> One interesting thing is that Europeans benefit from American innovation. They have iphones, windows pcs, use google, etc like everyone else.

Until the iPhone, Europe dominated the mobile phone business both in handsets and wireless network equipment. And this wasn't just the manufacturers; texting was pretty heavy and ubiquitous in the mid 1990s while it was still a novelty for the US a decade later.

Europe was a significant player in the early PC revolution and other technologies ubiquitous today; consider, for example, that the ARM processor was developed in the UK.

There was an interesting discussion in the Economist that appeared in HN a week or so ago discussing how Europe has fallen behind economically over the last couple of decades. It's rather surprising.

Another thing is that Europe didn't have any need for Paypal and others, because we already had working national bank transfer systems and SEPA for international transfers. The only time you'd need to cash a check was when you received a payment from USA.

> Europe was a significant player in the early PC revolution and other technologies ubiquitous today; consider, for example, that the ARM processor was developed in the UK.

And Minitel.

While laughed at today, it was a demonstration that people were willing to spend money online (and a working payment system).

Has regulation changed appreciably the last two or three decades resulting in less drive for innovation?

I don't think so; in particular I believe the strength of the European economy in the late 90s was merely hysteresis from the growth and investments of the 70s and 80s.

There is a certain structural "stiffness" which is a mix of regulation and culture but I don't believe it changed much. There was a big war in the middle of the 20th century that you might have heard of :-) and I feel like it upended things; poor countries like Sweden and Switzerland were able to spring ahead and the low energy point that the economy settled on was actually pretty solid for the second half of the 20th century: a resilient network of medium sized businesses with great socialization (the soi-disant "Mittelstand" of Germany is the most well known example). Unfortunately it didn't respond well to the global giants of the late 20th and early 21st century.

It makes me think that actually, the war had the same imposition of "stiffness" to all its biggest players. The US, Japan, the nascent EU and even the former Soviet Union all had a defined "place in the world" in the post-war order and followed more-or-less the same trajectory with their domestic economy. Gradually things started slipping, the Soviets being the obvious first to collapse, but everyone started running into some issues later in the 20th century and started kicking the can down the road to address them.

Countries outside of those great-power roles in the conflict didn't end up on the same timeline and so are landing in a different place today. Australia or Taiwan for example; both changed status and became markedly more independent.

Thanks for the perspective; there might be something to what you said.

> Until the iPhone, Europe dominated the mobile phone business

There was no such thing a "European domination", it was all Nokia, and to a much lesser extend Ericsson.

There is no such thing as "American innovation", it is all Apple, and to a lesser extent Google.

Are 95% (to be conservative) of the tech unicorns US-based ?

At this point, you can start drawing a trend. European successes are more the exception than the rule, which is kinda irrelevant anyway as 95% of European successes will end up being merged into a US behemoth...

Europe doesn't create Ubers because it doesn't have the capital. its not to do with innovation.

VC as a model requires huge markets and huge amounts of financing. It doesn't require home grown innovation.

Europe has enormous, deep pools of capital. The culture though is to fear loss rather than fear loss of upside. Capital is deployed differently in the US and China.

What does China has to do with the actual conversation ?

Merely that the US is not the only one with the eagerness to deploy capital at greater risk. Nothing more than that!

> Europe doesn't create Ubers because it doesn't have the capital. its not to do with innovation.

Europe has capital. You'll find a lot in Silicon Valley.

Siemens was there too before the Nokia domination.

And to the rest of your comment - paying in taxes and getting universal benefits benefit society as a whole, not just the poor.

I think it was finland that got rid of private schools, and all of aa sudden schools got WAY better , for everyone.

Insulating people with wealth from everyone else is an overt societal negative. People are their experiences, and if you go through life without meeting people with different experiences than you, you grow up in a bubble.

Having everyone be able to enjoy life and not having a govt bought off that laser focuses on making a small class of people even richer is their goal, not solidarity with a certain class.

Finland has good results because of the methods of teaching, not because of the ownership of the schools. We have a school on this system in my town and 2 kids in the family went there, the system is better even if the school is ... private.

> why is there substantially less innovation in Europe?

I know people who started start-ups and spun out side projects here in Europe (both the UK and the continent).

One thing I noticed was that when it came time to raise money almost of all of them ended up needing American investment. We don't have anywhere near as much VC capital here in Europe and the banks are incredibly conservative.

Plus depending on the country the taxes/fees for being self-employed or starting your own business can be incredibly punitive.

> One interesting thing is that Europeans benefit from American innovation.

While we do benefit from American innovation I'd also argue it's a sort of 'digital colonialism' for want of a better term - we don't grow our own huge firms like Yandex, Baidu etc. and instead just hand our cash over to American ones (Google, Facebook etc.)

> I'd also argue it's a sort of 'digital colonialism' for want of a better term

I think that’s a terrible term for it unless you think that America is somehow responsible for preventing Europe from developing its own tech industries.

But US Big Tech does affect at a global scale. What are the chances of a country developing their own search engine?

Their own mobile OS and hardware?

Their own social networking app?

What are you talking about?

Lots of countries have their own social networking apps. Some have their own search engines.

Also, quite a few countries have strong computer science schools and developers.

Linux was developed in Finland. Raspberry PI was developed in England.

“Big tech” isn’t preventing them from developing anything. The only thing holding these countries back is their business culture.

> Linux was developed in Finland.

I'd say that Linux kernel was developed by an international network of hackers with a Finnish leader, and benefited a lot from GNU userland. If you want more Finnish operating system, try Jolla. There was a lot of Finnish contribution to Series 60 too, but it's kind of awful.

> I'd say that Linux kernel was developed by an international network of hackers with a Finnish leader, and benefited a lot from GNU userland.

Linus did quite a bit before the network of hackers joined in. But I don’t disagree with you. My main point is that the US, and big American tech companies don’t have a monopoly on talent.

Not monopoly, but they do pay well and let developers do things, and those two things attract talent. AFAIK it used to be really uncommon in European companies to have advanced career path for engineering, and switching to management is still kind of expected.

> it used to be really uncommon in European companies to have advanced career path for engineering, and switching to management is still kind of expected.

That matches my experience. It concurs with the statement I made elsewhere in this thread that what is holding Europe back is its business culture, not some kind of American Colonialism.

Not purposely, but the dominance of American tech does make it almost impossible for European competitors to arise. That's why the Chinese are hesitant about US tech.

> does make it almost impossible for European competitors to arise.

There is literally evidence for this. It’s only a business culture that doesn’t celebrate and reward engineering that holds Europe back.

> If Europeans are more free to take chances, why is there substantially less innovation in Europe?

Someone told me a joke about the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The Vasa was an ambitiously designed ship that capsized shortly after leaving the shipyard on her maiden voyage. The joke was that they build the museum to send the message that if you try to do anything ambitious, you'll fail, and they'll build a museum to your failure so others won't make the same mistake.

As a % of population, and % of military spending... does "less innovation" hold up? I assume you have some data backing that claim, would be interesting if true, and the reasons why.

Personally, I think we're going to see a change in the trend of relying on two superpowers (USA, China) for tech and innovation. For the past years, it's been increasingly obvious that the political landscape can change almost overnight.

Europe has also been lacking a proper VC scene and culture, but this seems to have changed more in the past years.

So, don't expect the next 20-30 years to be identical to the previous decades.

Honestly, I'd say it's because the Eurozone doesn't encourage cooperation between member states.

>If Europeans are more free to take chances, why is there substantially less innovation in Europe?

What leads you to believe there is less innovation in Europe? Do you have data to back up that assertion?