Microsoft's president said a UK watchdog's move to block its Activision deal was 'bad for Britain.'
Despite months of lobbying and negotiation, the UK's competition regulator ruled yesterday that the tech firm should not complete its proposed multi-billion dollar purchase of the games maker Activision Blizzard. It would have cemented Microsoft's status as a video game uber-giant.
Britain has a long history of being good at tech innovation. Radio, the telephone, the Enigma World War 2 code-breaking machine, Dolby surround sound, the World Wide Web - all UK-based inventions.I've been to the unkindly nicknamed Silicon Roundabout tech hub in east London, and the beautifully titled Silicon Glen in Scotland.
Some of them manage it. Sometimes the giant in question only actually wants a small part of the firm's intellectual property and winds the rest of it down at the earliest opportunity. That is of course not unique to either tech or the UK.
Of course to an extent the same is true worldwide. For every Meta, there are thousands, maybe even millions of failed start-ups which burned through their funding and couldn't make it work. The government has introduced fairly light regulation for AI so far - stricter than the US but less strict than Europe - in the hope of allowing businesses to thrive.
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