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Comment by rydre | Hacker News Reader

Good job Euros! Now you need to level up tech sector, get rid of the shackles of Google, Apple, Facebook. Your startups deserve better then the current, anti competitive and worse environment! Your companies could do much better, now is the time and make it happen.

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It’s never going to happen. We’re a completely decadent society, and we’re essentially out of the IT race at this point.

Well it's not even the right point to discuss. A lot of great software is developed in Europe (not necessarily by companies with European headquarters). But why should software companies be tied to a specific region. Great software can come from the US, Australia, Asia, Europe, ... Because in the end it comes from people and the entrance barrier gets lower and lower.

What you point to is probably more a question of finance and ownership.

People keep saying this while ignoring the local huge boring IT companies and local subsidiaries of US IT companies.

Does it really matter where the nameplate that indicates where the HQ is? Or does it matter where the profits are taken for tax purposes (Apple appears to be an Irish company, by that measure)? Or where the CEO and board members are domiciled? Where the actual staff sit when they work?

So what you're saying is, that as long as there are other places in the world, outside of Europe, that still have a regulatory/financial/mentality/etc framework where new large software corporations can appear and flourish (and then open offices in Europe), then it's all good for Europe. If so, doesn't that seem a bit hypocritical? To have tighter privacy regulations locally but then be happy to accept business/jobs from companies that exist _because_ of no such regulations in other places (or at the time they were established)?

Err some of us actually like Apple as at least they actually pretend to give a shit. Google and Facebook not so much.

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