> By their CEO's own admission, Ford sees itself as a "data company":
The linked article quotes the CEO, "Overall, when you look at our business, we're not only a car manufacturing company. We are a technology company. As our vehicles become part of the Internet of things and as consumers give permission to us to collect that data, we'll also become an information company."
That's marketing related to the IoT buzzword. Next week they might talk about using blockchain. The other part of the statement is that they are a "data company," because they can sell information about their customers.
The words from the CEO are the same words from a data analyst, but they each mean something entirely different.
Margins for car companies are shit. Why would anyone invest in a race to the bottom high marginal cost company when differentiated zero marginal cost companies exist? And what if we just told everyone we were the latter?
It means they figured that monetizing the data they collect on people driving their cars will bring them more cash than selling the cars themselves. The same way electronics manufacturer have doubled their profits on "smart" TV sets over a few years by feeding advertisers knowledge about what you're watching, and when, so you can be targeted more precisely in future ad campaigns.
Have you heard of those small companies called Google and Facebook? Care to compare their market cap with Ford's lately? Do you really think they're worth that much because of their quick web search and easy friend-finding?
lol silly why would you think they use data to make business choices. They make the choices then make data to justify said choices. That’s how legacy companies do it
> Most people in Europe don’t want to leave.
I believe they're saying if European tech companies want to compete in business with US tech companies they need to pay their engineers more money.