3 ms·

That arc of software history is recognizable to me. There are excellent devs all over and pretty much every large company has divisions with european offices wi

That arc of software history is recognizable to me. There are excellent devs all over and pretty much every large company has divisions with european offices with devs. There's something about the business of starting large software based enterprises that seems to work better in the us though. Also, I think China is coming for the us software industry's dominance. If they can figure out how to get around the worry of chinese govt access to external to china customers, chinese software companies could out compete the us, just like microsoft with windows beat out ibm maybe.

Slartie 8y ago
That "something" is the huge, relatively homogeneous, english-speaking and thus very "international-by-default" single market. It's the one and only actual moat that the US has over Europe when it comes to developing huge corporations in the winner-takes-all online markets. Everything else (like better VC situation, more attractive environment for international talent) is just a result of this original moat and would have just as well developed the other way round if this one advantage had been on the other side of the Atlantic.