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> If Europe wants to have its citizens (and companies) rely significantly on European-operated software, it has no choice but to develop better software, NEVER

> If Europe wants to have its citizens (and companies) rely significantly on European-operated software, it has no choice but to develop better software, NEVER in my 30+ years as a user of computer networks or communication programs I have seen the "better software" win. It has always been the most marketing, the most shady ethics, or anything else that lead to the strongest network effect.

pjc50 5y ago
Following this, I think it might be instructive to ask what happened to EU tech successes that have failed. Nokia and the famous "burning platform", for example. Was it the case that natural market competition leads to there being only room for two phone OSs? And a far more controversial question: would it be allowed? Or would a successful European world-dominating quasi-monopoly on the FAANG scale get banned from the US market? We've seen twitches in that direction (remember the "Tiktok will be forced to sell to Oracle" nonsense?). Or in the aerospace market, things like https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/26/bombardier-us-tariffs-imports-uk-trump-jobs-belfast https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/26/bombardier-... or https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32542140 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32542140 ; Boeing vs Airbus shenanigans go back a long way. I found out the other day that one of the UK's longstanding tech companies collapsed after accidentally buying a CIA front organization for illegal arms sales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti#Collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti#Collapse Or ARM: are they an "EU" tech success any more? As their ownership is passed from Japanese Softbank to US NVIDIA.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Or ARM: are they an "EU" tech success any more? Even if they stay where they are they're not in the EU any longer anyway!
- DrBazza 5y ago
  The UK government have blocked the sale to nvidia as far as I know. Whether that means it is being brought back to the UK, I don't know. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56804007 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56804007
- thu2111 5y ago
  For ARM it was already deeply ambiguous because their CPU design teams are these days in Austin, Texas. Obviously a lot of staff are still in the UK but AFAIK the actual CPU design no longer is.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
Google vs. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves etc. After it was basically the winner it brought in marketing, shady ethics and everything else to keep growing.
- jan_Inkepa 5y ago
  Just to be clear, you're listing Google as a counterexample, as a piece of software that was good rather than just marketed as such, right? [ I would accept it as a counterexample. ]
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    yes.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    Perhaps people do not remember what using search engines in the 90s was like; statistically, there are a huge number of current software engineers who never did, and a largish number who were not even born when Google Search launched.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      sure, but perhaps the same is true for a lot of products that nowadays we think are not necessarily that good but only marketed as such. At any rate the original parent said that good has never won out, and I think there is still a larger number of people on HN than not that can remember at least one software product that was better. on edit: I mean there seems to be a large number of people of the opinion, and I concur, that Google now is not as good as the Google of a decade ago. This is part of the reason why I think that many products we think of as bad might actually have been very good at the time that they gained their initial success.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    At the beginning Google was pretty much technically better than yahoo (and even Altavista, which I would argue was the "technical" leader). It also solved search for that era; you really could find anything on google, and easily, so it was a better product too. The definition of "better software" is vague. Does it mean technically better? Better product? Easier to use? Ethical? Probably have to ask GP for clarifcation on that.
DrBazza 5y ago
> If Europe wants to have its citizens (and companies) rely significantly on European-operated software, it has no choice but to develop better software, Europe is at a permanent disadvantage with language. You either target your local market in your local language, or you do English first. If you do English first, your market isn't even in your home country. Even culturally England and the USA (and AUS/NZ) are a bit different to France, Germany, Sweden and so on. Only one "European" success I can think of whilst typing this: Spotify (anglo-swedish). America on the other hand has access to a literally flood of venture capital money.
- varjag 5y ago
  Skype. And really, i18n is a minor issue.
  - Chiron1991 5y ago
    From a technical perspective, yes. Most frameworks worth their salt provide good-enough mechanisms for that. Where i18n becomes nasty is when you have to find, evaluate and constantly coordinate with n external translation agencies. Working from Germany on an international product, this is a nightmare. From a technical standpoint we can release features within a minute thanks to our CI/CD setup, but as soon as some user-facing text is affected we have to hold changed back until all translations were collected.
  - DrBazza 5y ago
    Agreed, but i18n of your software isn't really what I'm talking about. There's other things like GDPR, local taxation, many cross border laws, and by culture I mean a variety of things: you'll see university graduates flogging themselves to death in Silicon Valley, but a start up in London will be slightly more relaxed by comparison. In the US, "free VC money" means there's an incentive to get to market asap, monetize, and move on. That doesn't really exist in Europe.
    - varjag 5y ago
      Fortunately most of the above mentioned is harmonized in the EU. Culture is a fair point, but I suspect much of it is chicken and egg problem. Thin VC money, less lively M&A market, fewer reasons for gold rush.
dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
Interestingly, in FLOSS the opposite is true.
arp242 5y ago
I do agree this is an important factor, but there are various well-known counter examples, so "NEVER" seems far too strong. Google was significantly better than anything else at the time, and in spite of the problems with Google, its search result are still quite a bit better than most others I've tried. GitHub was a huge improvement over anything that came before it, and after a review of alternatives some months ago it still clearly is the best product IMO. Internet Explorer was a lot better than Netscape. Yes, it was a mess, but Netscape was an even bigger mess. There are probably other examples.

pjc50 5y ago

Following this, I think it might be instructive to ask what happened to EU tech successes that have failed. Nokia and the famous "burning platform", for example. Was it the case that natural market competition leads to there being only room for two phone OSs? And a far more controversial question: would it be allowed? Or would a successful European world-dominating quasi-monopoly on the FAANG scale get banned from the US market? We've seen twitches in that direction (remember the "Tiktok will be forced to sell to Oracle" nonsense?). Or in the aerospace market, things like https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/26/bombardier-us-tariffs-imports-uk-trump-jobs-belfast https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/26/bombardier-... or https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32542140 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32542140 ; Boeing vs Airbus shenanigans go back a long way. I found out the other day that one of the UK's longstanding tech companies collapsed after accidentally buying a CIA front organization for illegal arms sales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti#Collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti#Collapse Or ARM: are they an "EU" tech success any more? As their ownership is passed from Japanese Softbank to US NVIDIA.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> Or ARM: are they an "EU" tech success any more? Even if they stay where they are they're not in the EU any longer anyway!
DrBazza 5y ago
The UK government have blocked the sale to nvidia as far as I know. Whether that means it is being brought back to the UK, I don't know. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56804007 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56804007
thu2111 5y ago
For ARM it was already deeply ambiguous because their CPU design teams are these days in Austin, Texas. Obviously a lot of staff are still in the UK but AFAIK the actual CPU design no longer is.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

Google vs. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves etc. After it was basically the winner it brought in marketing, shady ethics and everything else to keep growing.

jan_Inkepa 5y ago
Just to be clear, you're listing Google as a counterexample, as a piece of software that was good rather than just marketed as such, right? [ I would accept it as a counterexample. ]
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  yes.
- thrower123 5y ago
  Perhaps people do not remember what using search engines in the 90s was like; statistically, there are a huge number of current software engineers who never did, and a largish number who were not even born when Google Search launched.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    sure, but perhaps the same is true for a lot of products that nowadays we think are not necessarily that good but only marketed as such. At any rate the original parent said that good has never won out, and I think there is still a larger number of people on HN than not that can remember at least one software product that was better. on edit: I mean there seems to be a large number of people of the opinion, and I concur, that Google now is not as good as the Google of a decade ago. This is part of the reason why I think that many products we think of as bad might actually have been very good at the time that they gained their initial success.
- dnautics 5y ago
  At the beginning Google was pretty much technically better than yahoo (and even Altavista, which I would argue was the "technical" leader). It also solved search for that era; you really could find anything on google, and easily, so it was a better product too. The definition of "better software" is vague. Does it mean technically better? Better product? Easier to use? Ethical? Probably have to ask GP for clarifcation on that.

DrBazza 5y ago

> If Europe wants to have its citizens (and companies) rely significantly on European-operated software, it has no choice but to develop better software, Europe is at a permanent disadvantage with language. You either target your local market in your local language, or you do English first. If you do English first, your market isn't even in your home country. Even culturally England and the USA (and AUS/NZ) are a bit different to France, Germany, Sweden and so on. Only one "European" success I can think of whilst typing this: Spotify (anglo-swedish). America on the other hand has access to a literally flood of venture capital money.

varjag 5y ago
Skype. And really, i18n is a minor issue.
- Chiron1991 5y ago
  From a technical perspective, yes. Most frameworks worth their salt provide good-enough mechanisms for that. Where i18n becomes nasty is when you have to find, evaluate and constantly coordinate with n external translation agencies. Working from Germany on an international product, this is a nightmare. From a technical standpoint we can release features within a minute thanks to our CI/CD setup, but as soon as some user-facing text is affected we have to hold changed back until all translations were collected.
- DrBazza 5y ago
  Agreed, but i18n of your software isn't really what I'm talking about. There's other things like GDPR, local taxation, many cross border laws, and by culture I mean a variety of things: you'll see university graduates flogging themselves to death in Silicon Valley, but a start up in London will be slightly more relaxed by comparison. In the US, "free VC money" means there's an incentive to get to market asap, monetize, and move on. That doesn't really exist in Europe.
  - varjag 5y ago
    Fortunately most of the above mentioned is harmonized in the EU. Culture is a fair point, but I suspect much of it is chicken and egg problem. Thin VC money, less lively M&A market, fewer reasons for gold rush.

dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago

Interestingly, in FLOSS the opposite is true.

arp242 5y ago

I do agree this is an important factor, but there are various well-known counter examples, so "NEVER" seems far too strong. Google was significantly better than anything else at the time, and in spite of the problems with Google, its search result are still quite a bit better than most others I've tried. GitHub was a huge improvement over anything that came before it, and after a review of alternatives some months ago it still clearly is the best product IMO. Internet Explorer was a lot better than Netscape. Yes, it was a mess, but Netscape was an even bigger mess. There are probably other examples.