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"With a single European digital market, European alternatives to Google, Facebook, Amazon, Samsung, and Huawei could finally emerge. "



Wow. Is this a serious comment from a serious politician - because it demonstrates a near complete ignorance of what these companies are, what they do, how they came about and why they were successful.



The absence of a single digital market in Europe in completely irrelevant to even the three companies Guy mentions that would be nominally affected by it, Google, Facebook and Amazon.



What affect the digital single market would have on manufacturers like Samsung and Huawei, well let's just leave that level of ignorance for Guy to ponder.



A digital single market would not have enabled Nokia to have better competed with Samsung, whose mobile phone business was and is secondary to its chip foundries. A digital single market would not have facilitated tens of billions of Euro worth investment into chip research and manufacturing or anything even approaching the sheer scale of Samsung which was for much of its history 'trapped' in a single market of less than 50 million people who for much of Samsung's existence were considerably poorer than Europeans.



In fact, Samsung is an especially frightening case for Guy and his world-vision. A company that has thrived in a medium-sized country surrounded by giants often with nefarious intentions that has turned from being a fruit and vegetable import/exporter to being one of the world's biggest and most influential companies. The barrier to a European Samsung is hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of skilled employees, tens of of thousands of patents, and thousands of products - not one of those would be resolved by a single digital market.



The lesson for Europe from the giants Guy cites is that legislation and prevarication are no substitute for innovation, determination and diligence.



The absence of a digital single market is a complete red herring.



With Amazon, I suspect Guy - like many hostile policticians, is bedazzled by their retail clout. Far more important to Amazon (and actually to Europe) is their cloud offering which dominates.



The real barriers to European tech giants are skills, investment, ideas, scale and governments willing to fight their corner as vigourously as they would do for banks, car manufacturers, and agrifood.