SorryImLate

The next banking crisis will come with a struggling bank that can be bought.

I hope you’re wrong but time will tell.

Uh huh. I guess that depends on your definition of the word sell. In my view, making money by sharing my ad profile is selling my data. It might not be the raw, unprocessed data, but that doesn’t matter. No EU bank would be allowed to sell third-party ads on the web to their customers based on their personal profiles.

They also can’t “make their bank the default bank”. Unlike the digital world, the banking industry is very well established with lots of competition and money. The big banks have no motive to sell to big tech, and such a big transaction would draw a lot of attention. Anti-American sentiment is high in Europe. Does any bank really want to risk being in the headlines for allowing American tech companies in where regulators explicitly excluded them? Bank runs is how banks collapse.

Buying a bank would only give them access to their own client’s data, plus they would be subject to the stringent regulatory requirements of the banking industry. Banks have their faults but data privacy and security is not one of them.

They released their roadmap a few days ago.

Agreed, their site offers much more than just a simple listing. It is so tedious to have to navigate multiple different websites, trying to find the relevant information. Having a single, straightforward, centralised source showing availability, options and prices was amazing when they first started. Hotels have improved their online presence a lot in the last 20 years, but being able to filter consistently for detailed parameters is still valuable, as are their reviews.

I just wish they had stuck with their core business; I don’t want to be offered insurance or car rental or any of the rest of it :/