FRESH

Hacker News

Denmark's struggle to break up with Silicon Valley

92 points by giuliomagnifico

by petcat

3 subcomments

> In 2024, Google ran a set of tests of user interest in news content in Denmark and several other countries, concluding that removing such content had “no measurable impact” on search ad revenue. Those findings — along with the testing itself — have come under harsh criticism from Danish lawmakers.
I'm not really sure what Denmark is complaining about? It sounds like Google decided that removing Danish media and news from their services would have no impact on their finances whatsoever, therefore they are firm on their negotiating position since it's basically "take it or leave it".
And Denmark is also somehow trying to force Google to list and index their media, and at their price.

by CalRobert

2 subcomments

Meanwhile, the Netherlands seems intent to sell its national login service to an American company.
https://nltimes.nl/2026/01/15/dutch-experts-warn-us-takeover...

by robin_reala

0 subcomment

The local campaign related to this is Danmark Skifter (Denmark Changes): https://danmarkskifter.dk/en/

by subroutine

1 subcomments

> The publishers say that their industry is bleeding out while they wait for a deal that may never come.
If your industry cannot sustain itself without checks from tech companies for using content as LLM training data that is quite a precarious situation. What was the economic situation for the news industry in Denmark prior to 2021?

by bryanrasmussen

0 subcomment

I've said it before - about MS. But if you move enough Danes off American IT the rest will follow, I think once you have a 30-40 percent move then within less than a year a landslide, maybe quicker as it is now tied up with patriotism.

by neuroelectron

1 subcomments

Doesn't really doesn't matter what it cost to do. You should still do it. Of course, within reason, there may be some software that it's just intractable to reproduce.

by shevy-java

4 subcomments

Denmark is not alone here and it is also not just due to Trump threatening to enslave all Greenlanders by military junta force either. That is just part of the military complex being tied to "business" - and happened in the past too, by the way. Trump just makes it "more official".
The whole TechBro mafia structure behind Trump has again and again threatened damage against Europeans. A good example was Vance trolling on the security conference in Munich, where he complained how the ultra right are silenced in Europe. This showed that the new agenda that the TechBros in the USA do, is actively hostile - this in addition to Trump acting as agent Krasnov buddy for Putin. So, any more money that goes into the USA, is ultimately money that goes against Europe. In many ways Canadians understand this problem MUCH better than many governments in Europe - just look at the german government. They are absolutely unwilling to stop being so obedient to the USA. Denmark at the least understands the problem - why is Germany so strange?

by drnick1

0 subcomment

by mathisfun123

6 subcomments

i would take a 50% pay cut (FAANG) to move to denmark (with an accelerated path to perm residency) to work on whatever thing they want. any takers? actually any EU nation...
Edit: with all of the negativity under this comment I'm reminded of a hilarious experience I had when I first interned at FB during grad school: I was on some online game with a friend of mine and his friend (whom I'd never met) and we were on voice chat. My buddy asks me how the internship is going and I gave the standard "it's hard but I'm learning a lot" response. Afterwards the third guy chimes in and asks if me I don't feel ashamed (or whatever) about working for FB. It was literally my first tech internship so I said something equivocal. Then I asked the guy what he did/where he worked. I shit you not the guy was literally a radar engineer for the US army. The irony was clearly lost on him and he even went as far as insisting he (as opposed to me) was doing very good/valuable work.

by webdevver

1 subcomments

it would be so incredibly trumpian if he announces "Greencards For Greenland!"
surely, surely someone has already brainstormed it...

by SilverElfin

1 subcomments

I don’t think it will be a struggle for long. When you have a face to face meeting with your most powerful enemy and they tell you that they WILL conquer you (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/greenland-and-denma...), how can you stay coupled? This is going to accelerate the experiments started in Germany to move to open source software, etc. And I think Europe will pursue a heavy pivot to both grow local startups and couple to other powers like India or China.
At least for the next 50 years or so, the memory of this Trump administration will undermine any coupling to America. In the interim, I am not sure why these countries are even wasting time talking to American companies or representatives - they are absolutely not going to be a trustworthy long term partner:
> Rønde described the “Kafkaesque” experience of negotiating with local representatives who appear to have no actual authority.

by djha-skin

1 subcomments

It's not that hard to create your own search engine, office suite, and school ecosystem. I mean, no single one of google's services isn't replaceable, especially if a country sets its mind to it. Just do that if you're worried about it.