I feel like I'm being contrarian, but I don't see how your points aren't overshadowed by other factors. 1. Russia, China, India and other markets that to some

I feel like I'm being contrarian, but I don't see how your points aren't overshadowed by other factors. 1. Russia, China, India and other markets that to some extent have "their own Google" are completely horrible in terms of running companies. Much more so than Europe. The US is no dream in terms of e.g. declaring taxes either. I think this has more to do with attitude than anything else. US companies simply hire someone to do this. 2. That would explain why people doesn't start companies, if Europe didn't already have many successful technology companies. It offers little explanation why those companies doesn't go on to become "Googles". 3. I do somewhat agree with this one. Because while the technology industry do pay good salaries in Europe startups usually doesn't even though they are in high cost markets. I'm not sure this is actually that different from the US though. There are huge incentives for "the best" programmers to work at Apple/Google/Facebook where they have higher salary and relative job security, especially if the want to keep up with the housing market. I would say that that almost they entire reason why Europe doesn't "have a Google" is because we are part of the US market. All our contenders in the early days used to be domestic. Once we realized that we had to be global US companies bought those that were successful. Skype, for example, could have become a Google if it had been forced to stand on it's own or been acquired by a local company like Ericsson. Rather it was built to be sold and was to Microsoft.