might rub some people the wrong way as being a by hypocritical.
My 2 cents.
Moving to another continent isn't a particularly easy way out. It's also more than 99% of people are prepared to do.
In general it's not easy, but the difficulty lowers a lot when you have a US passport and 6-7 figure net worth.
The average person has almost no way of making any serious impact on society, especially in this time period. Besides that, the US was founded by people taking "the easy way out" and leaving another country, so it's only fitting.
Though the commenter mentioned working at a FAANG, so maybe they're far more culpable in this situation than the average person. If that's the case, I'd have to agree with you.
LOL my family immigrated to this country from a "shithole" when i was a kid and i've managed to claw my way out of immigrant poverty. i have exactly zero "generational responsibility".
"fuck you i got mine" a true american indeed
I don’t see what’s wrong with someone wanting to return to their home country instead of staying and risking a middle of the night policy change resulting in their residency status being cancelled and ICE dragging them and their children out of bed at night.
If one must point fingers, a better target is those actually in power.
you're never gonna be able to convince me that i owe some debt to a country/nation that barely ever tolerated me to begin with, you understand this right? also "i'm leaving" isn't "fuck you" in the least, it's just "i'm leaving".
If you can self employ (and find housing, but if you have cash from a FAANG job you can probably pay cash), the Dutch American Friendship Treaty is a popular choice.
If you're a US citizen you should probably pick a different European country. USA is not very popular here in Denmark. Likely wont be for a while.
Here in Denmark I hold no animosity toward Americans and none of my circle do. The current US administration on the other hand…
We've stopped hiring US citizens becuase they pose a national defense risk to the energy sector. I don't think anyone has any animosity toward US citizens here either though, but I do think you'd find some if you went to a local pub.
For me, Copenhagen Atomics would be ideal.
Would you work in Europe for a 5 figure salary?
Median salary for a dev is about $130,000 according to https://www.prosa.dk/raad-og-svar/loenstatistik-2025 (assumes 37 hour work week, 5 weeks of vacation).
As a freelancer you can easily still earn 6 figures
Many people do!
Sure. Money isn't everything. A broader concern is that many european countries have similar problems like housing costs and a rising far-right without any better solution. And besides, these sky-high wages won't last for long with a state intent on isolating itself and starving its consumer base of wages.
Personally, I'm looking at east asia and latin america.
I think you have the causation wrong. The far right is rising mostly due to social media which is full of fake news and propaganda. People working at US tech companies nurture this "engagement" in order to get rich while poisoning our societies.
Well, that may be true, although I didn't intend to imply any causal relationship at all. My point is I don't see the general situation in Europe (or the anglosphere) as much improved, just.... less advanced.
In Europe they have an issue with the economic refugees from Muslim countries. And in Denmark has the counter example of Sweden where they cause trouble. That's why the far right gets people's votes. Of course, all they do is point to the migrants. The far right won't be solving any issues, it will just create new ones.
Dreadful weather but otherwise a nice country.
Denmark is not alone here and it is also not just due to Trump threatening to enslave all Greenlanders by military junta force either. That is just part of the military complex being tied to "business" - and happened in the past too, by the way. Trump just makes it "more official".
The whole TechBro mafia structure behind Trump has again and again threatened damage against Europeans. A good example was Vance trolling on the security conference in Munich, where he complained how the ultra right are silenced in Europe. This showed that the new agenda that the TechBros in the USA do, is actively hostile - this in addition to Trump acting as agent Krasnov buddy for Putin. So, any more money that goes into the USA, is ultimately money that goes against Europe. In many ways Canadians understand this problem MUCH better than many governments in Europe - just look at the german government. They are absolutely unwilling to stop being so obedient to the USA. Denmark at the least understands the problem - why is Germany so strange?
idk, If I was in control of a country in the EU I would realize, unfortunately for pretty much everyone on the planet, that we have made a drastic miscalculation by relying on the US so heavily for defense.
However, that is not something that can be reversed meaningfully in less than a decade. So for now, I would play the long game like Germany while working to get the EU to build up a military force large enough to significantly reduce our dependence on the US.
It's not as if the US hasn't repeatedly requested that European nations invest in their defense for the past few decades.
Looking at it dispassionately as a European living in the US, if you wanted to foment the sort of mistrust many Americans have of Europe, I don't think you could have created a more invidious policy.
it would be so incredibly trumpian if he announces "Greencards For Greenland!"
surely, surely someone has already brainstormed it...
Only if you cough up enough green
I don’t think it will be a struggle for long. When you have a face to face meeting with your most powerful enemy and they tell you that they WILL conquer you (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/greenland-and-denma...), how can you stay coupled? This is going to accelerate the experiments started in Germany to move to open source software, etc. And I think Europe will pursue a heavy pivot to both grow local startups and couple to other powers like India or China.
At least for the next 50 years or so, the memory of this Trump administration will undermine any coupling to America. In the interim, I am not sure why these countries are even wasting time talking to American companies or representatives - they are absolutely not going to be a trustworthy long term partner:
> Rønde described the “Kafkaesque” experience of negotiating with local representatives who appear to have no actual authority.
I suspect there is going to be a flood of money in the EU for the creation of replacements for any US-based technology any of the EU countries are dependent upon (e.g., https://www.joindns4.eu). The real questions are whether there will be regulatory reform in the EU to facilitate this and will the money NOT flow to the usual dinosaurs. My impression is that Trump has sufficient pissed off EU governments such that there is some (small) hope for both. EC bureaucrats and MEPs might do well to read https://berthub.eu.
US tech workers believe their own lies and think they have some sort of magic sauce. For decades they've enjoyed government welfare and US-friendly regulation in many countries, which kept non-US competition small. An influx of non-US talent to US tech companies helped them stay innovative.
It is a courtesy that citizens from free countries pay US tech companies a middleman fee over various ways. What US tech workers fail to realize is that
So many of these things were done due to convenience and convention, making US tech workers richer and richer. I feel people are realizing what kind of pricks not only the management of US tech companies but also the US tech workers themselves are. Especially on HN these affluent workers from US tech companies run around and parrot the most stupid talking points while thinking their wealth comes from some sort of special skill.We made them rich. They looted our data and poisoned our societies with fake news. They show no respect towards our systems or culture.
What also has been true the whole time is that nobody has been stopping companies in other countries from creating social media sites, electronic wallets, movie streaming, operating systems, image hosting, or food delivery services. You are right, creating these companies does not come from some special skills only found in the US. Not sure why you are mad at US for creating these services, especially because, like you said, nobody is forcing you to use them. And nobody in the US is going to be upset if an EU company creates a new fun or convenient web service.
“And nobody in the US is going to be upset if an EU company creates a new fun or convenient web service.”
You were pretty pissed when the Chinese made a better social media app.
Maybe is because of your deep love of democracy and freedom, but it more likely that you can’t countenance not being in charge.
I recommend you read "careless people", the book about Facebook, where it is documented that Facebook illegally installed spyware alongside the Facebook app on the smartphones of their users. They monitored the apps their users where running alongside Facebook, which allowed Facebook to not only monitor all competitors but also see the rise of WhatsApp, which ultimately led to the "surprise" acquisition of WhatsApp.
Not to mention that Facebook and Google unknowingly ingested phone contact lists from smartphones of their users on a massive scale. So their "advantage" was extremely unethical behavior, which today would be considered an illegal crime.
So yes, it is literally Apple and Google stopping my European company to do the same, because they make it really hard to leech user data from their platforms.
> nobody is forcing you to use them
Do you remember internet.org? There's an interesting section in "careless people" about how Zuckerberg was working on bundling Facebook with smartphone contracts so people can use it for free. One country rolled out Facebook for free and it resulted in the Rohingyan Genocidg because Facebook enabled unchecked fake news along religious divides, while over years ignoring all warnings about the problem.
The problem is that convenience trumps everything.
The golden cage of convenience is why nothing will change in the US -- we prize convenience above all else.Sorry to be blunt, but it is extremely inconvenient to be force-exposed to internal politics of some religious shithole country which twice votes against their own interests. Where people don't believe in healthcare but accept school shootings. Where society cares about body positivity until Ozempic arrives. A country which talks bigly about geopolitics and ignores agreements they have signed.
It is inconvenient to buy a Tesla to help save the planet and then see emerald nepo baby Elon Musk doing hitler salutes, and US citizens downplaying it due to their special understanding of freedom of speech.
Or a sweaty Peter Thiel morphing from startup evangelist to religious nut babbling about the antichrist.
Or a Jeff Bezos who ships stuff from china to europe being so unhappy with his life that he needs to marry the wife of his neighbor.
On top of this there's this still unresolved child sexual abuse scandal that basically implicates all of US upper class including senior leadership of US tech companies, who suddenly come out of retirement like Sergey Brin because they keep being mentioned in the Epstein files.
For more and more non-US people the inconvenience of seeing all this outweighs the benefit of being able to use some sort of web application. We have survived before on Nokia phones and TomTom navigation systems, and we'll be able to do so again.
US tech companies had US government support and helpful non-US regulatory environment to capture value from our countries. In their core, they are rent-seeking middlemen, parasitic to our economies.
The parasite needs a host, but the host can always find a new parasite.
Investment would be great, but the tech already exists. From Suse linux, hetzner, fairphone, to LibreOffice and OnlyOffice.
One simply needs to start using them. Investment can be focused on integration work and bug fixing.
My tax money is on the fact that it's going to go again to the dinosaurs. I cannot see them do any quick and adaptive change in the short term.
I can see ways that could be really effective, though trying to get a sane word out to these bureaucrats nowadays seems impossible.
I just can't see it happening. The United States benefits from decades of compounding advantages compared to the EU: elite research universities, talent pipelines, mature capital markets, and tons of integrated industries (fintech).
This is obvious in the recent AI race. EU-headquartered companies remain rare compared to their US/Chinese counterparts.
All true, but incomplete: you are not discounting these advantages with plain old 'industrial inertia'.
Some stuff just went goes to the USA, because it always went to the USA - even though the original advantages are long gone.
Screw with it enough and the users (the world) just route around the damage.
As the UK can attest after Brexit.
AI race is a very good example, because Microsoft customers in the EU pay significantly increased Microsoft license fees so that Microsoft can give that money to OpenAI. Without Microsoft having non-US customers as a cash cow the AI valuations would not be anywhere where they are today. In return non-US Microsoft customers get a useless copilot slapped into all UIs and have to throw away all their computers and buy new ones just because of Windows 11 software update.
The other things you list are weak arguments:
I think the delusion among US tech workers is immense. The moat is not that big. If other countries stop sharing your idea of copyright and software patents there is not much you can do.The problem: you just listed all of the things under attack by the current administration.
NATO allies like Germany are sending troops to protect their ally nation along with Denmark. This isn’t a fight Trump is prepared for. If he somehow decides to move forward - we are all going to have to face a hard choice.
As a spectator from neither continent, I feel Trump is being a bit of a wuss.
He should give into his vices, embrace his inner-Putin and demand a “land-bridge” from Washington State to Alaska.
For national security reasons, of course.