Germany wakes up to US tech dominance
politico.euEurope has played a foundational role in the development of the foundations of modern computing - Linux and ARM are prime examples of technologies that have reshaped the industry over the past three decades. The question isn’t whether Europe should distance itself from American technology, but why US firms have been far more successful at monetizing Europe's innovations. I'm afraid they're going to have to do some soul-searching to understand why upstart businesses have a difficult time flourishing in Europe.
European companies have been plenty successful at monetizing their innovations. If you look at OECD statistics https://goingdigital.oecd.org/datakitchen/#/explorer/1/toolk... in the industry of "Computer programming, consultancy, and information service activities" Europe produced slightly more than the US in 2022, and the EU28 produced slightly less. Of course that means the US has a larger tech sector on a per-capita basis, but the difference isn't huge. If you think European companies are bad at monetizing technology and have a difficult time flourishing, you're probably narrowly focusing on the domain of large American tech companies (consumer products with strong network effects). Here, there are no European equivalents because those are winner-takes-all markets, and taking two companies with the same market penetration in the US vs. any European country, the US company has much higher revenue and hence more capital available for expansion. That's part of how Facebook steamrolled various European social networks. Investors know this too, so even before the winner is decided, they're reluctant to bet on European startups in such markets. On the other hand, there are plenty of B2B niches where network effects are much less strong and European companies are doing fine.
agree! other notable examples include MP3 and the GSM standard. Oh, and the World Wide Web...
Damn! I forgot about all that! But yeah, the world is built on European technology. They're just not as good at capitalizing on it. Being American, I have no first-hand insight to why that is. I know what people say, but I don't know how much to trust that.
As a German, I would guess on the one hand, there's not enough digital skills in the broad population. Also, entrepreneurs historically tended to flock to classical engineering roles (= making internal-combustion cars).
Sounds nice. But talking about how your nation will break free from dominance is 0% more difficult than quietly accepting that your low-effort feel-good priorities guarantee your perpetual submission.