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Hard evidence? No. And I'm not even saying that Germany has that much more (or more per capita) than some other countries.

It's just an annoying trend that I've noticed (and I'm not the only one, cf. links at the end). Don't get me wrong, there are many interesting startups, especially the smaller ones. But for a time there was an alarming trend of just taking an US product, and creating a German version of it. And then not keeping up with the original.

Of course it's never easy to say where you'd draw the line between copycat and competitor. Xing and Linkedin might be the latter, but StudiVZ and facebook? Quite often there's not much valued added besides the translation (myvideo vs youtube), and once the original gets a German localization…

The problem for me is that I'd actually like some German equivalents of some US apps (e.g. netflix, okcupid, mint), but I'd prefer if their implementors would add some passion to it. If you don't restrict yourself to German-language internet, some things often look rather familiar. And, as I said above, quite often that means that there's no excited (and exciting) company behind it, and so nobody will introduce interesting features in the future – or at least keep up with the interesting features of the original.

Who's to blame (assuming this is no figment of my biased imagination)? Hard to say. Maybe because there's no breeding ground for new ideas comparable to SV or NYC here (although Berlin might be there or almost), maybe because local investors are more risk-averse and if you show them something American that already has lots of customers/members…

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,779869,0...

http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/22/the-german-start-up-scene-...

http://www.thewavingcat.com/2011/09/03/defending-the-german-...

http://siliconallee.com/startups/2011/08/09/editorial-founde...