[xandrius]

Whenever something from the EU emerges on HN, whatever that is, a comment exactly like yours is made.

Today it's you, tomorrow someone else.

Always the same "points" and the poster always seems to feel obliged to bring their own misshapen view of history, forgetting that a lot of good changes in this so-called "free market" happened because of the EU.

Sure more tech became popular out of the US but let's not be blinded:

1. This tech isn't/wasn't the only innovative tech ever created

2. A lot of reasons for the popularity has to do with US position over the rest of the world

3. That this same tech has been kept at bay because of the US

I'm not saying the EU is perfect but I prefer its direction over the US, especially when it comes to making legislations which benefits the people rather than multinational corporations.

[serbuvlad]

I simply do not think that the popularity of US tech is due to anything other than the quality of US tech.

I live in Romania, and the people that were rushing to pirate Windows in the 90's after communism fell because they couldn't afford licensing weren't doing so because of any US imposition, but simply because they wanted to use personal computers, and Windows was the best OS for most people at the time for that purpose.

Just like when phones came around they rushed to buy Nokia phones; when smartphones came around they rushed to buy Samsung phones; when they wanted DLSRs they bought Canon and Nikon cameras and now that they want easily transferable digital cash and cheap tech trinkets they opened up Revolut accounts and order stuff off Temu.

Not because of any "influence" or "position" of Finland, South Korea, Japan, the UK or China, but simply because they are the best offer on the market as perceived by consumers.

What tech does Europe lead in? To be fair there are still some fields, like Aerospace (Airbus), Lithography (ASML) or Pharmaceutics (BioNTech). But on the consumer tech market, the phones, laptops and streaming services people want? The EU has no presence. Even the auto industry is going to be eaten up by China, because Europe simply pivoted too late to EVs. I know someone who works at Renault and they're just terrified of the cars that are coming out of China.

[xandrius]

I see your point but that stops being true once the bigger companies start stifling competition (both locally and internationally) to become even bigger and more pervasive.

There are European alternatives for many products/services that are currently US-based but they either don't have the same marketing budgets, or international reach or can offer lower prices. All those are often due to first-to-market tied with anti-competitive practices (further tied to governments not having much power against these organisations) which makes these companies move even more to the top. None of that was about better tech but rather everything else.

And sometimes yes, better tech, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that "better tech" is not somehow tied to more money available to spend on improving such tech. Big capitals being moved around the US has an impact to this tech.

By the way, there are European alternatives Amazon (just not big enough to be international, but many countries have their own version), Microsoft (i.e. Linux), Google (ProtonMail/ProtonDrive , Nextcloud, etc.), AWS (the ones which comes to mind are Upcloud and Hetzner), Android/iOS (Ubuntu Touch)

[achenet]

> But on the consumer tech market, the phones, laptops and streaming services people want? The EU has no presence.

I'm working on it, give me another ten years <3

[timeon]

> quality of

More like ability to buy competition.