[palata]

> Is there anything that stops today anyone from starting a new Google or a new Microsoft or a new Apple in Europe?

The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably.

And that's apparently not regulations.

> It's getting tiring of hearing of the big bad Microsoft that stops poor Europe from competing properly.

Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly.

But the big bad monopolies being US companies, they are protected by the US government who doesn't really care about having US competition in the US, but cares about domining over the rest of the world.

> The EU tech salaries are ridiculously low and the tax burden is unreasonably high. Add on top of that an aversion to risk from the banks and VC funds in Europe and this is what you get.

Again, a handful of companies completely dominate the software industry in the US, too. Is that because of ridiculously low salaries and unreasonably high tax burden in the US? I don't get the reasoning.

[CrimsonRain]

Blah blah. That's why almost all the tech companies in EU that (start to) get big, shifts to US.

eu has a shit software industry and it has only itself to blame for the insane amount of bureaucracy, cutthroat taxes, labor laws that promote stagnation, and the culture of extreme risk aversion.

It is a good place to live until the borrowed time elapses.

[fsflover]

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

[palata]

I don't have anything polite to answer to this :-).

[CrimsonRain]

Please post your impolite answer. I don't mind :)

EU (software) industry is a dream for mediocre skilled people. Secure a job once, can't get fired, do bare minimum and never be proactive.

It is a hell for people who work hard and fast. The whole culture is geared towards dragging down anyone who is proactive and makes others look bad by being too good.

[seec]

I agree with some reservations about this being completly generalised. There are still some successfull companies that rewards good players. But yes, there are very few and most of the rest are stuck coasting at a glacial pace, doing stuff that are not very competitive on so many levels it is impossible to describe succintly.

I would also argue that it is not just about the software industry. Many EU industries have become extremely uncompetitive on so many level. Even when you are ready to pay more for EU made products, it is not easy to find something that is decently competitive and not just a pale copy of better offerings.

It is clear that the EU has become too collectivist but they are still stuck blaming capitalism (just like the soviets I guess).

In France, even old big players that were once at the top and/or were (semi)public organisation have fallen very hard or have been scandalously sold piecemeal to foreign actors. The problem is not even that they are governement funded but it really is rooted in the collectivist organisation model that gives too much power to politics and very little lattitude to consumer/key actors choice.

Those systems become necessarily corrupted because they rely too much on human behaviors and most humans are fundamentally corrupt.

[palata]

> they are still stuck blaming capitalism (just like the soviets I guess).

I wouldn't say that the way it works in 2026 is the thing they called capitalism 50 years ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46146010

[seec]

Yes, I completly agree with your point of view, which is exactly why I said that.

They are using capitalism as a boogeyman for everything, when in practice the system in place is so far removed from "real" capitalism that ones need to be either blind or ideologicaly corrupt to put the blame there.

Unregulated capitalism has many weakness, the most potent one being that there is pruning of useless actors and that results in poverty and some people being left behind. But the remedy that is applied today isn't really much better, people are still left behind, just more slowly and that comes with massive oppotunity cost for those at the bottom, since they are the ones most likely to really benefit from the freedom that comes with capitalism.

This is just what the ideologues working in academia and politics (deeply linked) always come up with, even though their existence and ability to make such critics is fully funded by capitalism. There are just keeping the tradition of Marx that was completly funded by capitalists but came up with the argument that it was the worst system possible.

[noo_u]

It is, at this point, an easily verifiable fact that software engineering jobs in Europe are en masse poorly paid relative to the equivalent positions in the US, and the majority of the EU companies that actually pay well are actually US based. This causes a lot of outflow of talent. That VC funding in Europe is atrocious is obvious to anyone who has had to go through it, and have fun letting a poor performer go from your 5 person startup.

Your polite wishful responses are frustrating to read to anyone who's had to go through this hell.

[palata]

Are you saying that Europe can't compete with the US monopolies because all the good developers move to the US?

[rdm_blackhole]

Yes that is what OP is saying and OP is correct. If you are young, talented and you have a crazy idea that might just work and if you are given the opportunity then you go to the US every-time.

Why? Because it makes sense. Why stay in Berlin or Paris where you can make 50K to 70K euros a year at most and pay close to 40% or 50% in taxes when you can make double or triple that in the US or better yet, start your own company there and then expand in Europe after building it knowing that if you eventually sell it, you get to keep a lot of the sale price.

Talented people don't work for nothing. Motivated and ambitious people don't work for nothing.

If Europe wants to see it's own tech giants emerge, then it's needs to compensate founders and employees well. That's as simple as it is.

Unfortunately it's just not the case at the moment and until that changes, the most ambitious Europeans will continue leaving and building companies on the other side of the Atlantic.

[palata]

> Why stay in Berlin or Paris where you can make 50K to 70K euros a year at most and pay close to 40% or 50% in taxes when you can make double or triple that in the US

Have you ever talked to Europeans in your life?

[CrimsonRain]

because EU suffocates good developers, gives free roaming to mediocre ones. EU cant compete with anything US or China except making more cookie laws.

[noo_u]

Did I use the word "all" anywhere in my comment? There are good developers in Europe. What I am saying is that there would have been even more of them had the incentives not been so lackluster. More talent seems to generally result in a greater competitive ability.

Fwiw, I have doubts that currently Europe can compete with the US at the startup level, let alone at the bigco one.

I am not trying to drag Europe down - it worries me that sophisticated complacency, overconfidence based on the achievements of previous generations, and addiction to comfort, will start eroding the very aspects that make it a great place to live at.

[rdm_blackhole]

> The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably. And that's apparently not regulations.

The reason why there is no other Google in the US currently is because for the average person Google works fine so if you go to a VC fund and ask for USD 100M to build the next Google, you are going to have to sell them on your vision and explain how you are going to do things better and maybe just maybe someone will be crazy enough to invest.

As of this moment that has not happened but it certainly could.

However for Europe it is not the same calculations. Everyone keeps repeating that Europe is too dependent on US tech but what do we do about it? Not much.

It should be a top priority to start a competing search engine that is better than Google in Europe and it should be so good that people start using it without being forced to do so by bureaucrats in Brussels.

Instead, the risk aversion is such that no VC in Europe will ever consider that for one, it is doable and that two, it warrants such a massive investment (which it does). So the conclusion remains the same. There will be no European Google and there will be no European Apple.

> Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly.

I am only repeating your words. You say big bad monopolies stop other from competing properly. I am not seeing the evidence for your claim. Anyone can start a competing OS in Europe. Is Microsoft somehow stopping everyone from doing so?

If not, why is there no European Windows or European MacOS? Is it because of these monopolies?

You put the blame of the big bad monopolies and I say that the reason these monopolies exist in the first place is because we haven't even tried to compete and therefore de facto we are giving the entire market to the US tech.

> whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US.

The laws are not going to fix this issue when you have no other competing products to replace the US tech products. Is there a better search product out there than Google (despite all its flaws) for the average person? A better Windows?

Secondly, the fact that the US can "bully" Europe is simply a second order effect of the problem we are facing now. Since there are no good competitors in the critical tech sectors of Europe then the US knows there is nothing the EU can do.

That is why the "bullying" as you put it work here and it doesn't work in China which has developed it's own ecosystem of apps and tech companies and it doesn't have to bow to the US on that front.

> Again, a handful of companies completely dominate the software industry in the US, too. Is that because of ridiculously low salaries and unreasonably high tax burden in the US? I don't get the reasoning.

The average salary of tech worker in the US is higher than in Europe. Denying this fact is simply putting more blinders on.

If you want to make good products you need talent. If you want innovation you need talent and you need to have people who are motivated to start something new and usually for most people motivation takes the form of money.

Then to get talent you need to pay them properly and/or they need to understand that they will reap the rewards of their labor somehow.

That is why you see so many founders going to the US to found their company there instead of Europe. That is why some of the founders who start in Europe end up moving to the US when they get big enough because they know that there they can get the best talent and they stand to make some potentially life changing money if their company does well.

Then these founders exit their companies and what do they do next? They invest in other companies, the create their own VC fund, they foster the next unicorns and then these unicorns come knocking on Europe's doors with their product and once gain Europe has no response or a very weak response because there are no competitors or very small ones that are merely a blip on the US's radar. Then the cycle repeats again and again.

At the end of the day, if you take into account the potential risks, the legal hurdles, the lack access to capital, the potential monetary gains and the access to talent, then the conclusion is simple: The US wins every time.

Does that mean that everyone who creates a company in Europe eventually leaves or that no company get started at all? Certainly not. But since the incentives are not there, they are just less companies getting started, less unicorns being built, less access to capital, less access to talent and if you compound that year after year you end up in the situation we are in now.

And if you think that this is somehow misrepresenting the current state of Europe, it is not. Mario Draghi himself has tried to explain these things to the EU governments and made many recommendations in order to try to close the gap. 1 year later and basically nothing or almost nothing in his report has been implemented.

The EU likes to cry foul every-time a US tech giant comes in and steamrolls the competition in Europe and it thinks that just one more law, one more regulation will fix the problem.

If the EU/Europe was instead fixing the real problem which is the lack of good competitors in Europe, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place because the monopolies you mention would not exists here.

[palata]

I don't think I could disagree more :-).

[menaerus]

Sorry for being ignorant but in what universe do you live? It can't be more true than it (sadly) is. Everything what has been said is factual.

[palata]

Opinions are not facts.

[rdm_blackhole]

You can disagree all you want, the facts don't lie but if you prefer to stick your head in the sand and pretend that none of this is happening, then by all means continue to do so.

This is a real problem with most Europeans honestly. Not being able to admit when things are not working. And then finally we wake up 5 years too late and the writing is on the wall.