Dutch Software Firm Bird To Leave Europe Due To Onerous Regulations

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Cloud communications software firm Bird, one of the Netherlands' most prominent tech startups, plans to move most of its operations out of Europe, its CEO said, citing restrictive regulations and difficulties hiring skilled technology workers. "We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology," CEO Robert Vis told Reuters on Monday. "We foresee that regulations in Europe will block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI," he said in a text message response to Reuters queries.

Bird's operations in future will be mostly split between New York, Singapore and Dubai, he said. Vis first announced the move abroad in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. Bird, formerly known as Message Bird, was founded in Amsterdam in 2011. It is a competitor of U.S.-based Twilio in the market for helping companies manage their communications with consumers across digital mediums such as messaging, email and video apps. It says it has developed an AI-powered platform that automates and streamlines business operations across entire organizations including tech leaders.

2 stories

[thegarbz]

I get duping big news, but running 2 stories about a company no one has heard of with 360 employees world wide which just went through a downsizing and renaming last year and are now chasing buzzwords to try and stay relevant is a bit much.

And yeah I know about them because I looked them up last time the story ran.

My cat did a poo just now, should we post that story here too?

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[dskoll]

Twice. Because we know a poo is number 2.

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[drinkypoo]

My cat did a poo just now, should we post that story here too?

Was it an AI poo, or a cryptopoo? Because otherwise you're not getting your story submission accepted.

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[MIPSPro]

My strong suspicion is that the mods here have regular sock puppet accounts they browse with. They see the debate about the EU losing it's technical edge and ceding ground to both the US and China. They see the strong cognitive dissonance that the "europe stands for censorship, regulation, and technical decline" has on the site. They don't get many comments anymore on technical stories because they ran off most of the technical folks years ago. So, they go for divisive shit-flinging political clickbait.

Wow they must really be pissed!

[93 Escort Wagon]

They're not only leaving... they're leaving TWICE!

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[DesScorp]

They're not only leaving... they're leaving TWICE!

Henry Hill: "And then there was Jimmy Two Times, who got that nickname because he said everything twice, like":

"Dutch Cloud is leaving, leaving".

Hey look, spam

[ebunga]

This is definitely spam.

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[TigerPlish]

I believe the gentle, sensitive new-agey way to callthis is "Slashvertisement."

I'll also accept "complete and utter failure at editing."

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[ebunga]

I guess the slashdot editors are taking the google approach of letting the site run without anyone at the helm, just autopost everything.

This is sad to see from a great tech hub

[SuperKendall]

I had the opportunity to work in Amsterdam for about a month and a half, and what I found was that it is absolutely the perfect tech city. Even better than SF.

It had tons of technical people of all kinds, Almost any technical person there is just as able to speak English as Dutch, and kind enough to automatically switch to English even if you never ask them to. Also a great culture of sharing technical knowledge, with all kinds of great technical meetups on almost any subject.

The Dutch are also a very pra

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[ebunga]

The article is bullshit spam. Ignore it, unless you're part of the spam campaign.

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[MightyMartian]

Well now you can work in the US where regulatory capture is complete.

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[dskoll]

Amsterdam is indeed a fantastic city. And one little startup in a snit does not mean anything; it's a press release designed to get clicks.

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[postbigbang]

Worry not, our machines will digest them. Tasty startups, especially with Bearnaise Sauce, is a delightful treat, especially when snatched from the hands of the thoughtful.

Yeah will check in

[SuperKendall]

Amsterdam is indeed a fantastic city. And one little startup in a snit does not mean anything; it's a press release designed to get clicks.

I hope so, will reach out to the people I know still working there and see what they think.

I was there just last year on vacation and went to a tech meetup, everything still seemed good...

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[XXongo]

The Dutch are also a very practical people so it's a greta place to build soemthing

But I thought Greta was Swedish...

I'm not so sure...

[Halueth]

Disclaimer: Dutch here. First, I might not've been completely up to date, but this startup, I've never heard of them (while I work for national government and plenty of medium or bigger companies), so I guess that big of a startup they're not. Second, if you process data which can be linked to a person, company or a combination of both, and if you're working for any governmental entity, you are required to enlist your actions at the newly formed national register for algorithms, AI and machine learning in

Europe Dodged a Bullet

[DigitalSorceress]

"""We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology"""

I'm thinking that this is not the flex they think it is, and that the EU dodged a bullet on this one