[t8sr]

AFAIK the strength of German SMBs is often overstated. When you look at what's been driving economic growth, it's mostly been creating new, large companies like Google and Amazon. Germany used to be good at doing that: SAP, VW, many others. But not for the past 20-30 years. Why? Because establishing a new large enterprise is most readily done by inventing a new sector of the industry. But Germany's (and Europe's) regulation regime, risk aversion and slow processes prevent that from happening. Maybe Google couldn't have been German, but Deepmind could have been.

But it's hard creating something new, when new technologies are banned by default and you are required to file tons of paperwork before doing anything. And it's also hard when the type of people who form startups are not moving to Germany, because they can start a company in the UK or Israel with 20 pounds by filling out an online form in 5 minutes.

[ahartmetz]

Since you mention DeepMind, DeepL is German (Cologne). It is the best translator for the languages it supports. Source: I have a sister who is a professional translator. She uses it to get a rough version and then polishes it up as needed. No other tool produces a rough version that is good enough to save time.

The DeepL founder is, from his name, probably Polish.

[q-big]

> because they can start a company in the UK or Israel with 20 pounds by filling out an online form in 5 minutes.

Starting a company in Germany is much easier if you don't need limited liability (which GmbH and UG (haftungsbeschränkt) do offer).