Re:Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe
by logicchains on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @11:22AM
(#11762286)
What I meant was Google's founders could still have founded it without government money, it would just have taken them longer to obtain the funding.
Money isn't enough to make a search engine; Baidu for instance has the Chinese government behind it but still produces worse results even for Chinese language searches than Google. Bing's had quite a lot of funding from Microsoft put into it.
Even besides that early governmental founding. Companies aren't created nor exist in a vacuum.
Tax payer's money payed for most of the infrastructures, research and education those companies requires to operate.
How can you run a company like Google or any other without educated employees, roads, internet, etc.
Entrepreneurs love to think they built themselves alone, but they are just a product of the society they lives in.
Now as a society you can choose to either socialize or privatise your infrastructures, but you'll have to pay for them either way.
The USG was wise enough to fund them when they were extremely risky.