For years, Europe boasted its digital rules — on privacy, on social media, on antitrust — would force others to follow its lead.
But when push came to shove, the rest of the world, or, at least, American tech giants, have an answer: No thanks.
In quick succession, Meta announced its Twitter-killing app, Threads, would be available in a hundred countries — but not within the European Union. Last month, Google turned on the charm offensive when releasing Bard, its rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT — but again said it wouldn’t be available to the 27-country bloc’s well-heeled consumers.
Both tech giants — which have had repeated run-ins with Europe’s digital enforcers — claimed that as much as they would like to offer Threads and Bard, respectively, to the EU, the bloc’s pesky rules made it too much of a risk to shower Europeans with the same digital wizardry now available elsewhere.
Meta referenced ill-defined “regulatory uncertainty” for holding back on Threads. Google said its generative AI product could breach Europe’s data protection rules.
In a world where policymakers are increasingly focused on digital rulemaking, an abundance of caution is never a bad thing. But the tech giants’ reluctance also represents a canny lobbying tactic just as Brussels is finishing up separate antitrust and artificial intelligence rules that will directly target Alphabet and Meta.
Withholding their shiny new products is a very public demonstration to Europeans — not policymakers — that the EU’s effort to set the digital rules for the West comes with consequences. And, sometimes, that means you’ll miss out.
It’s understandable why Meta would not want to release Threads in Europe, at least not yet. The Big Tech giant will officially be named a “gatekeeper” under Europe’s new Digital Markets Act rules in September.
That label triggers a more onerous regulatory regime, including requirements that Meta’s services must easily interact with rivals and that Brussels has to approve the company’s expansion plans before, not after, Mark Zuckerberg pulls the trigger.
With lobbying around how that rulebook should apply still ongoing, why would Zuck & Co. want to give European regulators another digital service with which to bemoan its global dominance?
The fact that Europeans across the Continent must now look on, enviously, as their friends around the Western world access Threads (arguably a poor man’s version of Twitter circa 2011) is an additional bonus in the lobbying campaign over how onerous the bloc’s new digital competition rules should actually be.
Google, too, has good reason to hold its artificial intelligence firepower amid ongoing negotiations around the bloc’s upcoming AI Act, the world’s only comprehensive legislative package aimed at regulating this emerging technology. Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive, was in Brussels in late May to claim his company was open to more regulation — but only as long as it didn’t stifle innovation.
It’s true Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner — the main European privacy regulator overseeing Google’s activities within the bloc — had raised questions about how Bard, the company’s generative AI tool, complied with existing EU data protection rules. But withholding the tool from EU consumers is a timely reminder of how the Continent’s digital rulebook isn’t always the positive story that many within the European Commission’s Berlaymont building would like it to be.
Yes, generative AI may infringe Europe’s privacy rules, and Google is taking a cautious approach in its roll-out. But with months of hard-nosed negotiations before the AI Act is likely finalized before the end of the year, the search giant’s actions also are a highly-public reminder that EU policymakers’ desire to be first in regulating new forms of technology inevitably means European voters may miss out on the next big thing.
Will these services eventually get an airing in Europe? Almost certainly. Both companies deny claims their reluctance to release new digital services in Europe has anything to do with their lobbying strategies.
But with the application of Europe’s new competition rules on the horizon and months of lobbying around the bloc’s separate AI rulebook ahead, the timing for both Meta and Alphabet is extremely convenient.
Holding back new marquee products, even for a few months, is a highly public reminder to regular Europeans that as much as their policymakers believe they are acting in the greater good, the urge to regulate can also come with downsides.
Right now, Europeans are on the sharp end of how that feels.
Source : Politico