On one hand, I hate MS. On the other hand, EU tech companies need to be better and EU consumers need to support them.
Step 1: all the tech companies should stop using Windows (and MacOS for that matter). They whine about MS but still use their products. So use Linux, use LibreOffice, use EU based email or roll your own, develop software on open standards, etc...
Look at what the non-MS (and non-Apple) FAANGs do; they use OSS operating systems, tech stacks and build their whole infrastructure on open tech and standards, apart from a few proprietary bits rolled in-house.
EU tech's problem is that they all try to be MS but aren't. None of them seem to model what they do on the successful non-MS/Apple big tech companies.
> Look at what the non-MS (and non-Apple) FAANGs do; they use OSS operating systems
My man, at Amazon basically all engineers use either Windows or Mac. The only ones using open source are customers, and sometimes not very much considering all AWS is a proprietary cloud.
Netflix on the other hand is basically 99% AWS too.
You jest, but you know deep down that (except for S3 and APIs created outside Amazon) every API on AWS can't easily be replicated outside of AWS, and that's the point the parent's making. It's like calling Android (at least the official version) open because it's based on Linux.
That's completely missing the point. The point is that the tech boom after the .com bust came as a result of tons of startups (Facebook, Netflix, Google, Amazon, etc...) leveraging commodity hardware and open source software to build their infrastructures and businesses instead of relying on vendors like Microsoft, IBM, Sun, etc... It's about how they became big and the forces that allowed them to grow, not about the fact they still sell proprietary products.
EU 'tech' companies are like the slow-moving 'enterprise' companies that still buy from MS, IBM, Oracle, etc... Instead of leveraging what's out there, taking some risk and building things themselves they just do the 'safe' thing. Likewise EU investors play it too safe as there's too much generational wealth whose goal is to preserve said wealth.
On the top of that EU companies looking at the EU historically bad legislation bodies to achieve "protection" against US based tech companies instead of innovating.
There is not a single company in the EU that could build S3 today. If there was such company we could have a cloud that uses S3 as storage and any computation platform to run most of the workload running on US based cloud companies today. There are several OSS software components that can be deployed on Nomad or k8s and have a solid infra just with these two. (I am leaving out IAM/AAA, obviously). Sure this is not the convenience level of AWS/Azure/GCP but at least a start that you can build on and if the EU is serious about it turn it into a real EU based cloud provider. Once you start to add additional services (for example TiDB, Presto, Kafka or even Qemu/Firecracker/KVM) you can build a cloud that has the best offerings of the hyperscalers.
Instead, the whole EU tech scene is hiring lawyers to pressure the EU to ban US based cloud computing. Somehow we lost our way in the EU and innovation happens in the US and in China.
No, you've misunderstood. Netflix (the website and other such things) runs on AWS using Linux. However, Netflix, the streaming service that their website and apps use, runs on FreeBSD and is not on AWS.
As soon as something substantial comes up from Europe, including the UK, will end up in the US.
It's not really a quality problem, Europe produces tons of high quality stuff but anything that can scale scales in the USA.
Europe is not one of the richest places on earth by selling museum tickets, the place has the talent even has the money - albeit not at the scale of the US. I don't know what's missing but tech in the sense of "fast scaling high margin business that eats the world" is something that doesn't happen in Europe and I don't believe that any legislation will directly change that.
EU is more in the business of mitigating the risks of having your infrastructure run and data being processed by foreign entities. GDPR and the other stuff is all about that.
The EU doesn't have the 'free market above all' philosophy of the US. As a result venture capital is more restricted. In the US failure is not a bad thing, just a reason to try again. The EU is more risk averse. There's much more restriction on businesses, building megacities etc.
However there's a flip side to this like our much better social welfare systems and affordable healthcare. I personally prefer it this way. It does hurt us economically but economy isn't the only thing that matters.
In Europe we limit how high you can climb and this limits the amount of risky investment we attract because a big win is not automatically a mountain of profits due to more taxes and more regulations. But on the other hand we limit how far you can fall too. As a non-entrepreneur nor investor the latter matters much more to me.
> I don't believe that any legislation will directly change that.
I definitely didn't avocate for any legislation. I'm saying they need to shift their perspective. Tech isn't booming because US startups played it safe...
Legislation plays a big role in encouraging entrepreneurs to play it safe or not.
Cf. banking. European fintech startups are doing extremely well. In turn, big banks have to catch up and adapt if they want to stay relevant. Thanks to EU regulation and investment in core infrastructure.
If we think about the cloud, I don't see what Europe is lacking if we really wanted to build an O365 competitor. But there's no stewardship, rather the opposite, cf. the lackluster response to the CLOUD act an other extra-territorial US bullshit. Instead we have OVH and Hetzner compete on price rather than features and quality, and underfunded open source software like NextCloud.
> Step 1: all the tech companies should stop using Windows
Their complaint is a lack of open standards and interoperability create unnecessary barriers to stopping using Windows so your solution is that they should stop using Windows..
Absolutely advocating supporting local businesses. Just like I advocate using OSS. Is an EU company going to make a better search engine than Google on day one? Is any company going to be an absolute world-beater on day one? Sometimes voting with your wallet means supporting something you want to succeed...
I mean, I'll never use MS products nor buy an Apple product, ever. Not even if they have the nicest X. Because I don't like the prospect of a world where it's only MS/Apple. So I use products that are good for an open world as much as possible.
In the real world, people support local businesses. People support small business and hand-made products, even if it's more expensive. Because that's how you grow your local economy.
>In the real world, people support local businesses. People support small business and hand-made products, even if it's more expensive. Because that's how you grow your local economy.
That's fine as a consumer. But as a business and a professional I don't have time to muck around with half-baked "local" solutions when better solutions exist.
So it sounds more like moving all capabilities to China and waking up later that you don't have locally any possibility to make products.
Right now US companies are hiring eastern European developers directly for "whatever they want to be paid" and local companies cannot compete on salaries. Whole world is paying US companies, EU companies are local at best in couple of European countries and even then they have to spend loads of money on localization.
While US is 331,449,281 people and EU is 447,706,209 differences between EU counties are a lot bigger than between US states. If you start up with a company you can start in single language and single country - moving to other country takes loads of effort.
I might be wrong about how it is easy to scale business between US states but I expect it is a lot easier than in EU.
It is chosen by businesses and individuals because it’s about the only complete solution out there (even if it is a monumental shit show) which is cost effective. Either that or they are ignorant or genuinely like it.
The EU tech sector needs to build something better. LibreOffice and Linux as it stands is not it. I tried over and over again to use it but it’s just not good.
I’m lurking in the leper colony of iCloud, Sheets and Numbers for reference and do most of my stuff on iOS. It’s different but not better.
The point is not that the people aware of the situation can avoid using these services, the point is that Microsoft (just like Apple and Google) is abusing its control over the OS to entice millions of people to use their own services. This is not an even market, competition is distorted. How could better competitors emerge in such situation? As if the unlimited fundings these companies have was not enough.
Why shouldn't a company promote its own products? It is not "abuse of control", that is such bullshit. Also I have been using Windows for decades and never touched MS Office or Teams. It's not that hard.
Why shouldn't companies agree to work together for mutual benefit, like tech companies agreeing to hold down wages, like they did recently. Or is that too 'free market'?
What is the point of your comment? I am aware that there were agreements between the companies. My question was what is the rationale behind making such a thing illegal. Your link doesn't answer that question.
What the fuck no it is not the same. Stabbings are murder. At the very least you can argue with Kant's imperative that you shouldn't do what you don't want others to do to you. It seems to me agreeing not to poach other companies employees is more in the line with Kant's imperative. If anything, poaching other companies employees would be more like murder. Society seems to already have realized that, that is why they call it "poaching".
"poaching other companies employees would be more like murder."
If you consider improving someone's quality of life by offering better salary to be 'like murder', and do not recognise that cartels, illegal in every civilised nation, are bad for the economy, then I cannot fathom what I could possibly write to get through to you
Not all economists agree that cartels are bad. Also they are usually about prices for selling stuff, not for buying stuff (as in buying employees). Just because companies have agreements doesn't make it a cartel. It would be stupid if companies wouldn't be allowed to have agreements.
And as mentioned before, workers cartels (unions) seem to be legal in most "civilized" places.
Or think about another example: poaching somebodies wife. That also seems to be frowned upon in many places. Yet, it is just an agreement that nobody should make somebody else's wife a better offer.
People tend to forget with all those rules that they could also be on the receiving end of things. You may not be a worker forever, maybe one of these days you want to become independent and run your own company. It would be a shame if people effectively weren't allowed to do so anymore.
It seems like (anecdotally) there's a decent number of shops that are 100% linux for servers, except there will still be an AD + Exchange setup because there's really no comprehensive solution in the open source world, like you said.
I didn't think I (as an experienced software engineer) would struggle so much to save a file until I had to use Office 365. I wish Dropbox was more popular in your average small business office.
Oh yes that’s a nightmare. They turned saving a file into a kafkaesque dystopian hell hole.
This is one of the things I like about Numbers etc on iOS. It abstracts this away so we’ll I don’t have to give a crap and it appears instantly on all my devices.
In general it boils down to "the distributed storage is buggy/not performant".
The standard experience I want as a user is that my "cloud" files should be treated like my "local" files. However, in practice this is not the case. There are constantly syncing issues, files go missing from device or another, old versions appear/disappear randomly, the syncing server can't connect for a very long time (say upwards of 20+ minutes), etc. etc. And of course as Murphy would have it, this usually happens around the time where you critically need to share files across machines with a client or something. It's just generally a really frustrating experience.
> The EU tech sector needs to build something better. LibreOffice and Linux as it stands is not it. I tried over and over again to use it but it’s just not good.
Can you elaborate?
I have had quite a nice experience on the Linux ecosystem and with LibreOffice too.
But there's usually a point where you realize that "this should've been a script" ™. I do concede that Excel pushes that point further down the road with what I remember to be better performance when working with bigger files, but by no means something so drastic.
Well in my case there is always something hideously broken. For example I had a problem a couple of years back where libreoffice would take 3 minutes to open a sheet when my printer was turned on. Then there’s days where if I close the lid on the laptop I had to pray to all the gods of the disc that it’d wake up again without smiting me in some horrible way. And then there’s the usual face punch where I just want to solve a problem, not solve a whole tree of problems.
I don’t work on anything exceptional really. It’s all simple stuff. But there’s just so many broken things all the time that I had to walk away.
I’m writing this on the only tool I’ve got that doesn’t melt in my hands regularly, an ass end 9th gen ipad paired with a fairly old apple keyboard. It just works. This gives me more time to do things I actually derive value from in my life.
To be fair Microsoft have no accountability either. But it’s easier to tick the ISO 27001 or SOC compliance box when they pretend they have some accountability.
Watch them squirm, pocket their billions spent on lobbying, and then say „sorry no“ and ban them from all public procurement processes, in all countries in the EU.
In 10 years, Europe will be a software superpower.
I wonder where those numbers come from? I'm an entry level dev and make €60k a year here in Germany. Where do people pull those numbers from? I'm fairly certain that those are salaries paid by _some_ companies, but that those aren't realistic salaries let alone representative of the EU. Also, I saw many people referring to such numbers for devs in east European countries and completely failing to factor in the dramatically lower cost of living.
TL;DR: European senior devs certainly don't make as much as their FAANG counterparts (most U.S. based seniors probably don't make that much either) but €40k isn't a usual senior salary in most (west-)european countries.
No, US devs really do make a very large amount of money. Both the mean and median wage in US are over $100k. That number is probably on the low side too, as the government BLS data doesn't seem to account well for stock grants, bonuses, and benefits.
Thank you for sharing, thats actually quite impressive!
The numbers I found for Germany seem to support my initial comment at least from a German point of view. The median software developer salary in Germany is €62k ($70k) [0]. Seeing that high of a median in the US is quite impressive. Do high salaries like those usually include benefits like healthcare?
Yes, those salaries will generally include by health insurance- the overwhelming majority of full time US workers do have access to health insurance through thier employer (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ebs2.pdf). The number tends to go higher as you get out of low wage, low margin industries like food service.
Many employers (and probably most direct employers of software engineers) will also offer additional benefits like subsidized tax advantage retirement savings plans (401k's, very common), wellness/fitness programs (common, but varied in extent), or subsidized stock purchase programs (less common.) Those benefits can easily add up to an extra 5-10% of income.
I'm getting paid €35k here, for a robotics position that's more senior than junior at this point. Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark tend to have slightly higher wages but the rest of us get paid jack shit.
In the US you could pull in $100k or $120k easily. But then you'd have to live in the US, which is a major downside to be sure.
> In the US you could pull in $100k or $120k easily. But then you'd have to live in the US, which is a major downside to be sure.
I think that is another factor that is under-appreciated. Many people seem to completely ignore the cost of living in the area surrounding the company and the country in general.
A friend of mine had an exceptional start into his career, money and skill wise. He is quite possibly the smartest person I've ever met in person. Three years into his career he got quite a few very very attractive offers from US based companies offering him an attractive relocation package as well as a significantly higher salary. He denied all of those, telling me that all the money they could offer would not justify the awful work life balance that would be a result of those positions.
I think that is a perspective that many people seem to lose, mainly because our culture tells us to "work hard" (although the degree of that seems to differ dramatically). But it also goes to show that Europe might be competitive by "idealistic" standards, but not at all when it comes to market standards. And the market standards will only continue to get worse when looking into the structural changes in important industries like automotive.
>I'm an entry level dev and make €60k a year here in Germany.
You're not getting 60k as an entry level dev in most of Europe though. I'm middle level in Austria and barely make above 50k. I know in high CoL big metro areas like Munich and Amsterdam you can make way more but the real estate market in those places is currently broken though IMHO.
Your compensation will depend more on working for top international companies that can scale internationally and extract value at that large scale, rather than the country itself though.
And Austria, has in general, almost no top international SW companies, just mom and pop shops that only serve the small local market, so the pay is junk.
I think one issue is that the definition of Europe varies wildly when taking colloquially, that 40k figure can be valid in parts of Southern Europe. Although the market has shifted massively in the past few years so you can shift that figure to 60 or 80k even in the south for senior roles.
Even at the upper averages though these numbers still aren't really all that competitive. As a single data point, I'm earning 2-3x the local market rate in Europe (170k) by working for a US startup remotely.
> Even at the upper averages though these numbers still aren't really all that competitive. As a single data point, I'm earning 2-3x the local market rate in Europe (170k) by working for a US startup remotely.
That seems like a fairly popular option nowadays which is not surprising given the fairly unattractive local market. But I'm interested, how does it work after taxes and social security contributions? I've been looking into that here in Germany, but the headache that comes with working for a remote only company does not seem worth the higher salary (at least not for entry level positions).
My setup is through a local company who manages taxes, employment rights etc. for me (a professional employer organization) so there's no practical difference compared to being employed locally. Everything is above board and I don't have to file any extra tax returns myself.
From what I understand the premium for the actual company I work for though is around 10% of my salary.
Not to mention, money per year is a bad metric for how attractive a job is.
Americans work much more hours than Germans[1]. I heard about a guy in the Netherlands going back from the UK because even if the pay was good, they wanted him to work overtime.
I'd say purchasing power per hours per week is a better metric. (This anecdote was very likely about London specifically, checking the source below I noticed how UK on average is on the short side of workweeks with Netherlands.)
"Work smart, not hard." Seems to me something American employers don't get, they'd rather have you work inefficiently for prolonged periods of time than let you do hard work for a few hours. It's kind of proven that most people burn out and stop being efficient after as little as 30 minutes, there, a short break gets you up and running again, but this has a limit before you totally burn out for the day. So it's not even in their best interest to force you to work a lot.
And I much rather work with someone that knows what's good for them, it means they are less likely to make insane requests like forced team work.
Nevermind that, imagine working to a corporation that makes you think of them as "family". I don't know how often corporate culture like that you will encounter in America, but it is there to some extent. And if worst comes to worst, can you be picky?
Here's a source for national workweeks, maybe not every job is considered there, but seems like a good rough estimate that corresponds to people's anecdotes.
Doesn't really make sense. The US is still producing new unicorn companies, so you can't claim Europe wasn't able to do that because of the US monopoly. Since those are new services, there was no previous monopoly, as the kind of service didn't exist.
There are some pretty successful startups like Wolt recently, but they inevitably get bought out and taken over by american captial. So there is nothing because as soon as it becomes something it's no longer ours lmao.
EU invested a billion EUR into creating a Google alternative some years ago. Naturally, nothing was ever heard from the project again. Such things happen on a regular basis. Money shortage is not the problem.
There are also many big companies, for example VW could have bought some AI startups or Uber competitors.
Banning specific companies is silly because then the next big company not on that list will just do the same thing they did.
Just set general policy. If you require open source and open standards etc. then microsoft could play too in principle, but they probably won't anyway.
Threatening with doing something you are already doing, is not very effective leverage.
The American trade war on the EU, started by the US in 2018, is technically still in effect until January 1, 2022. The decision to end it was made only earlier this month.
Yeah right, with all the restrictions and regulations EU will never touch anywhere near "superpower" territory, ban anything you want, even with toughest protectionism (which is always bad) EU lacks manpower, knowledge and education for sufficient IT sector development.
Software developers like (as one might assume) to earn money and immigrate to US on first possibility or job offer, where there is ongoing boom in innovation and development, where companies compete to hire them, nobody likes to be suffocated with heavy EU taxes and get lower salary because main competitors are banned.
The EU tech companies only have themselves to blame in my view. I’ve been working in tech for over 30 years and it was precisely those EU tech companies that created crap products and treated their customers like crap, that made consumers and businesses look elsewhere. I have very little sympathy I’m afraid as if I’m a business or even providing public services I want the best products, support and customer service. That is all it takes to compete, so let’s see some EU tech companies stop whinging and start serving customers with amazing products and even better service. I’ve seen it in pockets, so I know the potential is there.
You should remember browser wars, PHP vs. ASP, Oracle vs Server, on and on and on. I am not saying I took already side with this statement. But I know enough about how Microsoft sneaks in the check under your glass when you are not looking.
The biggest dick move currently MS and Amazon is trying to pull off for example is forcing IoT world into OPC foundation together with Rockwell Automation which is originating from EU mind you.
There are absolutely better tools from EU and APAC (and from US too) etc. and if we follow your argument some IoT provider has to build a full cloud offering, compete with GCP, AWS and Azure just to earn the right to exist. That is not how leverage works. So in that sense, they are just pushing every service in your face just to install Windows to your own machine which you bought with your own money.
The statement doesn't ask for favors, it asks for level playing field.
On top of that you can add the ~40 years of tech industry brain drain from compensating their employees so poorly versus what US companies were/are willing to do.
The only thing that can build out a competitive EU tech industry is US venture capital, which will put down the enormous, very willing risk capital required to dramatically alter the landscape permanently. As US venture capital floods that market and spikes salaries, there will be no going back (most likely). That transformation process may be underway at present judging from US VC interest in Europe. The only other venture capital on the planet comparable in capability and scale is in China. If it's just left to EU VC, it'll take forever.
Ok, but then force Android and macOS to unbundle their crap. Why do I have to use Chrome and Gmail as default? Why do I get force fed iMessage, Safari and iCloud?
Opening iOS to competing browser engines is unlikely to lead to Chrome being dominant there. Safari has more than 60% market share on macOS where they've never been banned.
What it could lead to though is some real investment in Safari from Apple's part, which is very much needed considering how buggy and behind competition it is. That way maybe the web will indeed be able to compete with native as they already falsely claim it can.
You don't... You can have Firefox and Outlook as defaults if you want. Ever use a Samsung phone? It comes bundled with a bunch of Samsung and MS crap, despite being Android. Samsung has their own web browser, their own store...
Let me rephrase, force Google not to ship Chrome and their apps by default on Android, and completely remove login/registration when first starting the phone.
Does anyone have any good arguments for why we lack any serious blue-chip competitors in the EU?
I mean we have things like Spotify and SAP (though they're b2b). But I really can't see any parallels with the US tech industry. There really is no company that comes to mind in the EU where I think "yeah that's where all the software engineers want to go to".
Also what I find super weird is that actually, a lot of the other industries are providing the golden ticket type jobs for SDEs that, in the US, would be reserved for FAANG. For example VW has some pretty great Digital "labs", pay is quite high, and they're even one of the biggest forces investing in quantum research, funding phd programmes and the like.
What we're missing is the valley, where huge piles of cash are in search of anywhere to go to. Where as little as a sales pitch can give you backing to hire fifty people for two years... After which everyone figures out the idea wasn't any good, investors didn't win on this ticket. And you proceed to think of your next pitch, with nobody holding the previous failure against you.
Much of Europe came late to the party, it’s hard to start a startup especially on the continent and even harder to get funding.
The UK is doing alright especially around fintech and some of the more academic startup tho the latter tends to be bought up rather quickly.
The costs of starting a company and the overall employment culture is quite antithetical to the whole fail fast startup culture. The cost of failure is substantially higher than in the US and the cost of scaling up astronomically higher and this is before you need to deal with unions and work councils.
The big nations in Europe as in France and Germany are trying to catch up but the next most likely spot would be the likes of Estonia followed up by Croatia.
Estonia is trying to become the Israel of Europe tech wise and they are on the right path.
Both Estonia and Croatia also have the digital nomad visa which allows you to come and work remotely from there for a whole year tax free, they hope that it would attract some talent that would like to settle and start companies there.
Estonia is especially well situated no corporate tax on unless the money leaves the country or is taken out as dividends, huge tax breaks on everything else and a flat 20% income tax rate that can attract a lot of tech talent from the rest of Europe.
Salaries in Europe are rising in tech they are still not anywhere near the US with the exception of some top talent in London and contracting but with 50% marginal tax rates and little to no compensation in the form of stock retaining top talent is difficult in this relatively mobile economy.
I’ve seen offers as high as €150K for senior self contributors and technical managers coming out of Estonia not many but a few, and even at half of that you’ll still be making most likely more than in Germany after tax.
> Both Estonia and Croatia also have the digital nomad visa which allows you to come and work remotely from there for a whole year tax free, they hope that it would attract some talent that would like to settle and start companies there.
Not sure how you got Croatia on a map of startups. That digital nomad thing is nothing more than a few nice phrases made to look like its some heaven for IT companies. It couldn't be further from the truth.
The taxes and bureaucracy roadblocks on the individuals and companies are one of the highest in the world. One must be completely crazy to come over for some (non-existing) startup (or even established) scene. The government doesn't give a rat's ass about this industry.
The only reason why there are a lot of people in this industry working for foreign companies is that the salaries are quite low (compared to rest of the EU) but still considerable better than a median domestic salary. But as the last census is going to show (there were already some leaked statistics) the young people are leaving in droves and the shit is no joke as the population is rapidly decreasing. Why work here for say double the median salary (a little less than 1K euro) for some foreign company, when you can emigrate and make at least 7 times more? But more truthfully, people are leaving because they cannot even get a bit more than half of the average salary.
So if I were thinking of opening a startup, it would be pretty much anywhere else but here, it just doesn't make any economical sense.
I see so many comments about how great the EU is v.s. the US based on how much the government provides. How can you be surprised that people and corporations in the EU aren't going to have the same drive as US companies to be competitive? E.U. companies do well with long, incremental growth (German cars are great) but not with innovation and fast growth.
"How can you be surprised that people and corporations in the EU aren't going to have the same drive as US companies to be competitive?"
So your theory is "the less a person has, the more motivated and productive they are". Surely some poverty striken nation like Somalia should be pinnacle of productivity?
Or do you need infrastructure and education, perhaps lets try Russia, mexico?
If that's still not good enough, what makes you believe thay the sweetspot of support is the US?
Or could an alternative, much simpler theory be true, that the country that's the world's money printing press and global center of capital has some kind of advantage?
> the less a person has, the more motivated and productive they are
Absolutely not. I'm saying that high tax rates and high levels of direct government benefits from those taxes stifles innovation by reducing the incentives to be innovative.
Does it make for an "equal society." Sure. But that also means that you don't reward people with innovative ideas or who go way above and beyond. Sure they could work their ass off to make their idea a reality....or they could just not. It's not like they'll get massively rewarded for it. Plus the government probably gives them what they need already.
Yes there is a sweet spot and infrastructure is important. If the government doesn't do anything people die on the streets which is A. Inhuman B. Makes people more concerned about not dying over anything else. I also think promoting good education is really important so you give people a path from nothing to something. Who cares if you make it rewarding to succeed if it's absolutely impossible from birth for some people.
I can only say the US is the closest sweet spot just by the results. It's absolutely not perfect, but the US is specifically known for its Innovation and productivity.
From the day you get your first job till the end of your career, you have about 2 years total to split between you wife, kids and aging parents that may pass away before you get to retire. This is quite sad actually, work for 40 year to earn 2 years of life
How far along is the Texas Gigafactory in Texas? I think they started later than Berlin, but may finish first?
There may just be too much bureaucracy in Europe, too much socialism... People here don't want to be part of a company that does exciting things, they just want a well paid job they can't be fired from because the union protects them.
This is a vague and exaggerated statement, it makes you sound quite biased. If we're going to argue in that direction then let me point out that China has "way more socialism" (as you put it) than Europe, yet their lightening speed in making advancements in their private tech sector, digitalisation and even scientific research such as computer vision and quantum computing puts even the US to shame.
"People here don't want to be part of a company that does exciting things"
Absolutely false. Have you ever spoken to anyone at a German car company? They live and die for the pride they have working with their "team". Same goes for other Mittelstand companies, employees tend to be very loyal and have a personal relationship with their company and product, even if it is as simple as a company making world-class pencils. Maybe this is because of all the "socialism" (i.e. reasonable amount of time off and workers rights and being treated like a human with a personal life)
That is not to say that there aren't groups of long-tenured 20 year+ employees at such corporations who occupy a cushy job with almost no chance of being fired. Yes they exist, and I've met them.
But I think you're trying to equate the mindset in Europe to the American ideal of the individual person doing something that 'CHANGES THE WORLD'. Europeans certainly dream and want to do exciting things that make the world a better place, but the way to do this isn't exclusively held by this radical capitalist view (I say this as a believer capitalism) that one man/woman with an idea can change the world. I think we take on a more longer-term view, taking the time to research, perfect one's craft and slowly make small steps of change that last longer. And I think this view and mindset is what drives so much medical and scientific innovation in Europe.
OK point taken about China, even though I think it still is not clear how much they innovate by themselves and much they are just stealing, and how much they really still are socialist.
It seems they have a kind of dictatorship bent on exploiting their population to get ahead. Another example perhaps were the nazis who also made a lot of technical advances like building the first rockets. They presumably throw a lot of resources (manpower) at things, too, because they don't care about the individual.
The European variant of socialism is more like a class of leeches that simply wants to extract as much energy as possible from the unsuspecting population.
I live in Germany and I have worked for a big car company as a contractor. I think many big companies are very slow moving and excitement for new ideas is difficult in such an environment. Even the product I was working on was basically a huge expenditure to be able to comply with some government regulation (privacy laws regarding employee monitoring).
Yes, there are people here in Germany who are excited about technology and startups. They have to fight an uphill battle against all the regulation, though. And any successful company is regarded with suspicion. Also government jobs are very popular as they come with many perks. Here in Germany it might not yet be as bad as in other European countries, but the class of government employees is growing. A couple of years ago I read about Greece that ALL the elite students did expect to get comfortable government jobs. That would of course also suck away talent from innovative companies.
My other comment about the Gigafactories in Texas and Berlin was downvoted for some reason, but I really am curious. Which one will be finished first? The one in Texas was started at a later stage. I live nearby the Berlin one, so I hear a lot about the ridiculous regulation struggles they face.
Then again I read that some Tesla employee was awarded north of 100 million dollars because his colleagues supposedly called him racist things. So I worry about the future of the US, too,
I agree with you actually about the Gigafactories and it won't surprise me if the Texas one finishes first.
And I also live in Germany and have worked for car companies as a contractor :) And believe me I am also quite exhausted by the slowness of so much of the industry and the old white opas running things. But at the same time I get the feeling that university-educated younger members of society really want this to change and want to participate actively in shaping their country.
I think I usually like to counter extreme positions for either approach (US-capitalist, fast moving approach vs German/European slower, more left leaning approach). I think our views might actually be quite similar, and I have actually been considering what life might be like in the US where people seem to really have no limits to their ambition and drive. I guess I just see both systems as useful in some ways and limited in others. I like the fact that in Germany, everyone has access to good education, health and a social safety net, and I am ok with that coming at the cost of maybe the country not being as disruptively innovative as it otherwise could be. On the other hand, I am extremely glad a place like the US exists, where some random south african dude can waltz into the Rocketry industry and the auto industry and simultaneously turn both on their heads in less than 2 decades.
Also what you said about Greece is pretty shocking. To be fair, it's very possible that in general the amount of people who really want to put their own blood, sweat and tears into in endeavour is actually quite small. A lot of people I know just want a contented life, which is fine, but I'd rather not have that at the expense of a meaningful, exciting career.
> Microsoft, Google and Amazon have grown their market share to 66% of the total European market, with local providers contracting from 26% to 16%.
While it's certainly a problem that USA companies are swallowing the EU market, the EU has done nothing whatsoever to help itself compete with these companies.
It is nearly impossible to start a "startup" company anywhere in the EU. The overwhelming bureaucracy and risk-averseness of obtaining capital and venture investment drives the European founders out of the EU and to USA so they can get some money to start-up their little company.
This is not a problem with Google, Microsoft, or Amazon consuming the EU. This is a problem with the EU. They just can't make anything themselves.
> Microsoft is integrating 365 deeper and deeper in their service and software portfolio, including Windows. OneDrive is pushed wherever users deal with file storage and Teams is a default part of Windows 11. This makes it nearly impossible to compete with their SaaS services.
Am I the only one that doesn't see what the big deal is here? The integration of cameras into smartphones wrecked the digital camera industry but I've never heard of a digital camera company petitioning the government to ban cameras from being bundled with smartphones to "allow a level playing field". How is this different?
It is pretty hard to install a camera in a phone, but it is pretty easy to install a program on a computer. That makes a really big difference as to where we should accept bundling as a good thing and where we should see it as a bad thing.
If ease of installation is the determining factor then Garmin should be allowed to petition the government to ban Apple and Google from shipping maps apps on their devices in order to ensure a level playing field for their GPS sales?
Indeed Apple and Google could be engaged in dumping, using their revenue from another market to sell maps service below cost to bancrupt the competition.
The press release claims they've filed a formal complaint. Can anyone find a link to it? Because complaining just about OneDrive/Teams being pre-installed in Windows seems like pretty weak sauce.
I know this is somewhat tied to the point they are making, but I was interested to see that I don't recognize a single one of the signatory companies on that page.
> No gate keeping (by bundling, pre-installing or pushing Microsoft services) for a level playing field.
> Open standards and interoperability that make an easy migration possible. This gives consumers a free choice.
poorly defined and vague. what is "gate keeping"? what is a "level playing field"?
migration of what? what is envisioned by open standards? what is a free choice?
It's intentionally vague and poorly defined. That's the point.
They want the government to hamper the competition. The less defined the better if that's your aim. They want to say just enough to get the government to act, and not so much that they restrict potential government action ahead of time. They want to spur government movement on the subject broadly, not pursue a very specific course of action.
We're making it worse, not better, with the absolutely insane amount of digital regulation that the EU, the EU' national governments, and the UK, have been pushing these past 7 years and are continuing to step up almost incessantly. The number of major new digital laws being considered by our legislators is staggering. Even the lawyers can't keep up, let alone the companies meant to be scaling, trying things out and competing under all that. Quantity does not equal quality, when it comes to regulation.
idk why people still use microsoft stuff, only quality thing coming from microsoft is their hardware. Really can’t imagine a niche they have a monopoly in.
Because without governments, there would be no matching power sockets? Bullshit. And APIs are way more complicated than that.
You want a government standard for social networks, so they all have the same features? Essentially it would be frozen how social networks work, and we would be stuck with that forever? Or if we are lucky, we can elect a committee that decides on new features and gets paid billions of tax payer money?
APIs for crappy social networks are not more complicated that the needs of electrical safety, power transmission, etc.
you should pick up a book on electrical engineering, maybe then you'd learn to respect 'real' engineering where you can't get away with spit balling everything the way we do in software design. If mechanical engineers had the attitude developers do, planes would be falling out of the sky, and civilisation would have collapsed and died of famine.
When I, as a European Union citizen, want to watch some videos of how to access European funds for investments on the EU Commission's website, they are all securely hosted in European Data Centers, using a nicely European-built streaming service to play them. Just kidding, they embed YouTube, an American company.
I think until the weird robed cultists that run the EU find some time between their Brussels orgies to encourage innovation inside the EU borders, we'll only be using fines and legalese to even the playing field with the rest of the world.
>"I think until [those] that run the EU find some time between their Brussels [meetings and conferences] to encourage innovation inside the EU borders, we'll only be using fines and legalese to even the playing field with the rest of the world."
The real question is what the limits of government support and 'encouragement' are. It seems like governments are capable of enacting massive infusions of capital into stable industries, but there aren't many cases where the government itself created 'innovation'.
There are arguments to be made around semiconductors and the military (and similar examples), but that was mostly the government fostering the demand side, not really 'taking charge'. There is no lack of demand for software products in the EU, but there does seem to be a distinct lack of innovation.
"there aren't many cases where the government itself created 'innovation'."
"Literally every single sliver of technology that makes the iPhone a smartphone instead of a stupidphone – internet, GPS, touchscreen, battery, hard drive, voice recognition – was developed by researchers on the government payroll." - The Entrepreneurial State
> The real question is what the limits of government support and 'encouragement' are.
In this case, they could encourage European competitors to YouTube by using their services and infusing them with some capital. By digitalizing the processes across the union, and by again, using European services.
They certainly have the money; maybe they can spend a bit less on those "[meetings and conferences]".
I'll give you another example. Because Germany is big in Pharma, they encourage the pharma industry along with its research and development. Because of this, when the pandemic hit, we were already exploring some interesting options. This should be the tech case also, not just pharma.
"but that was mostly the government fostering the demand side" - this is a great way to do it, yes.
> there aren't many cases where the government itself created 'innovation'
Maybe my understanding is wrong, but I feel like a lot of innovation comes from heavy government-backed entities. And then the capitalists come and distribute these innovations in various forms to the population.
>'In this case, they could encourage European competitors to YouTube by using their services and infusing them with some capital. By digitalizing the processes across the union, and by again, using European services.'
Capital infusions have a troubled history, as they've often been used for political payoffs to companies with dubious prospects (Solyndra). I'm also not sure the government will choose 'the right ones', as their criteria may not match those of the consumers, which will lead to specialty government contractors (like US ship construction since the Jones Act).
>" Because Germany is big in Pharma, they encourage the pharma industry along with its research and development."
This seems to be a typical failure mode of government, they encourage & subsidize existing, visible industries, and ignore/tacitly punish 'up & comers'. The film industry is a typical example of the subsidies, and software is a classic example of the neglect.
>"Maybe my understanding is wrong, but I feel like a lot of innovation comes from heavy government-backed entities. And then the capitalists come and distribute these innovations in various forms to the population. "
I think this depends on how you frame the issues; for example, you could say that ARPAnet was the progenitor of the internet, or you could say that 'cisco' was the real innovator. I tend to view 'true innovation' as transforming a niche or speculative idea into something widespread and common, but that's not a universal perspective.
What is unfair about the playing field? Why aren’t European innovators creating YouTube alternatives? If they are, what specifically is it about EU law that prevents them from being successful?
It seems like there might be a cultural issue at play - I keep hearing about how European VCs are much more conservative, and European banks/investors in general just don’t want to invest in software like they do in the US.
Every time there’s a post about working hard at startups, or at work in general, the European commenters are the first to raise that as a self-imposed crime against humanity. But some would argue that a small uptick in hustle might help Europe compete with FAANG and Silicon Valley startups. It’s not impossible to compete - see Spotify, which drove more established US competition out of the market.
I understand the European solution is to have national champions that are heavily subsidized (the US does this to some degree, too, at its peril) - but should that be the first choice?
I'm not arguing that it's unfair, I'm arguing that the EU is not doing enough to encourage development within its borders.
> Why aren’t European innovators creating YouTube alternatives?
I have unsourced beliefs in this matter, that a lot of innovators follow capital outside of EU. There is not a single start-up that I worked with locally, that didn't end up incorporating in US for the capital and the market.
Recently, the EU start-up scene is picking up, so I hope we can see more and more successful companies springing up here. But we're very far from competing with the US and China.
> If they are, what specifically is it about EU law that prevents them from being successful?
I'm not an expert, so I couldn't really say this, however, I know one major issue is the cultural and language barrier. There must be solutions to it, and there must be money in the EU to finance looking for such solutions.
> I keep hearing about how European VCs are much more conservative, and European banks/investors in general just don’t want to invest in software like they do in the US
This is also true; changing recently. I also agree with everything that you posted after this, with the mention that it should be a market-led choice, which type of engagement you want with whichever company you choose.
> I understand the European solution is to have national champions that are heavily subsidized (the US does this to some degree, too, at its peril) - but should that be the first choice?
I believe that, in general, investing smaller sums in more companies across multiple industries is the best solution in terms of government intervention. Then specialized programs for more capital infusion to companies in various stages of development, based on proper due diligence. But again, I'm not an expert.
You’re right and you just need to compete. You don’t necessarily need to win - just compete better at one facet of the market, whatever that may be. You don’t need home runs, you just need quality competitors that have enough success to be sustainable.
The EU would seem to think creating a Vimeo would be a waste. The US is winning because they recognize that Vimeo is successful, even if small.
How Law Made Silicon Valley (2014) https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a... presumably has been superseded (pointers appreciated) but points out some areas of law that made the US favorable to grow large internet companies relative to the EU, Japan, and South Korea -- IIRC more permissive and/or more certainty, sooner, concerning some areas of intellectual property, intermediary liability, and privacy.
This is a very European attitude. IDK what it is about Europe, but the pervasive business mindset seems to be to jump to the conclusion that things aren’t possible before even brainstorming the options. Nothing is ever possible in Europe. A bookshop can’t possibly compete with Amazon in France (despite damn near every small town I’ve visited in the US having a successful independent bookseller) without government help. European businesses could never succeed because Americans sell ads. Stop making excuses for businesses and actually try to compete.
Options for EuroTube:
- sell ads with a focus on European content
- sell privacy
- sell better creative control and/or get really great at microsubscriptions
- sell in-country hosting of content
- sell as a “green” hosting alternative
- sell better software with a better experience/creator tools
- sell better streaming (compete with Twitch)
- sell region-specific hand-curation
There are competitors to YouTube that are successful, there are competitors that have created new categories, etc.
Heck, it doesn’t even have to really be all that competitive, at least give Europeans an equivalent-quality option and the impetus to buy local/but European should be enough to carve out a niche.
Why would you want to create an alternative to Youtube anyway? Streaming videos for free is a terrible business model YT itself still wasn’t profitable back in 2015 (and Google stopped releasing figures after that) for all we know Google might still be subsidizing it, in any case it took at least 10 years for it to break even.
Probably to avoid the national/continental embarrassment of relying on the Americans for every basic piece of technology European society depends on. The original comment was about how government websites rely on YouTube to host their content. I guess there’s also a case for not subjecting European citizens to the perils of Google’s data collection efforts, or the government’s content to the moderation whims of YouTube’s algorithms.
This is part 2 of the dirty duo of European business attitudes: “why even bother?” Nothing is ever worth doing in Europe, an unfruitful complement to the belief that nothing is possible in Europe.
Sorry, honestly but you sound to me like of this “European” attitude you’re fighting against. Basically you’re suggesting investing large amounts of public money (because no sane VC would invest enough capital to build an alternative YT) not driven by actual business needs (you know that you can just host videos directly on tour own server?) but instead some weird ideas about avoiding “national embarrassment”.
If European citizens valued their data enough, preferred hosting their videos on EU servers etc. and were willing to pay extra for this such a service would already exist, but they don’t. Given the current consumer preferences no independent free video streaming could compete with YT unless Google was broken up into multiple companies.
> If European citizens valued their data enough, preferred hosting their videos on EU servers etc. and were willing to pay extra for this such a service would already exist, but they don’t.
The same could be said for anything that doesn’t always exist.
> because no sane VC would invest enough capital to build an alternative YT
Perhaps no European VC. The premise of a VC is that you fund things that aren’t a sure bet, on the hopes that a few ventures will be successful. VC has always been high-risk, high-reward, and you don’t need to start at YouTube scale. It is possible to start with modest funding and grow from there.
> Given the current consumer preferences no independent free video streaming could compete with YT unless Google was broken up into multiple companies.
Vimeo continues to exist. As does DailyMotion. As does twitch. As do Chinese alternatives.
So you’re saying that it’s illegal for a company to subsidize it’s unprofitable products by using funds from more successful products? Because that’s basically what’s Google business model was from the beginning (i.e. release a bunch of free stuff to tie in users into their ecosystem and gather their data) : Gmail, Maps, Docs, Chrome are illegal because they are/were subsidized by the Search/Ads business?
Have dumping laws ever been actually applied to software?
That is my understabding of what dumping laws mean.
Many laws have not been properly tested on software, even ownership of data is still sketchy.
I am saying that, as scrutiny of software conpanies increases, and a new generation of lawmakers comes in that has some computer literacy, chances that any dumping laws will be applied increase dramatically
Step 1: all the tech companies should stop using Windows (and MacOS for that matter). They whine about MS but still use their products. So use Linux, use LibreOffice, use EU based email or roll your own, develop software on open standards, etc...
Look at what the non-MS (and non-Apple) FAANGs do; they use OSS operating systems, tech stacks and build their whole infrastructure on open tech and standards, apart from a few proprietary bits rolled in-house.
EU tech's problem is that they all try to be MS but aren't. None of them seem to model what they do on the successful non-MS/Apple big tech companies.