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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

> One interesting thing is that Europeans benefit from American innovation. They have iphones, windows pcs, use google, etc like everyone else.

Until the iPhone, Europe dominated the mobile phone business both in handsets and wireless network equipment. And this wasn't just the manufacturers; texting was pretty heavy and ubiquitous in the mid 1990s while it was still a novelty for the US a decade later.

Europe was a significant player in the early PC revolution and other technologies ubiquitous today; consider, for example, that the ARM processor was developed in the UK.

There was an interesting discussion in the Economist that appeared in HN a week or so ago discussing how Europe has fallen behind economically over the last couple of decades. It's rather surprising.

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Another thing is that Europe didn't have any need for Paypal and others, because we already had working national bank transfer systems and SEPA for international transfers. The only time you'd need to cash a check was when you received a payment from USA.

> Europe was a significant player in the early PC revolution and other technologies ubiquitous today; consider, for example, that the ARM processor was developed in the UK.

And Minitel.

While laughed at today, it was a demonstration that people were willing to spend money online (and a working payment system).

Has regulation changed appreciably the last two or three decades resulting in less drive for innovation?

I don't think so; in particular I believe the strength of the European economy in the late 90s was merely hysteresis from the growth and investments of the 70s and 80s.

There is a certain structural "stiffness" which is a mix of regulation and culture but I don't believe it changed much. There was a big war in the middle of the 20th century that you might have heard of :-) and I feel like it upended things; poor countries like Sweden and Switzerland were able to spring ahead and the low energy point that the economy settled on was actually pretty solid for the second half of the 20th century: a resilient network of medium sized businesses with great socialization (the soi-disant "Mittelstand" of Germany is the most well known example). Unfortunately it didn't respond well to the global giants of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Thanks for the perspective; there might be something to what you said.

It makes me think that actually, the war had the same imposition of "stiffness" to all its biggest players. The US, Japan, the nascent EU and even the former Soviet Union all had a defined "place in the world" in the post-war order and followed more-or-less the same trajectory with their domestic economy. Gradually things started slipping, the Soviets being the obvious first to collapse, but everyone started running into some issues later in the 20th century and started kicking the can down the road to address them.

Countries outside of those great-power roles in the conflict didn't end up on the same timeline and so are landing in a different place today. Australia or Taiwan for example; both changed status and became markedly more independent.

> Until the iPhone, Europe dominated the mobile phone business

There was no such thing a "European domination", it was all Nokia, and to a much lesser extend Ericsson.

There is no such thing as "American innovation", it is all Apple, and to a lesser extent Google.

Are 95% (to be conservative) of the tech unicorns US-based ?

At this point, you can start drawing a trend. European successes are more the exception than the rule, which is kinda irrelevant anyway as 95% of European successes will end up being merged into a US behemoth...

Europe doesn't create Ubers because it doesn't have the capital. its not to do with innovation.

VC as a model requires huge markets and huge amounts of financing. It doesn't require home grown innovation.

Europe has enormous, deep pools of capital. The culture though is to fear loss rather than fear loss of upside. Capital is deployed differently in the US and China.

What does China has to do with the actual conversation ?

Merely that the US is not the only one with the eagerness to deploy capital at greater risk. Nothing more than that!

> Europe doesn't create Ubers because it doesn't have the capital. its not to do with innovation.

Europe has capital. You'll find a lot in Silicon Valley.

Siemens was there too before the Nokia domination.

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