欧盟不应该调查谷歌 Europe should forget Google and investigate its own shortcomings

Imagine if, over the next 60 days, the European Commission staged a series of press conferences and bombarded journalists with a battery of announcements of pocket-sized investigations into the condition of the continent’s technology industry.

想象一下，如果欧盟委员会(European Commission)在今后60天里召开一系列记者招待会，宣布对欧洲科技行业展开一连串袖珍调查。

One investigation might delve into the rate at which PhDs are granted to students of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects at Europe’s 20 leading universities. This might contain an appendix showing the percentage of Nobel Prizes given to people born and resident in Europe over the past 100 years.

一项调查可能是研究欧洲20所领先大学里的科学、技术、工程和数学专业的学生被授予博士学位的比例。这可能包括一个附录，显示过去100年出生并居住在欧洲的诺贝尔奖得主百分比。

Another inquiry might examine the state of science education in high schools across the EU and how this compares to countries such as China, Singapore, Israel, India and the US. An appendix of this report might summarise the number of European high school students and college graduates that have elected to study in, or emigrate to, the US.

另一项调查可能是考察整个欧盟的高中的理科教育状况，并在这方面与中国、新加坡、以色列、印度和美国等国进行对比。该报告的附录可能概述选择去美国留学（或者移民美国）的欧盟高中生和大学毕业生的人数。

Other lawyers and social scientists on the vast EU payroll might be dispatched to the patent filing libraries to see how the rate of European invention in critical fields has kept track with what has occurred in China and the US since 1990. Then, assuming there are still lawyers available — not an insurmountable challenge in Brussels — another taxpayer-financed squadron could be sent to examine why the rate of formation of technology companies in Europe trails that in other countries.

欧盟雇用的庞大律师和社会科学家队伍的其他成员，可能被派到专利库，去查看自1990年以来欧洲在关键领域的发明速度与中国和美国相比表现如何。接下来，假如还有律师闲着——在布鲁塞尔这不是一个不可逾越的挑战——另一个纳税人资助的团队可能被派去考察欧洲科技公司的形成速度为何落在其他国家后面。

Instead, the commission has chosen to launch a new investigation into one of its bête-noires — Google. This new witch-hunt, seeking to uncover skulduggery and anti-competitive practices in the way that Google has licensed its Android operating system, is in addition to a separate Commission probe into the company’s search business. Add to this the EU probes into the privacy policies and tax payments of US technology companies, and the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Qualcomm — six of the greatest businesses built over the past 30 years — must be thinking that, within Europe, no success goes unpunished.

相反，欧盟委员会偏偏选择对其看不惯的一家企业——谷歌(Google)发起新的调查。最新的“猎巫”行动旨在发现谷歌在授权使用Android操作系统上的欺诈和垄断行为，此前欧盟委员会还对谷歌搜索业务展开调查。除此之外，欧盟还对美国科技公司的隐私政策和纳税行为展开调查，亚马逊(Amazon)、苹果(Apple)、Facebook、谷歌、Netflix和高通(Qualcomm)——过去30年打造起来的最伟大企业中的6家——的首席执行官们必定认为，欧洲是一个惩罚成功的地方。

This same sentiment seems to be spreading to European boardrooms. Recently, the founders of Spotify, the Stockholm-based music-streaming service that has been engaged in a tooth-and-nail fight with some of the largest US technology companies, did the unthinkable. They voiced a distinctly American viewpoint by castigating Swedish politicians for the conditions they have to battle in their homeland. These included the acute housing shortage in Stockholm, the manner in which gains from stock options are taxed and the shortcomings of technical education — particularly for girls and young women. Little wonder that they threatened to move much of their company — lock, stock and smoked herring — to more hospitable climes.

这种情绪似乎正蔓延至欧洲企业的董事会。最近，总部位于斯德哥尔摩的音乐流媒体服务公司、一直在全力对抗美国一些大型科技公司Spotify的创始人做了一件不可思议的事情。他们表达了典型的美国式观点：针对他们不得不应对的国内艰难条件指责瑞典政客。这些条件包括斯德哥尔摩住房严重匮乏，来自股票期权的收益被征税的方式，以及技术教育的不足之处（尤其是对女孩和年轻女性而言）。难怪他们威胁要将公司整个搬到营商环境更好的地区。

The commission might find some solace in an odd place — its own investigation of Microsoft which started in 2000 and extended for more than a decade. The accusations against Microsoft were every bit as pointed as the charges now levelled at Google. Yet consider what’s happened since. The EU filed its charges against the leader of the personal computer industry before Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat or Skype were even formed and at a time that Google was barely a year old. However, the inventiveness of these companies that had a much greater effect on Microsoft’s apparent ironclad lock on the technology industry than any set of mandarins infusing legal charges with a political marinade.

欧盟委员会可能在一个诡异的地方找到一些慰藉——当年它对微软(Microsoft)展开的调查。那项调查始于2000年，持续了十多年。对微软的指控和现在针对谷歌的指控一样尖锐。然而想想自那以来发生的情况吧。欧盟对这家个人计算机行业的领军企业提出指控的时候，Facebook、Instagram、WhatsApp、Snapchat或Skype甚至还未诞生，谷歌成立仅一年。然而，与带着政治动机提出法律指控的官僚们相比，这些公司的创造力对微软对科技行业貌似稳固的霸主地位产生了大得多的冲击。

The commission should examine one other fact. Over the past five years the eight most valuable technology companies developed in Europe have assembled a combined market value of around $32bn. That’s not a figure to be sneezed at any more than the admirable young European technology entrepreneurs who, despite all odds, are more inclined to take a risk than members of their parents’ generation. But EU legislators should be wondering why Europe’s eight most valuable companies are only worth about 10 per cent of Facebook or 6 per cent of Google.

欧盟委员会还应反省另一个事实。过去5年里，欧洲发展起来的8家最有价值的科技公司的市值总额达到320亿美元左右。这个数字不容小觑；欧洲许多年轻科技创业家也值得钦佩——尽管面临重重困难，他们仍比父辈中的某些成员更愿意冒险。但欧盟立法者应该纳闷的是，为何欧盟8家最有价值的公司的总市值只有Facebook的10%，或者谷歌的6%。

There’s nothing new about this strain of anti-Americanism running rampant in Brussels. Some of its intellectual roots stretch back 50 years to Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the French publisher and journalist, who tried to galvanise Europeans into countering the threat from across the Atlantic with the publication, in 1967, of The American Challenge. Its echoes can be heard in this week’s press conferences in Brussels. Forget the fact that American ingenuity and daring has brought to hundreds of millions of Europeans phones cheaper and more powerful than the supercomputers of the 1970s, thousands of films and TV shows that can be streamed at the touch of a button, free text-messaging services, books that are delivered overnight and thousands of comfortable cars that can be summoned at a moment’s notice.

布鲁塞尔反美情绪高涨并不是什么新鲜事。这其中的一些理论渊源可以追溯至50年前的法国出版人和记者让-雅克•塞尔旺-施赖伯(Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber)，他在1967年出版了《美国的挑战》(The American Challenge)，试图激励欧洲人反制大西洋对岸的威胁。该书的回声在布鲁塞尔最近的记者会上可以听到。忘掉如下事实吧：美国人的智慧和胆识让数亿欧洲人的手机比上世纪70年代的超级电脑更便宜更强大、点击一下就可以观看数千部电影和电视剧、免费的文字聊天服务、次日就能送上门的图书，以及很快就能叫到的舒适汽车。

Rather than pointing across the Atlantic and seeking scapegoats, the Commissioners who have just launched another fusillade against one of their favourite American bogeymen may want to start a series of investigations into Europe’s own shortcomings. This may be a more fruitful exercise than reigniting the spent flames of the 1960s.

与其指责大西洋对岸和寻找替罪羊，刚刚再次炮轰他们最爱的美国靶子的欧盟委员会，不如对欧洲本身的不足之处展开一系列调查。相比重新点燃上世纪60年代的余烬，这么做可能更有成效。