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> Europe is always fretting about how they need to create their own Silicon Valley but it's easy to do, kick out the Americans! You'll have your own Baidu, Tenc

by donkeyd 11y ago

> Europe is always fretting about how they need to create their own Silicon Valley but it's easy to do, kick out the Americans! You'll have your own Baidu, Tencent and Alibabas in no time. People seem to forget that Europe is not a country. Europe does not have a single uniting language. What happens, is that every country starts their own smaller versions and they stay mostly within that country. If they want to move to another country, there's often already a major player there, and they might not have the means to kick them out. I think the reason that silicon valley is so powerful, is that the initial market is 325 million people who all speak the same language. Once you get the US market, you have the size, name and means to easily start conquering European countries. It's always about scale...

richmarr 11y ago
I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.
- Kurtz79 11y ago
  You are unsing a very specific example do draw a very far-reaching conclusion. The only fact that the there are some 20 different languages makes the EU a much less omogeneous market than the US. This withouth considering that each country has its own employment policies, social security services, healthcare system, education system, revenue service... I'm strongly pro-union, but it's far from perfect, or even efficient, in the current state.
  - richmarr 11y ago
    > You are unsing a very specific example do draw a very far-reaching conclusion. No, I don't think "in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market" is far-reaching at all, especially when accompanied by a concrete example.
- mrweasel 11y ago
  We need to register a company in each EU country we want to ship stuff to, otherwise we would quickly hit the sales tax limits in each country. From our perspective the EU common marked is pretty much just a pipe dream. Being able to start a business in one EU country and just automatically have access to all of the 500million EU citizens would be awesome, but right now that not how it works.
  - Vespasian 11y ago
    Just out of curiosity why do you need to register a company in every country (assuming you are US based since there is no sales tax in the EU anywhere ;) ). I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data (e.g. the customers country)? Or do you mean that you have to pay VAT at all if you do this? In this case your problem is more political and about the concept of VAT in general. I mean almost any EU country had it for a long time. It sucks that there are huge differences when it comes to the exact amount but the concept itself is nothing new.
    - mrweasel 11y ago
      >I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data I think that only works if you have limited business, but I'm not sure. I believe the problem is that we're in a country with 25% VAT, but if we want to charge our German customer only 19%, we need to do that via a German company, otherwise we would have to charge them the 25%, leaving us uncompetitive (6% is more than our entire profit for some products).
      - tajen 11y ago
        I'm not sure whether you have the best information available. VAT/GST must be paid depending on the country of the customer, through a form, and doesn't require a local company. The location of the company doesn't matter and we have an EU-wide VAT identifier. http://www.happybootstrapper.com/2014/im-us-whatll-happen-just-ignore-eu-vat-changes/ http://www.happybootstrapper.com/2014/im-us-whatll-happen-ju...
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Problem is that those standards (GSM was another) isn't solving how to run a business in different countries with different consumers, different rulesets etc.
- flexie 11y ago
  In very few ways Europe is a homogenous market, and certainly not in the search business or e-commerce. French search in French, Germans in German, Danes in Danish, Spaniards in Spanish, Italians in Italian, Dutch in Dutch etc. Then, if your local language doesn't give you good results, you default to English. Online shopping is mostly a local thing with Amazon as the prominent exception. Even in the market for plane tickets local websites dominate, meaning that a French person travelling from Paris to Berlin is likely to use a different website than a German guy travelling from Berlin to France. Again, the exceptions seem to be mostly American. European countries even have their own payment solutions.
  - rogeryu 11y ago
    > French search in French, Germans in German, Danes in Danish, Spaniards in Spanish, Italians in Italian, Dutch in Dutch etc. Then, if your local language doesn't give you good results, you default to English. So how is this different from the current situation with Google dominating the market? Google works in French, German, Dutch, Spanish etc! You only need one company in based one country and they can work in all languages. And if they grow big, they setup offices in different countries, for country specific or language specific searching.
    - iopq 11y ago
      But it doesn't work with Russian or Ukrainian that well. A few reasons: 1. Slavic languages have heavy inflection. If Google doesn't understand all the possible forms of a word, it will give you poor results until you search again by changing your query slightly. 2. Google doesn't understand common synonyms, so it doesn't give results that contain synonyms. 3. Russian websites may not care about google rank as much as Yandex, so they might not even be indexed. I don't know how, but there are thousands of websites I can find by searching Yandex for a certain thing that will not be on Google. It may be those three things combined, or other factors I didn't think of.
- hessenwolf 11y ago
  Ha ha. Good one. In theory, yes. In practice, they don't for many reasons. Cross border business is still hella complex for insurance in Europe. Source: People pay me to do that stuff.

by donkeyd 11y ago

richmarr 11y ago

I think this view is one-sided Despite having many different languages, in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market than the US. For example, an insurance business can operate freely across Europe with only one small piece of additional paperwork. I think it's actually an A4 piece of paper. In the US they'd have to be regulated separately by nearly every state.

Kurtz79 11y ago
You are unsing a very specific example do draw a very far-reaching conclusion. The only fact that the there are some 20 different languages makes the EU a much less omogeneous market than the US. This withouth considering that each country has its own employment policies, social security services, healthcare system, education system, revenue service... I'm strongly pro-union, but it's far from perfect, or even efficient, in the current state.
- richmarr 11y ago
  > You are unsing a very specific example do draw a very far-reaching conclusion. No, I don't think "in some ways Europe is a more homogenous market" is far-reaching at all, especially when accompanied by a concrete example.
mrweasel 11y ago
We need to register a company in each EU country we want to ship stuff to, otherwise we would quickly hit the sales tax limits in each country. From our perspective the EU common marked is pretty much just a pipe dream. Being able to start a business in one EU country and just automatically have access to all of the 500million EU citizens would be awesome, but right now that not how it works.
- Vespasian 11y ago
  Just out of curiosity why do you need to register a company in every country (assuming you are US based since there is no sales tax in the EU anywhere ;) ). I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data (e.g. the customers country)? Or do you mean that you have to pay VAT at all if you do this? In this case your problem is more political and about the concept of VAT in general. I mean almost any EU country had it for a long time. It sucks that there are huge differences when it comes to the exact amount but the concept itself is nothing new.
  - mrweasel 11y ago
    >I haven't done it but isn't the thing with the new VAT regulations that you can pay your taxes to one revenue service (and just register with one) and they will divide it according to your sales data I think that only works if you have limited business, but I'm not sure. I believe the problem is that we're in a country with 25% VAT, but if we want to charge our German customer only 19%, we need to do that via a German company, otherwise we would have to charge them the 25%, leaving us uncompetitive (6% is more than our entire profit for some products).
    - tajen 11y ago
      I'm not sure whether you have the best information available. VAT/GST must be paid depending on the country of the customer, through a form, and doesn't require a local company. The location of the company doesn't matter and we have an EU-wide VAT identifier. http://www.happybootstrapper.com/2014/im-us-whatll-happen-just-ignore-eu-vat-changes/ http://www.happybootstrapper.com/2014/im-us-whatll-happen-ju...
ThomPete 11y ago
Problem is that those standards (GSM was another) isn't solving how to run a business in different countries with different consumers, different rulesets etc.
flexie 11y ago
In very few ways Europe is a homogenous market, and certainly not in the search business or e-commerce. French search in French, Germans in German, Danes in Danish, Spaniards in Spanish, Italians in Italian, Dutch in Dutch etc. Then, if your local language doesn't give you good results, you default to English. Online shopping is mostly a local thing with Amazon as the prominent exception. Even in the market for plane tickets local websites dominate, meaning that a French person travelling from Paris to Berlin is likely to use a different website than a German guy travelling from Berlin to France. Again, the exceptions seem to be mostly American. European countries even have their own payment solutions.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  > French search in French, Germans in German, Danes in Danish, Spaniards in Spanish, Italians in Italian, Dutch in Dutch etc. Then, if your local language doesn't give you good results, you default to English. So how is this different from the current situation with Google dominating the market? Google works in French, German, Dutch, Spanish etc! You only need one company in based one country and they can work in all languages. And if they grow big, they setup offices in different countries, for country specific or language specific searching.
  - iopq 11y ago
    But it doesn't work with Russian or Ukrainian that well. A few reasons: 1. Slavic languages have heavy inflection. If Google doesn't understand all the possible forms of a word, it will give you poor results until you search again by changing your query slightly. 2. Google doesn't understand common synonyms, so it doesn't give results that contain synonyms. 3. Russian websites may not care about google rank as much as Yandex, so they might not even be indexed. I don't know how, but there are thousands of websites I can find by searching Yandex for a certain thing that will not be on Google. It may be those three things combined, or other factors I didn't think of.
hessenwolf 11y ago
Ha ha. Good one. In theory, yes. In practice, they don't for many reasons. Cross border business is still hella complex for insurance in Europe. Source: People pay me to do that stuff.