So big tech invests billions, and the EU is going to take the lead how exactly?
The scheme includes bringing together creators, media companies and others to create an industrial ecosystem, setting up regulatory sandboxes to help companies test out the metaverse and rolling out skills development programmes as well virtual public services.
Meh
They want to carve out a piece of the metaverse for European companies is basically the message. We’ve learned in the past 30 years that large firms dominate different aspects of tech space. Take a look at what they’ve done in aircraft manufacturing - they’ve elbowed into the space that Americans were dominating. Now there’s just 2 - Boeing and Airbus which is theirs. They are going to seek to replicate that, learning from the mistakes in tech in the past.
Boeing and Airbus bought up every competitor to create a duopoly, and Boeing’s 737 MAX issues have hurt them recently
I just don’t see how the EU regulating the metaverse will result in a competitive advantage over the billions that Meta for e.g. have invested in their headsets and software
They bought up the small ones because they were failing. That industry requires huge economies of scale and the smaller ones couldn’t cope. EU created Airbus out of the scrap pieces of dying European aircraft manufacturers and injected capital into it and gave it a captive market. In metaverse they are starting to behave this way - currently Threads isn’t allowed to operate in Europe. They are going to create regulatory barriers around it. Allow European alternatives to grow - i.e. Mastodon, etc. And provide any kind of support - regulatory, capital, incentives, etc. European governments have used their might to create industry giants so that their countries remain relevant and that wealth creation and innovation remains rooted in their countries. It will be the same in this case.
Unless they lose more court cases because their subsidies break WTO rules…
What’s stopped EU tech companies previously? I can’t think of any European tech companies other than OnlyFans lol
Well that’s just IT. They don’t have a significant presence in the tech space and they are trying to create barriers to develop home grown companies. (To answer your question SAP and some anti-virus companies top of my head but there isn’t a lot.)
