It's not a stupid question.

First of all, none of the GAFA were actually started as Cloud infrastructure providers. So the question is not why isn't Europe creating big Cloud Infrastructure companies, one could argue that the biggest "pure-player" in Cloud is OVH which is European.

If anything it's the (insanely lax and pro-monopoly) American regulatory environment that has the biggest impact on the creation of big Cloud providers outside of the U.S. The only country that manage tyo do that are China & Russia to a lesser extent because they have active protection against AWS/GCP/MS.

As to why Europe doesn't create big GAFA-like companies in other sectors, one reason is that the E.U is not a single market from the perspective of these companies. Yes the regulatory environment is stable & simple enough for companies to operate in all E.U countries, but that's not all that makes a market.

The fact that europeans speak 27 different languages for instance makes building a european sized company much harder than a U.S sized one, for roughly the same market in terms of $$$.

EDIT: I don't think creating GAFA-style companies is a goal any state should pursue. The U.S needs to get their head out of their ass and split AMZN & Google ASAP, & fix Facebook.

It doesn't help that the best engineers work for GAFA because of big salaries. European companies pay smaller salaries compared to the US ones. A good engineer can double his salary by going to the US. Sure, he may see more social issues there because of no safety net, but maybe he doesn't care.

Less of a safety net is more accurate. Medicare, MediCal, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Social Security, public housing, welfare, etc. It’s the majority of US federal government spending.

Salaries are irrelevant since it's close to impossible for an European worker to move to the US, work visas are incredibly difficult to get and even if you manage to get one you don't have the same careers prospects as a native.

edited: reworded to "close to impossible"

> Salaries are irrelevant since it's not possible for an European worker to move to the US

I know plenty who did. You should rather say something like it's hard for the average European worker to move to the US.

Hard is an understatement. I had multiple friends who had offers from US companies on the table for $200k+. They all fell through because it was impossible to get a visa (however internships are easy with a J1).

The one who went the furthest worked remotely for a very well known company from France for 2 years. Even with the company sponsoring the visa, he had to wait more than 1 year to have a shot, the lottery only happening once a year. He didn't get selected and eventually the company gave up on having any hope to ever bring him.

??? This is false. Look at the top researchers in US companies and universities and a massive share is from Europe.

NeoFeznet asked:

> why is that? Is it the regulatory environment?

fcantournet:

> If anything it's the (insanely lax and pro-monopoly) American regulatory environment that has the biggest impact on the creation of big Cloud providers outside of the U.S.

I don't think you can say the problem there is America's lack of regulation preventing European cloud providers (which was what the question was about) from starting.

It seems like the problem there is one of the European regulations being too strict.

Stifling regulation is not a force of nature, it is a lever that can be adjusted.

I think he means there is little to no protectionism in Europe when it comes to software - so we get 'digitally colonised' by the USA.

Whereas China and Russia have stricter rules about what foreign corporations can do, so there that allows for the creation of homegrown solutions like Baidu - would Baidu exist today if Google was able to run their services without interference in China since the start?

That reasoning is one of the reasons EU is in its current state.

You will never get a Ronaldo/Jordan caliber player without exposing them to the best players from an early stage.

Protectionism works well until they face a real challenger and then wonder why their usual tactics and products all seem to fall short.

It’s cultural. It’s really hard to get investors to invest in things that aren’t a guarantee. Most potential billion dollar companies. Investors in the USA are fine taking risk investing in them. In the EU you don’t find that culture. Could part of it be regulatory in terms of tax write offs? I’m not sure.

I don't buy the culture argument after looking at the success of China. I think it's a matter of having a big enough internal market to be able to compete with the American monopolies.

Big internal market might be a part of it. But at least for China, investors do take some crazy bets. I know if many that are pretty head scratching. But in the end, it just takes a few of these crazy bets working out.

EU is as large as the USA.

It's not one coherent market though.

Wasn’t that the main selling point of the EU?

It's not to the same degree as the US. There's still different languages and cultures.

I think one of the reasons, other than legislation, is lack of motivation; it is more or less egalitarian and that promotes mediocrity, not innovation. In US you can become filthy rich relatively fast, not in Europe, so why bother? Just see the IT salaries in Europe vs. Silicon Valley, they are a lot lower, so really good and ambitious people move to SV, don't spend time in Europe.

because money is the only prime motivator in life?

Also, this egalitarianism and promoting of mediocracy you speak of makes no sense in regards to people who want to attain personal growth. Not to mention having a system like the US comes at a massive cost in regards to the wellbeing and welfare of the general population.

Innovating isn't just about money. Not to mention a ton of innovators exists in the EU, they are just not the same scale as amazon/google etc.

I never said money is the only motivator; also egalitarianism and promoting mediocracy does negatively impact people who want to attain personal growth, being treated the same as the village idiot is not a morale booster. Appreciation is a top motivator according to Maslow.

> because money is the only prime motivator in life?

The task of a business is to make profit. So yes, in that sense, the money is the ultimate goal and profit is the one and only kpi to look at.

Would investors want to risk investing in a anti-tech part of the world who will blame them for everything?

The EU is populist in trying to blame tech companies for all of society's ills.

No, the EU blames FAANG for skipping taxes and monopolistic behaviour. They might just prefer to punish US companies rather than domestic ones.

What I don't like as an EU citizen is that our network infra is ridden with Huawei equipment. I'd much rather have US equipment and services if domestic companies aren't capable delivering it rather than One Belt, One Road. Just take a look at Kyrgyzstan and how it's going to become a Chinese colony.

Now this is a claim you'll need to substantiate!

Do I need to going into the whole blameing tech for "fake news" while the media spreads it themselves?

Who wants to invest in what will be scapegoat for law makers to cry at?

And Newspapers have started wars with fake news.

Agreed, its nicer doing business in a country where you can fraudulently cause global economic meltdown and go on unscathed.

I mut have missed this global economic meltdown you speak of, which was caused by GAFA?

Is lack of corporate accountability exclusive to GAFA?

You can kill ~300 people and noone goes to jail. You can launder money for druglords and just get a fine.

What does a corporation have to do to actually suffer serious consequences, like jailtime or breaking up a company? Something that's not just 'cost of doing business'?