Don’t worry, Google is trying to confuse you
Comment on Google criticizes Europe's plan to adopt free software
Steve@communick.news 2 weeks ago
According to Google, the idea of replacing current tools with open-source programs would not contribute to economic growth.
Is Google seriously arguing that the money these nations save can’t be added to their GDPs?
That what it sounds like. Or am I confused?
inari@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
mumblerfish@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To an enormous extent are todays data centers, cloud providers, and all the techology the whole world use today based on open source. Without linux, curl, ffmpeg, and so on nothing in todays high tech society would work. Google, as it is today, would not exist if it was for all the open source they leech of.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Well Google contributes a lot to open source, but I get your point.
Korkki@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
They mostly do that because they want control and maybe slowly reach their tentacles into projects. Like Chromium and Android are in theory open source, but in practice both are locked down by google and used for their business and mass data harvesting and advertising empire.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Chrome comes from Safari that comes from KHTML, the original KDE web browser. No open source means no Chrome.
bobs_monkey@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Nah, I think they’re saying that their corporate offerings and jobs in a given country would not contribute to GDP, while failing to address that developers and engineers would still be necessary to implement these open source applications, though Google won’t get to siphon money out of those economies. It’s purposely convoluted, basically Google throwing a temper tantrum.
BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
Nah that’s it. Their logic is seemingly if you don’t give the money to Google it’s not contributing to economic growth.
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Two economists are walking down the street and pass by a pile of dog shit. One of them (a sadist) turns to the other and says “I’ll pay you $1000 if you eat that dog shit”.
The other performs an internal utility calculation and eats the dog shit.
Continuing their walk, the second economist sees another pile of dog shit and makes the same offer to the first. The first economist also agrees, and eats the dog shit. They walk on.
After a while the second economist says to the first “I can’t help thinking we’re worse off than when we started this walk. We both have the same amount of money we started with, but we both had to eat shit.”
The first economist replies “Worse off?! We’ve just engaged in 2000 dollars worth of trade!”.
Look, by certain ways of calculating GDP growth and trade, it’s probably true that if the money isn’t being spent on software licenses and so on, it means there’s less economic activity going on.
The whole point of open source / free software is that you’re not locked into someone’s proprietary software ecosystem. You don’t have to continue paying license fees. So, if the governments simply stop paying for software licenses, it’s probably true that their GDP will technically shrink. But, that assumes the money won’t be spent on something more useful.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They are saying FOSS isnt companies, google’s value is tied to GDP in some EU countries. If they see less growth so does the GDP.
Yanks are whores who only think of money and kids.
Cherry@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
The last line needs a bender meme.
rezad@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
they meant google’s economic growth.
fizzle@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
No i think the comment is less direct than that.
For much of government, the underlying objective is to contribute to GDP. For example, funding healthcare means a healthier population who can be more productive.
So by saying “this policy won’t contribute to GDP” its a very general way to say this is not what’s best for your population.
At least I think thats what theyre saying.
As an aside, savings dont directly improve GDP, by definition.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Perhaps they understand economic growth the same way the orange rapist understands tariffs?
Korkki@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Killing parasitic and monopolistic gatekeepers and middlemen is very much contributing to any country’s economic growth.
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I think he’s arguing that not using the most advanced technologies (eg. what Google and Microsoft offer) would be detrimental to worker productivity in the EU.
Of course, in reality, if all those countries start investing in FOSS, they could easily replace the Office suit, SharePoint, the Power platform, etc. I know several programmers who’d gladly devote their time to FOSS full-time if they could. I’ve even met one who simply refuses to work to create anything proprietary.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
They are suggesting that going to open source solutions won’t result in new industry in their countries (i.e. that Google won’t be opening offices and data centers and such there).
It’s a pretty bogus statement anyways, but it’s not COMPLETELY senseless.
mech@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
When corporations or conservatives talk about “the economy”, simply replace it with “rich people’s bank accounts” and it makes sense again.
They are trying to gaslight you into still believing in the trickle-down-theory, against decades of evidence.
And all mainstream media as well as centrist parties (including the US Democrats) join in.
TheLastOfHisName@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Google meant THEIR economic growth.