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Comment by jakozaur | Hacker News Reader

As a European I wish EU would fight harder to create its own tech giants, rather than fight existing ones (e.g. Facebook, Microsoft, Google).

There might be some merit in better regulation privacy, data protection, natural monopolies in tech. However, so far regulations seems backwards (e.g. permissions to use cookie, VAT regulations). It would be awesome if more people at EU were a bit more tech savvy.

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Silicon Valley won't happen in Europe for the same reason it didn't happen in New York and East Coast. It's cultural. Europe should not compete with Silicon Valley by copying what's there. Europe should work on stuff that doesn't work in US e.g. Music Industry - very hostile in US, all unicorns are in Europe (Spotify, SoundCloud)

You mean other than Pandora, which is a successful, $4 billion company that has seen a massive revenue boom:

2012: $274m

2013: $427m

2014: $920m

Pandora is obviously not a unicorn because it's public, but counting Spotify as a start-up would be equally absurd, they're nine years old.

Good exception that proves the rule. Startup industry is order or magnitude bigger in US, normalize and then compare.

This might be the case but I don't think that is the main reason. In fact, Europe has many excellent universities. I believe one of the reasons that Europe is lacking IT giants is because investors are risk averse and they would rather invest in tangible industries. For example, in Switzerland which is ranked first in global innovation index [1] the IT industry is almost non-existing even though it has vibrant medical, food, financial industries.

Another reason in my opinion is the lack (or weakness) of military industrial complex. In the US many innovations are funded directly or indirectly with public money through military contractors and projects. (DARPA, Silicon Valley [2], Internet,...). Just by looking at patent portfolio of NSA you get a taste of technology transfer with public money to private sector.

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Innovation_Index

2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

EU is not a state with a single national mindset and identity - it's a bag of different countries with different fragmented cultures and languages. China has its Baidu and Qzone, and Russia has its Yandex and VK. All this in spite of the obvious lack of Silicon Valley analogs.

the US is a group of states that often times adopt completely different opinions, not sure your first point translates well.

What would be the incentive of majority of people flocking to EU services ?

Better privacy protection would pull in some users.

With an heavy emphasis on "some".

Yes, your local government controlling your communication channels will result in far better privacy than some remote government who doesn't care about you controlling it. /s

Better the devil you know?

Historically, doesn't seem to be true at all. Local law enforcement likely cares far more about prosecuting you individually and has far more means to do so, than some foreign national agency. Imagine if Twitter was based within one of those countries that had a major uprising. Would the locals still be as safe using it, as if it were based far beyond the control of their country?

Not really anything unknown about this situation. There are many obvious historical incidents.

Not in the slightest bit true.

The way the US bill of rights applies to non-citizens not residing in the US is complex, but considering how little the US courts care about the question, functionally we have no rights when dealing with the US government.

This is the lynchpin to things like seizing people passing through US airports and holding them indefinitely in Guantanamo bay.

At least my own government can't get away with treating me like a brick.

Parallel construction.

Depending on your threat model, the very fact that Facebook and google are non European companies IS the privacy advantage. ..on the other side most people fear tailored ads more than their omnipresent government agencies. That's why I think people will like it anyway.

better multilingual support.

EU as a geographic entity, or EU as a political organisation?

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