[alfalfasprout]

And you really think more protectionism will help?

Maybe part of the problem is that due to so many regulations, there's not a healthy startup ecosystem and the compensation isn't remotely high enough to draw the best talent.

[mytherin]

Regulation has little to do with it. Most of the tech industry is inherently winner-takes-all or winner-takes-most because of how easy it is to scale up tech solutions. US companies get a huge head-start because of their large home market compared to the fragmented EU market, and can easily carry that advantage into also dominating the EU market.

There is a reason Russia and China have strong tech companies and Europe doesn’t. That reason isn’t lack of money, lack of talent or regulations. The only way for Europe to get big tech companies is by removing or crippling big US companies so EU companies can actually compete. The US companies would be quickly replaced by EU alternatives and those would offer high compensation all the same.

Whether or not that is worth it from the perspective of the EU is not so black and white - tech is obviously not everything - but the current situation where all EU data gets handed to the US government on a silver platter is also far from optimal from the perspective of the EU.

[fishermanbill]

Absolutely. The only bit I don't agree with is that tech isn't everything - to all intense and purposes it is (at this point in time).

[smabie]

The only way for Europe to get good tech companies is to create a business friendly environment. They seem unwilling to do that.

[ngcc_hk]

When is the time china and Russia has a lead in IT by not protectionist and copycat. I can only think of tik tok.

The strange thing is if you do not count brexit, Arm is one of the many example Uk can do it. And whilst we say Nokia, Sieman and japan fuji (sitting in Hosiptal now and thinking those mri, ...) non-chinese and non-Russia do dominate the tech world even they are not USA. But communist ideology totalitarian I found tik tok is really the exception.

Hence I think Eu has their problem. But not because they are not as good as Russia or china.

[guorzhen]

Tmall of Alibaba processed 544,000 transactions per second during the peak of its Singles' Day in 2019. I believe this has set a new world record for an e-commerce platform.

In case you didn't know about Singles' Day: https://graphics.reuters.com/SINGLES-DAY-ALIBABA/0100B30E24T...

[DiogenesKynikos]

Huawei. They lead in 5G equipment because they did the necessary R&D investment.

Their phones are pretty good, too (or were pretty good before they got cut off from their suppliers). Their edge was that they built really great cameras into their phones.

[fishermanbill]

Yes the US is all about protectionism, same goes for China, same goes for the EU (also note my use of Europe, EU != Europe). Hence why all three major trade blocks dont have complete free trade deals setup between them (not that comment has anything to do with free trade deals - at least not primarily).

Ultimately free trade is where the world would like to get to purely from an economic basis but you have to do that in tandem with the rest of the world. If you go first everybody else has a economic advantage over you as possibly the UK will find out after Brexit actually happens. Also politics gets in the way of the world achieving full free trade. Some gov will always want votes by protecting an industry - like the UK's fishing industry for instance.

[dijit]

There are a lot of tech companies that start and are successful in Europe. They just get bought when they get big enough and killed later.

Skype is another example to add to the list.

Skype is effectively dead technology and isn’t even promoted any more.

[AsyncAwait]

> Maybe part of the problem is that due to so many regulations, there's not a healthy startup ecosystem

Reaganomics talking point since the 80s, yet the U.S. constantly relaxes regulations, recently it released even more environmental ones and it looks in parts like Mars.

But of course, cut regulations, cut corporate taxes, cut benefits, cut, cut, cut. There's never a failure model for such capitalism apparently. 2008 even was blamed on regulation, rather than lack of thereof.

Am quite frankly done with this line of argument.

[quadrifoliate]

I know what you are referring to in the US, but that doesn't explain the intra-Europe differences in regulation when it comes to doing business. Like Denmark is number 4, Germany is number 22, and Greece is number 79 on this index? [1] I don't think Denmark (or Norway, at number 9) is exactly an unregulated capitalist paradise where the environment is being destroyed in the name of business.

I say this because I think Europe with a set of consistent regulations and ways of establishing business would serve as a good counterweight to the freewheeling, "anything goes" nature of US capitalism. But I think the fragmentation is its Achilles Heel.

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[1] https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings?region=oecd-high-i...