Will the Digital Markets Act help Europe breed digital giants?
Probably not
IN THE EARLY 1970s a handful of former employees at IBM, then the world’s biggest computer-maker, spent weeks pulling double shifts. During the day they quizzed the workers at a nylon plant in southern Germany about what exactly made their factory tick. At night they painstakingly turned this knowledge into code and tested it. The result of all this toil was one of the world’s first comprehensive pieces of business software. The company behind it, SAP, is still Europe’s mightiest technology titan by revenue, with annual sales of nearly €30bn ($33bn). It has a market value of €123bn as it celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 1st (no joke).
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “New kids in the bloc”
Business March 26th 2022
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