8 ms·

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble that people still celebrate as a win.

petcat 11mo ago
EU is in a really tough situation. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while also facing a belligerent Russia on their eastern borders. And their internal politics and governance makes it very difficult to align in a direction that could enable them to start digging out of so much globalized dependence.
- js8 11mo ago
  Yes. Unfortunately, the EU institutions have been designed during heyday of globalization and neoliberalism. So they are unable to adapt to (or even recognize) the end of it.
  - p2detar 11mo ago
    Oh, it’s very well recognized. You can check the Mario Draghi report or even recent comments by ECB‘s Christine Legarde. I think it’s mostly reluctance to make big structural changes that seems to be the issue right now.
    - js8 11mo ago
      But when Draghi wrote his report, he was leaving the power structures. It will probably slowly change, but the neoliberal hegemony is still there. I think the big issue is that all European elites have investments in the USA, and they don't have reason to pick EU over USA for investing. So there is nothing compelling them to voluntary worsen the relations.
- seanieb 11mo ago
  A recent analysis of the Trump Tarrifs on the EU concluded that while “some regions and industries could suffer”, for Europe overall the hit may be “limited but not negligible. The EU is quietly investing massively in diversifying away from the US market. there are trade negotiations or agreements in process (or being advanced) with countries/regions including India, the countries of the Mercosur bloc, Mexico, and Middle-East countries.
  - nxm 11mo ago
    If that was so easy to do then they would have done it already years ago
    - bigfudge 11mo ago
      European defence spending is going to be much less transatlantic than it would have been were it not for Trump. Some of this is about mindshift. We could have avoided us defence contractor tie in before, but we don’t see the need. Now we do.
    - seanieb 11mo ago
      The economics have changed, and now it's worth their time. It's a priority for economic and political reasons. The Trump Tariffs and the US's policies towards Ukraine, and questionable commitment to NATO highlighted the dependencies and exposed the EU is to Trumps corrosive tactics.
bojan 11mo ago
"Europe" is, unlike the US, not a single entity. Yes, we have European Union which helps a lot, but it is not complete (and certainly wasn't in the time when Microsofts and Googles of this world started), making that all-important initial scaling way more difficult than it is in the US.
- saubeidl 11mo ago
  > "Europe" is, unlike the US, not a single entity It really needs to be, though, that's kind of the crux of it. Federate or die off, it's time to get rid of old tribal thinking. We're all Europeans.
  - martijnvds 11mo ago
    Tell that to the right-wing nutjobs who all want their "<country code>XIT"
  - AllegedAlec 11mo ago
    Please god no.
  - ramon156 11mo ago
    I can't fathom why you would give one parlement all the power. This is the root issue of America right now, individual states have less and less power every year.
    - bojan 11mo ago
      Otherwise you get an economy stifling patchwork of regulations, which is what we have within the EU now. Further, it'd probably be two Chambers, and we have proportional representation, which should make a slide to fascism a bit more difficult.
    - concinds 11mo ago
      America is already a country. The EU isn't. You could give the EU a metric ton more power and they'd still be more decentralized than the halcyon days of the US that you reference.
SunshineTheCat 11mo ago
It feels like an emphasis has been placed more on legislating or policing what other people make rather than making anything of value themselves (as far as tech goes). Being a barnacle on the side of a boat might be a nice free ride for a while until it goes somewhere you don't want to.
- amarant 11mo ago
  I feel like this sentiment comes at least partially from American companies(especially Microsoft) habit of buying successful European tech companies, making people believe they're American and not European. There is plenty of European tech success stories, but plenty of them will be mistaken for American ones after Microsoft bought them(and more often than not ruined the product, see Skype for example)
  - disgruntledphd2 11mo ago
    Deepmind is another good example, as is ARM.
  - SunshineTheCat 11mo ago
    That might be your feeling, but it isn't reality. It comes instead from EU companies not even being in the same galaxy as US ones when it comes to revenue, size, and market impact. There is literally no comparison. It's not like the major leagues compared to the minors, it's like the major leagues compared to tee-ball. https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/Comparing-the-Largest-Companies-in-the-US-Europe-and-China-4100 https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/Comparing-the-Largest-Com...
    - amarant 11mo ago
      I think we're comparing different things. While you appear to be talking about financial size, I meant in terms of technical capability. Financially, yes. American companies are obviously larger. How else would they be acquiring all the European companies? In terms of technical capability, European powerhouses like ASML doesn't even have competitors from America as far as I can tell. It's entirely possible to argue they don't have competitors at all. For certain categories of products (EUV), they literally don't!
qoez 11mo ago
AI is gonna be even worse. At least there's some competition from scandinavia and germany and france's tech scenes. For AI there's basically none.
- vanviegen 11mo ago
  Yeah, but unless there's AGI right around the corner, it's starting to look more and more like there's no real moat in the trillions being invested. As switching between AI providers is easy (especially when compare the stranglehold say Microsoft has on organizations), catching up may be relatively easy and cheap for latecomers.
jimbohn 11mo ago
Along with Europe's incompetence and divisiveness, you must also consider that the US has kept it so tight under its umbrella that it has squeezed it. The US wants a rich market to sell into, a suitable ally for oil campaigns, but not a competitor. The US is also still cultivating divisiveness, at the EU level, they groom a politically aligned minority that conveniently opposes any long-term improvement (Looking at Meloni's Italy, Hungary, etc.), at the country level, where possible, they again groom divisiveness by propping up yet another sovranist party. Of course, that's what a "normal" competitor does, and of course China russia are also taking part in it. But the ambiguous situation of the USA-EU friendship needs to be solved. I don't see how the EU can get out of this without recognizing that the US is not a friend anymore, and enduring a few decades of protectionism at the services level to try to pull a china on key sectors.
- Workaccount2 11mo ago
  As long as the European psyche is at "40 days PTO, 4 day work weeks, and generous worker protections" the US doesn't have to worry about Europe getting out from under it. Europe is in the intractable situation of needing to double defense spending, slash taxes, gain energy independence and bankroll it with an aging population skilled in mostly legacy industries. And doing all this with a working population that has only ever known generous work/life conditions.
  - greatgib 11mo ago
    Surprisingly, from France, Hen I work for US companies, the American employees were on holidays more often than the french ones. For example, here "sick leaves" days are not considered normal holidays that have to be taken in the year to not be lost.
    - Workaccount2 11mo ago
      Thankfully we don't have to rely on anecdotes, and can just check data. The average American works 300 (!) more hours a year than the average Frenchman. 37.5 days more, That's huge. And France isn't even the lowest in the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
hulitu 11mo ago
They tried. They were either spied on (Earth - then developed by Google) or aquired (Star Office by Sun).

Europe's failure to facilitate a competitive tech scene in the early 2000's (and even still ongoing today) will haunt them for decades. Such an enormous fumble that people still celebrate as a win.

petcat 11mo ago

EU is in a really tough situation. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while also facing a belligerent Russia on their eastern borders. And their internal politics and governance makes it very difficult to align in a direction that could enable them to start digging out of so much globalized dependence.

js8 11mo ago
Yes. Unfortunately, the EU institutions have been designed during heyday of globalization and neoliberalism. So they are unable to adapt to (or even recognize) the end of it.
- p2detar 11mo ago
  Oh, it’s very well recognized. You can check the Mario Draghi report or even recent comments by ECB‘s Christine Legarde. I think it’s mostly reluctance to make big structural changes that seems to be the issue right now.
  - js8 11mo ago
    But when Draghi wrote his report, he was leaving the power structures. It will probably slowly change, but the neoliberal hegemony is still there. I think the big issue is that all European elites have investments in the USA, and they don't have reason to pick EU over USA for investing. So there is nothing compelling them to voluntary worsen the relations.
seanieb 11mo ago
A recent analysis of the Trump Tarrifs on the EU concluded that while “some regions and industries could suffer”, for Europe overall the hit may be “limited but not negligible. The EU is quietly investing massively in diversifying away from the US market. there are trade negotiations or agreements in process (or being advanced) with countries/regions including India, the countries of the Mercosur bloc, Mexico, and Middle-East countries.
- nxm 11mo ago
  If that was so easy to do then they would have done it already years ago
  - bigfudge 11mo ago
    European defence spending is going to be much less transatlantic than it would have been were it not for Trump. Some of this is about mindshift. We could have avoided us defence contractor tie in before, but we don’t see the need. Now we do.
  - seanieb 11mo ago
    The economics have changed, and now it's worth their time. It's a priority for economic and political reasons. The Trump Tariffs and the US's policies towards Ukraine, and questionable commitment to NATO highlighted the dependencies and exposed the EU is to Trumps corrosive tactics.

bojan 11mo ago

"Europe" is, unlike the US, not a single entity. Yes, we have European Union which helps a lot, but it is not complete (and certainly wasn't in the time when Microsofts and Googles of this world started), making that all-important initial scaling way more difficult than it is in the US.

saubeidl 11mo ago
> "Europe" is, unlike the US, not a single entity It really needs to be, though, that's kind of the crux of it. Federate or die off, it's time to get rid of old tribal thinking. We're all Europeans.
- martijnvds 11mo ago
  Tell that to the right-wing nutjobs who all want their "<country code>XIT"
- AllegedAlec 11mo ago
  Please god no.
- ramon156 11mo ago
  I can't fathom why you would give one parlement all the power. This is the root issue of America right now, individual states have less and less power every year.
  - bojan 11mo ago
    Otherwise you get an economy stifling patchwork of regulations, which is what we have within the EU now. Further, it'd probably be two Chambers, and we have proportional representation, which should make a slide to fascism a bit more difficult.
  - concinds 11mo ago
    America is already a country. The EU isn't. You could give the EU a metric ton more power and they'd still be more decentralized than the halcyon days of the US that you reference.

SunshineTheCat 11mo ago

It feels like an emphasis has been placed more on legislating or policing what other people make rather than making anything of value themselves (as far as tech goes). Being a barnacle on the side of a boat might be a nice free ride for a while until it goes somewhere you don't want to.

amarant 11mo ago
I feel like this sentiment comes at least partially from American companies(especially Microsoft) habit of buying successful European tech companies, making people believe they're American and not European. There is plenty of European tech success stories, but plenty of them will be mistaken for American ones after Microsoft bought them(and more often than not ruined the product, see Skype for example)
- disgruntledphd2 11mo ago
  Deepmind is another good example, as is ARM.
- SunshineTheCat 11mo ago
  That might be your feeling, but it isn't reality. It comes instead from EU companies not even being in the same galaxy as US ones when it comes to revenue, size, and market impact. There is literally no comparison. It's not like the major leagues compared to the minors, it's like the major leagues compared to tee-ball. https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/Comparing-the-Largest-Companies-in-the-US-Europe-and-China-4100 https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/Comparing-the-Largest-Com...
  - amarant 11mo ago
    I think we're comparing different things. While you appear to be talking about financial size, I meant in terms of technical capability. Financially, yes. American companies are obviously larger. How else would they be acquiring all the European companies? In terms of technical capability, European powerhouses like ASML doesn't even have competitors from America as far as I can tell. It's entirely possible to argue they don't have competitors at all. For certain categories of products (EUV), they literally don't!

qoez 11mo ago

AI is gonna be even worse. At least there's some competition from scandinavia and germany and france's tech scenes. For AI there's basically none.

vanviegen 11mo ago
Yeah, but unless there's AGI right around the corner, it's starting to look more and more like there's no real moat in the trillions being invested. As switching between AI providers is easy (especially when compare the stranglehold say Microsoft has on organizations), catching up may be relatively easy and cheap for latecomers.

jimbohn 11mo ago

Along with Europe's incompetence and divisiveness, you must also consider that the US has kept it so tight under its umbrella that it has squeezed it. The US wants a rich market to sell into, a suitable ally for oil campaigns, but not a competitor. The US is also still cultivating divisiveness, at the EU level, they groom a politically aligned minority that conveniently opposes any long-term improvement (Looking at Meloni's Italy, Hungary, etc.), at the country level, where possible, they again groom divisiveness by propping up yet another sovranist party. Of course, that's what a "normal" competitor does, and of course China russia are also taking part in it. But the ambiguous situation of the USA-EU friendship needs to be solved. I don't see how the EU can get out of this without recognizing that the US is not a friend anymore, and enduring a few decades of protectionism at the services level to try to pull a china on key sectors.

Workaccount2 11mo ago
As long as the European psyche is at "40 days PTO, 4 day work weeks, and generous worker protections" the US doesn't have to worry about Europe getting out from under it. Europe is in the intractable situation of needing to double defense spending, slash taxes, gain energy independence and bankroll it with an aging population skilled in mostly legacy industries. And doing all this with a working population that has only ever known generous work/life conditions.
- greatgib 11mo ago
  Surprisingly, from France, Hen I work for US companies, the American employees were on holidays more often than the french ones. For example, here "sick leaves" days are not considered normal holidays that have to be taken in the year to not be lost.
  - Workaccount2 11mo ago
    Thankfully we don't have to rely on anecdotes, and can just check data. The average American works 300 (!) more hours a year than the average Frenchman. 37.5 days more, That's huge. And France isn't even the lowest in the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

hulitu 11mo ago

They tried. They were either spied on (Earth - then developed by Google) or aquired (Star Office by Sun).