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Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

The top 33 "software and programming" companies by revenue in the world can be found below [0]. 28 of them are American. Two are in the EU. One is in the UK. One is in Australia. The last is Russian.

One of the companies in the EU produces enterprise software almost no one on this website uses (SAP). The other is Dassault.

In the US the top five companies are Microsoft, Oracle, ADP, Adobe, and Salesforce. If you include Alphabet and Amazon, well...

When the EU or Asia (non-China, I guess) can offer mature alternatives even remotely competitive with the American companies, I guess your strategy could work. Until then, no one is going to flock to Hetzner over AWS.

And I like Hetzner.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_software_c...

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I think you are conflating marked share with quality of offering.

Indeed there are viable local options for many of these things. Heck, the reason why European companies have so little relative marked share, is because they serve smaller, domestic, markets.

A Danish webshop provider probably has a better offering for a webshop for servicing the Danish market. It probably has better support for Danish accounting, better locale support etc.

Do Danes have unique server needs compared to the rest of the world?

Don’t strawman the parent post, they have already generalized US service dependency beyond OP, and there are already examples of local needs above:

> It probably has better support for Danish accounting, better locale support

That's an issue for the webshop service provider ;)

Yes, they speak Danish.

And Danish laws and Danish accounting systems and Danish gov agencies to maybe integrate with, etc

(Maybe more relevant for SaaS than servers though)

While the US sure is dominant, there are dozens of software companies larger than those in that list, e.g. Zoho has about $5B revenue, Baidu $11B, Tencent $23B, Accenture $41B, ...

The list employs some particular filters (e.g. SaaS seems to be excluded) and heavily emphasizes market cap over revenue.

I wouldn't consider Accenture a large software company. They do a lot of software "consultancy" (ie bodyshopping), but the nature of the consulting game plus their decentralized architecture (I've worked with Accenture, and the relationship between their different offices seems to be closer to co-franchisees than colleagues) means I wouldn't consider it a "big software company" (as in lots of people working on the same system/architecture

Yup they're not a big software company if you arbitrarily constrain the definition of software company.

I could argue Google is not a big software company (as in lots of people working with mismatching socks and propeller hats).

But that would be just as stupid.

What I mean is that the overwhelming majority of Accenture (or TCS, or Deloitte, or IBM Consulting, or Infosys, or any other bodyshop) employees aren’t building software for Accenture, they’re being hired out. So that’s why I don’t consider Accenture a “software” company

Would you consider Randstad to be a building company? They loan out hundreds of thousands of building contractors across the world

It doesn't matter anyway. Accenture is also an American company despite being incorporated in Ireland.

Baidu and Tencent are in China, hence why they were excluded from the discussion (since the poster specifically said US/China can't be trusted).

Accenture is American-Irish and listed on the NYSE. Subject to US jurisdiction from a national, not global level.

> One of the companies in the EU produces enterprise software almost no one on this website uses (SAP)

What? SAP is a huge software that is used in a lot of companies.

Correct. I'm also willing to bet the people on Hacker News are not typically in the circle of businesses that use SAP.

I'm willing to bet that they are.

Do you think there is a huge tendency towards Oracle, Infor or MS Dynamics rather than SAP across hacker news, or are you just assuming that people who go on hacker news aren't in the 'circle of companies' which need an ERP?

Most people on HN probably go work for companies that pay them the best compensation or offer them a good position, not based on what ERP they chose.

You underestimate the reach of SAP and overestimate the "SV-ness" of HN.

SAP Developer/Customer here.

Does that mean most people on HN work for companies either too small for or too competent to outsource an ERP system?

SAP user here... not that I liked it :)

Also, you should take into account that SAP the company is not just the ERP. It has acquired several big SaaS vendors in the past years (Ariba, SuccessFactors, Concur etc) so many of us may be touching SAP without even realizing it.

Both you and the person you replied to are right. They are not mutually exclusive points.

Famous example: MS Windows having a marketshare of 96% should not necessarily stop you from designing your business around linux.

Sure they are. Propose an EU or non-Chinese Asian alternative to AWS that is, say, 80% as efficient/effective. If that's not possible, then choosing AWS for your startup/scaling business is not the stupidest move you can make, assuming AWS fits your use case.

"MS Windows having a marketshare of 96% should not necessarily stop you from designing your business around linux"

But Windows doesn't have this kind of marketshare in most areas going forward? The #1 OS used worldwide is AndroidOS and no one is clamoring to write for it as far as I can tell.

I think you're missing the point. It's less a question of "can you find an alternative that is at least 80% as efficient", and more a question of "is this 20% bump in efficiency worth the liability risk".

Your opinion is 'yes'. OP's opinion is 'no'.

Both are valid opinions and highly depend on the nature of your business.

But, OP's somewhat un-american sentiment aside (which I believe is mostly what you're reacting to, rather than the general nature of their argument), I agree that erring on the side of caution and minimizing external liabilities should be on the top of the agenda for any company.

And this is aside from the whole "support local infrastructure and don't empower monopolies further" argument.

Maximizing the risk-adjusted returns on the business is the top of the agenda. Sometimes this means shedding risk, particularly at well established companies; sometimes this means embracing it, particularly at younger ones. If you don’t have revenue yet there’s little need to protect it.

I am not anti-american or anything like that.I even acknowledge american dominance in Tech and better conditions for skilled workers (read much higher salaries).

That said as a european I have to consider my interests and interests of my business.

Microsoft can't ban you from using Windows or developing software that runs under it.

Amazon can sure kick your company off its services.

For many startups AWS is a no-brainer, which makes life somewhat harder for anyone who wants to deal with Iran from EU (as long as EU allows it) and not be shut down on a US three-letter agency's request.

At this point it is kinda an open question whether using AWS/Azure/GCP for anything involving PII is even fully legal under EU/EFTA law. I know at least my employer is working towards having more options to jump ship at a moments notice these days.

I think EU/EFTA is large enough to enable the growth of at least one 80% offering given enough time. Or otherwise large enough as an economic bloc to force America to stricter legalisation so that they can use and depend on the American offerings.

You can use many of the products from the companies in the list (i.e. SAP, Adobe or Oracle) without risking all your data in a Kafkaesque ploy of sorts.

If you keep everything your business is at Amazon you better be prepared to Amazon booting you.

>Until then, no one is going to flock to Hetzner over AWS.

You don't need the market to flock to Hetzner or OVH to use it yourself and avoid US sanctions.

There are often subsidiaries that offer the same services, except everything is done in the EU, data storage, support, etc. Of course the US still has access because of compromised infra, but at least it's illegal now.

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