Twenty-Two: EU

This post will be short. It is just a note of appreciation for what I have seen in the news about the EU lately.

For those who don’t know, the EU – at least in the recent past – have been champions of the consumer in a digital age. They have forced Apple to use USB-C and allow app sideloading (coming soon?), and now they are forcing Microsoft to allow Windows users to uninstall Edge/Bing/Cortana/etc. from Windows! The tyranny of Edge has finally come to an end. Users can now make non-Microsoft apps their defaults for Windows 10/11. I can’t believe that this day has come. This is not to mention other great things that the EU has done for the consumer, i.e. GDPR.

I am incredibly impressed with the fact that the EU can strong-arm these huge corporations. After all, the EU is a massive market, and Apple or Google or Microsoft could never succeed without continuing business there. It makes me happy that at least some governmental body is starting to push around corporations in support of the consumer. In a world where trillions of data points are collected daily, the consumer has at least a little bit of a supporter at their back.