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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

> a nation investing in itself is definitely something we need more of

It's always made me curious why foreign governments allow their critical technical infrastructure to come from other nations - even friendly ones. It seems like something you obviously cannot allow yourself to become dependent on for a vast number of reasons.

Yes, the EU and it's member nations should invest heavily in their own domestic technical companies and capabilities.

However, I suspect part of the reason there is no present-day "FAANG" in the EU is in no small part due to their relatively anti-business/startup policies, which while well-intentioned, obviously have had a tangible impact on their tech business field.

Maybe some technical founders in the EU can chime in on some of the challenges they face when building within the EU versus the US.

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> It's always made me curious why foreign governments allow their critical technical infrastructure to come from other nations

That was part of "end of history" politics, that we've reached a stable democratic state nothing particularly revolutionary is going to happen, just steady prosperous growth. Once upon a time it was possible to believe that, however unlikely it seems nowadays.

> no present-day "FAANG" in the EU is in no small part due to their relatively anti-business/startup policies

Draghi's report claimed a big factor was the lack of a true financial union, which made it hard to mobilize and raise capital.

There used to be more cross border banking until the Eurozone crisis exposed the structural flaw that under the regulations back then (and probably still currently) national regulators were responsible for bailing out headquartered banks, so you had small countries like Cyprus going belly-up because they had to bail out large cross-border banks.

VC markets are definitely not cross-border in practice.

I have it directly from European CTO’s and founders that in Europe every country is its own market — not just rules and regulations, but culturally — significantly affecting consumer behavior.

In the US a launch is a launch into a market in excess of 300M potential customers, in EU you have to lather-rinse-repeat 27 times

Until recently, the United States was seen as a reliable friend. So the benefits of aggregation from a cost and interoperability perspective outweighed the risk.

Now, the US is going in a direction that makes it increasingly risky. I think we’ll see global companies diversifying outside of the US in addition to governments.

EU member nations have been attempting to diversify for as long as the EU has existed. Germany famously went down the Linux Workstation path and eventually gave up, instead of applying adequate resources to build a competing product.

There's no reason these things cannot succeed. Apple pulled it off with MacOS (built on BSD). It's just attention span, resources, regulations and the political will.

It's much easier to just buy Microsoft and hope for the best.

I think a big big reason for that there is no Big tech companies in Europe is really that the landscape is so much more diverse then in the US.

If you are big in one state in the US. You have the same lang and most likely the same regulations. In Europe its so many languages and its no more likely that we choose a company from another country in the EU vs the US.

I think that is not true for the US. So its easier to get big in the US, and then you are so big its actually likely the a company in the EU would choose you. Maybe not over another company from the same country (everything else beeing equal), but over a company from another country in the EU/Europe

> founders in the EU can chime in on some of the challenges they face when building within the EU versus the US.

the answer is very simple, raising capital. It has nothing to do with regulations, filling out paperwork in Germany is annoying but doesn't stop you, not having money or a market does.

Internal barriers of trade in the EU, the heterogenity of the countries and users and the lack of a deep financial sector across the union is what does most businesses in.

globalism

the idea that forming a tight reciprocal network of economic dependency will prevent petty politics and align everyone towards cooperation, or starving.

it seemed like a good idea but now its seeming more and more like an economic version of bismarck's pre-WW1 "balance of power" strategy.

why did that fail to prevent WW1? my guess is that its an unstable equilibrium in the short term, a prisoners dilemma where, in the short term, one party can benefit more from betrayal than from cooperation.

why do humans tend to go for the short term gain of betrayal versus the long term gain of cooperation? idk, but it seems intrinsic to us because i think the "thrown out of eden" parable is folk wisdom about this same thing

Sure but you can ask that at different scales, in a reductio ad absurdum: Why should EU use American tech company? But also why should Germany use French tech company? Why should one region of France use tech company from other region? Why should one person use tech from another person?

> anti-business/startup policies

Which ones, exactly? I heard this phrase tossed around but on close examination it always turns out it something related to protecting the citizen. Which I believe, is a conscious choice on this side of the ocean.

> It's always made me curious why foreign governments allow their critical technical infrastructure to come from other nations - even friendly ones

Cost and quality. Economies of scale and comparative advantage mean you can usually buy something better for cheaper from the specialists versus NBH’ing everything.

The EU didn’t even exist by the time the last FAANG company was founded, Apple predates the fall of the iron curtain, so I doubt the EU is to blame for this (especially because Europe dominates in markets where integration has been going on for longer such a precision manufacturing)

It depends how big you are. If you're the UK or France or Germany, then sure, it makes sense (but you still have less scale than the US). If you're Luxembourg or Macedonia then you probably dont have the resources and at least need to collaborate with your neighbours.

because other nations don't have same capabilities or resources

same like US not producing their own food and equipment

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