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Thursday, July 08, 2010

DG COMP: interoperable and open Internet is key to freedom to innovate

Commissioner Almunia is thinking the same as Kroes: its the open Internet, stoopid!
"The market for online content in Europe is a shameful anachronism, and the distribution of content online across the entire European Union is expensive and difficult. This market fragmentation deprives us of scale and the lack of scale deprives us of business... we must not confuse threats to the creators of content and threats to the current intermediaries...For instance, it is a combination of competitive markets in infrastructure and open standards that fostered the development of « cloud » services. And the internet would not be the success it is today, had it not been built on open, interoperable standards and protocols. These brought the « freedom to innovate » to everyone, from the largest multinational to the self employed mom in her garage. It was impossible to predict the many ways internet services would develop and it took an open environment to have the very successful – and unexpected - services that we have today. Not any one company could have dreamt them all. There are many ways society might seek to lower the cost of innovation. An internet based on open standards has proved to be a very effective platform for innovation."

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