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Comment by alexgmcm | Hacker News Reader

> why is there substantially less innovation in Europe?

I know people who started start-ups and spun out side projects here in Europe (both the UK and the continent).

One thing I noticed was that when it came time to raise money almost of all of them ended up needing American investment. We don't have anywhere near as much VC capital here in Europe and the banks are incredibly conservative.

Plus depending on the country the taxes/fees for being self-employed or starting your own business can be incredibly punitive.

> One interesting thing is that Europeans benefit from American innovation.

While we do benefit from American innovation I'd also argue it's a sort of 'digital colonialism' for want of a better term - we don't grow our own huge firms like Yandex, Baidu etc. and instead just hand our cash over to American ones (Google, Facebook etc.)

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> I'd also argue it's a sort of 'digital colonialism' for want of a better term

I think that’s a terrible term for it unless you think that America is somehow responsible for preventing Europe from developing its own tech industries.

But US Big Tech does affect at a global scale. What are the chances of a country developing their own search engine?

Their own mobile OS and hardware?

Their own social networking app?

What are you talking about?

Lots of countries have their own social networking apps. Some have their own search engines.

Also, quite a few countries have strong computer science schools and developers.

Linux was developed in Finland. Raspberry PI was developed in England.

“Big tech” isn’t preventing them from developing anything. The only thing holding these countries back is their business culture.

> Linux was developed in Finland.

I'd say that Linux kernel was developed by an international network of hackers with a Finnish leader, and benefited a lot from GNU userland. If you want more Finnish operating system, try Jolla. There was a lot of Finnish contribution to Series 60 too, but it's kind of awful.

> I'd say that Linux kernel was developed by an international network of hackers with a Finnish leader, and benefited a lot from GNU userland.

Linus did quite a bit before the network of hackers joined in. But I don’t disagree with you. My main point is that the US, and big American tech companies don’t have a monopoly on talent.

Not monopoly, but they do pay well and let developers do things, and those two things attract talent. AFAIK it used to be really uncommon in European companies to have advanced career path for engineering, and switching to management is still kind of expected.

> it used to be really uncommon in European companies to have advanced career path for engineering, and switching to management is still kind of expected.

That matches my experience. It concurs with the statement I made elsewhere in this thread that what is holding Europe back is its business culture, not some kind of American Colonialism.

Not purposely, but the dominance of American tech does make it almost impossible for European competitors to arise. That's why the Chinese are hesitant about US tech.

> does make it almost impossible for European competitors to arise.

There is literally evidence for this. It’s only a business culture that doesn’t celebrate and reward engineering that holds Europe back.

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