5 ms·

Just a question, how many people actually benefit from a Google being in their particular country?

by dmoo 11y ago

dazc 11y ago
Google being in Ireland, for example, has likely had a big impact in terms of the local employment/economy but maybe not much else?
- FormFollowsFunc 11y ago
  I can't speak for Dublin where Google is based, but in Cork you have Apple's European headquarters. As a developer/Apple user you wouldn't know it was there. There isn't an Apple store in the country and all products are shipped/repaired from the UK. Since our taxes are higher and our public services worse than the UK (I used to live there) we're probably not getting a huge amount of corporate tax from the US multi-nationals but we are getting jobs which makes the politicians look good. Saying that, there are a lot of Range Rovers around, so those directly involved with the multi-nationals are getting rich though it's not really trickling down.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
I tried to cover this line of reasoning a bit in an other post in this thread. No deep analysis from me, but very briefly looking at ROI of Google's shareholders one can see it flows to investors worldwide, not the US in particular. Taxes then... very minimal, and are mostly redirected through a Dutch-Irish tax scheme anyway, EU probably profits more than the US. Employment, 50k or so, that's significant for sure. But 40% is outside the US, and compare it say to Walmart which employs literally a couple million, and you'll find tech companies in general don't make large dents in employment figures. As for actual services, there's barely any difference. A European benefits virtually the same from Google's products and services, albeit sometimes say the launch of the latest Nexus happens two weeks later in small European countries like the Netherlands. Mostly I'd say the benefits are related to generating and disseminating your own culture, more political/legal influence in worldwide companies, drawing talent to your country etc. These benefits are significant, but I don't think Europe has anything to be alarmed about. Tech here is great, lots of solid companies with billion dollar valuations, solid infrastructure, but fewer unicorns. And that's no surprise with the EU being, deep down, a fragmented market where the biggest first-language market is German which stands at 18% of the EU population. It's not easy to roll out companies that grow to hundreds of millions of people in Europe, if the biggest language that people speak as a first language is only spoken by 18% of the union. European talent with great ideas that aim very large tend to go English first, and then move to the US at the earliest signs of solid traction. Everyone else stays, and that's how you get lots of solid companies like Supercell with a few billion dollars valuation that are relatively small compared to a Facebook. That's not a bad thing.
- icebraining 11y ago
  I think the language issues are overplayed; translating the software is not expensive, and it's usually not very difficult to hire someone who can read and write in English, German and/or French. We are a <10 person startup, and yet we have customers that speak Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    Partially disagree. Certain customers/industries require very little localisation. e.g. a startup that sells cloud services to tech companies, can probably do business with virtually any tech company in Europe in English just fine, but this is a niche. I'm not sure if your startup fits that picture, but e.g. an online takeaway service where you can order food from restaurants in your neighborhood, in English, just won't cut it in France. My parents filter anything not Dutch, despite their English being more than sufficient. Language is important here. More importantly though, the reason I partially disagree is that language is just one thing. I'm using it as a proxy to show fragmentation in Europe, show differences in culture. Yes one can translate, but it's just one of various issues. Take Dublin for example, tons of tech companies are located there because of fiscal reasons, and you'll find sales teams for google, twitter, FB, Oracle etc etc... you have entire teams, localised. I've got friends working in the Dutch teams of these companies. They call Dutch customers, from Dublin, rerouted through a Dutch line so the customer sees a dutch phone number coming in. That's not because these companies love the diversity of these employees, but purely because that's how Europe still works, each country is unique and you can't interface with millions of regular people in their second/third language and expect to be successful. You don't call French people in English to do sales, in general. (of course, plenty of exceptions but they're still a minority). They've got these entire teams set up targetting countries individually because you usually can't do it any other way. Building these teams takes money, US companies can build US teams, decentralised somewhat, and reach a quarter billion people, then use that cashflow (or investment capital) to build European teams. European companies need to establish in a single market of 10-70m people, then use that cashflow or investment capital to do the same in other smaller EU markets. It's doable, which is why we see lots of successful companies worth a few billion. But scaling like that is slower, you have the odds to get acquired by a larger American (or Asian nowadays) venture earlier than scaling worldwide. It's like you have a school with 1000 kids, and 20 schools with 100 kids, all quite different and requiring their own approach and investment. 5 businesses start selling candy in one of the small schools and one starts in the big school. It's not a surprising outcome the business in the biggest school will likely scale the fastest, having only to implement 1 approach and getting tons of market exposure, and then has cashflow to acquire or outcompete the rest. Anyway language alone isn't everything, I was just using it as an example. Take something like lunch culture between the Netherlands, France and Spain. Completely different, running a startup in the lunch industry requires entirely different business approaches. The US has tons of internal diversity, but nothing quite like this. The EU is awesome, it's very flawed but I love the idea of the union and it's benefited me greatly, so far. But when talking about the EU in this context, compared to China or the US, we really mustn't gloss over the fact these are tens of very different mostly small markets with only some standardised elements. (some EU import/export stuff, the euro, SEPA etc...) I think this diversity plays a major role in company's ability to scale. I can't count the number of successful startups in say France, that then failed to establish properly in say Germany. Some American companies can bruteforce success because they already have large business at scale in the US to finance an adventure in Europe.
xiaoma 11y ago
China clearly believes so.
- icebraining 11y ago
  The Chinese government believes it's important to have a company that follows their rules. It doesn't necessarily follow that the people benefit from it.

Just a question, how many people actually benefit from a Google being in their particular country?

by dmoo 11y ago

Just a question, how many people actually benefit from a Google being in their particular country?

dazc 11y ago

Google being in Ireland, for example, has likely had a big impact in terms of the local employment/economy but maybe not much else?

FormFollowsFunc 11y ago
I can't speak for Dublin where Google is based, but in Cork you have Apple's European headquarters. As a developer/Apple user you wouldn't know it was there. There isn't an Apple store in the country and all products are shipped/repaired from the UK. Since our taxes are higher and our public services worse than the UK (I used to live there) we're probably not getting a huge amount of corporate tax from the US multi-nationals but we are getting jobs which makes the politicians look good. Saying that, there are a lot of Range Rovers around, so those directly involved with the multi-nationals are getting rich though it's not really trickling down.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

I tried to cover this line of reasoning a bit in an other post in this thread. No deep analysis from me, but very briefly looking at ROI of Google's shareholders one can see it flows to investors worldwide, not the US in particular. Taxes then... very minimal, and are mostly redirected through a Dutch-Irish tax scheme anyway, EU probably profits more than the US. Employment, 50k or so, that's significant for sure. But 40% is outside the US, and compare it say to Walmart which employs literally a couple million, and you'll find tech companies in general don't make large dents in employment figures. As for actual services, there's barely any difference. A European benefits virtually the same from Google's products and services, albeit sometimes say the launch of the latest Nexus happens two weeks later in small European countries like the Netherlands. Mostly I'd say the benefits are related to generating and disseminating your own culture, more political/legal influence in worldwide companies, drawing talent to your country etc. These benefits are significant, but I don't think Europe has anything to be alarmed about. Tech here is great, lots of solid companies with billion dollar valuations, solid infrastructure, but fewer unicorns. And that's no surprise with the EU being, deep down, a fragmented market where the biggest first-language market is German which stands at 18% of the EU population. It's not easy to roll out companies that grow to hundreds of millions of people in Europe, if the biggest language that people speak as a first language is only spoken by 18% of the union. European talent with great ideas that aim very large tend to go English first, and then move to the US at the earliest signs of solid traction. Everyone else stays, and that's how you get lots of solid companies like Supercell with a few billion dollars valuation that are relatively small compared to a Facebook. That's not a bad thing.

icebraining 11y ago
I think the language issues are overplayed; translating the software is not expensive, and it's usually not very difficult to hire someone who can read and write in English, German and/or French. We are a <10 person startup, and yet we have customers that speak Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Partially disagree. Certain customers/industries require very little localisation. e.g. a startup that sells cloud services to tech companies, can probably do business with virtually any tech company in Europe in English just fine, but this is a niche. I'm not sure if your startup fits that picture, but e.g. an online takeaway service where you can order food from restaurants in your neighborhood, in English, just won't cut it in France. My parents filter anything not Dutch, despite their English being more than sufficient. Language is important here. More importantly though, the reason I partially disagree is that language is just one thing. I'm using it as a proxy to show fragmentation in Europe, show differences in culture. Yes one can translate, but it's just one of various issues. Take Dublin for example, tons of tech companies are located there because of fiscal reasons, and you'll find sales teams for google, twitter, FB, Oracle etc etc... you have entire teams, localised. I've got friends working in the Dutch teams of these companies. They call Dutch customers, from Dublin, rerouted through a Dutch line so the customer sees a dutch phone number coming in. That's not because these companies love the diversity of these employees, but purely because that's how Europe still works, each country is unique and you can't interface with millions of regular people in their second/third language and expect to be successful. You don't call French people in English to do sales, in general. (of course, plenty of exceptions but they're still a minority). They've got these entire teams set up targetting countries individually because you usually can't do it any other way. Building these teams takes money, US companies can build US teams, decentralised somewhat, and reach a quarter billion people, then use that cashflow (or investment capital) to build European teams. European companies need to establish in a single market of 10-70m people, then use that cashflow or investment capital to do the same in other smaller EU markets. It's doable, which is why we see lots of successful companies worth a few billion. But scaling like that is slower, you have the odds to get acquired by a larger American (or Asian nowadays) venture earlier than scaling worldwide. It's like you have a school with 1000 kids, and 20 schools with 100 kids, all quite different and requiring their own approach and investment. 5 businesses start selling candy in one of the small schools and one starts in the big school. It's not a surprising outcome the business in the biggest school will likely scale the fastest, having only to implement 1 approach and getting tons of market exposure, and then has cashflow to acquire or outcompete the rest. Anyway language alone isn't everything, I was just using it as an example. Take something like lunch culture between the Netherlands, France and Spain. Completely different, running a startup in the lunch industry requires entirely different business approaches. The US has tons of internal diversity, but nothing quite like this. The EU is awesome, it's very flawed but I love the idea of the union and it's benefited me greatly, so far. But when talking about the EU in this context, compared to China or the US, we really mustn't gloss over the fact these are tens of very different mostly small markets with only some standardised elements. (some EU import/export stuff, the euro, SEPA etc...) I think this diversity plays a major role in company's ability to scale. I can't count the number of successful startups in say France, that then failed to establish properly in say Germany. Some American companies can bruteforce success because they already have large business at scale in the US to finance an adventure in Europe.

xiaoma 11y ago

China clearly believes so.

icebraining 11y ago
The Chinese government believes it's important to have a company that follows their rules. It doesn't necessarily follow that the people benefit from it.