My god, if I had a biscuit crumb for every time someone on HN mentioned ASML as an example of European tech dominance, I would have died from obesity several times over. The simple fact that ASML (and sometimes Spotify) is the only name that comes to mind when discussion EU tech dominance, speaks volumes. (I'm European BTW)
Where is EU's iPhone? Or Android? Or Windows? Or Intel? Or AWS? Or Office365? Or Google? Or ChatGPT? Or Xbox? Or Steam? Or Netflix? Or Nvidia? Or Micron? Or AMD?
Europe is basically completely absent in terms of international champions in SW and HW products and services, especially in the consumer facing market.
Go to any tech job in Europe, and the tools you'll be using both HW and SW (client and infrastructure) will mostly be from some US tech giants or SV start-ups. Come home from work and fire up any digital entertainment platform it will most likely also come from the US or Japan or to a smaller degree China.
US's handful of top tech companies outmatch the EU's entire tech sector combined, both in market cap and sheer numbers. It's not even a competition.
>Tech couldn't exist without ASML...
False, more like ASML couldn't exist without US tech. We could be using non-EUV lithography machines from Canon and Nikon, so chip tech would exist just fine, but would probably be stuck around ~10nm level. Not great for bleeding edge tech, but not stone age levels either.
Short story, the only reason ASML won and Canon and Nikon lost, is that US decided to license its domestic EUV tech From Sandia labs to ASML, and denied it to Canon and Nikon, purely because ASML acquired Silicon Valley Group Inc, US's leading lithography supplier ta the time, giving ASML a major US presence vs their Japanese competitors.
Longer story:
"The basics of EUV were invented in, and owned by, DOE labs (Sandia, Berkeley, and Lawrence) in the 1990s. The chip manufacturers wanted the labs' inventions commercialized, of course, so Intel took the lead on pushing that effort through a public/private partnership called a CRADA (Cooperative R&D Agreement) between the DOE labs and a consortium of private companies. They formed an entity called EUV-LLC to facilitate the CRADA.
Intel was eager to have Canon and Nikon participate in EUV-LLC, along with ASML and SVGL (the sole leading-edge American stepper supplier at the time and also a beneficiary of US taxpayer help). However, the DOE and the larger U.S. government weren't keen on handing U.S. taxpayer-funded research to foreign companies, so there was a lot of back and forth. I know only the sketchiest of details.
The DOE and Congress ended up rejecting Canon and Nikon's membership in EUV-LLC, denying them access to the underlying IP. But they allowed the (Dutch) ASML in. About 3 years later ASML was allowed to buy SVGL and, voilá, the only litho tool supplier that had a license to EUV IP, and the financial and technological backing of the EUV-LLC consortium, was Dutch."[1]
Some examples of Eu based tech would be: Nokia killed by MS, an US company. Skype. SAP. ARM, UiPath, Bitdefender.
But is true, we are unable to compete with US on tech. Part of the reasons is that we don't have good startup ecosystem and hubs, we don't have tech hubs, we don't have tech investors, our tech and entrepreneurship culture might be lacking. But another part is that big US tech companies are monopolies and they are trying to stifle the competition and succeeding at it.
Both EU bureaucrats and each country's politicians don't care. No one does a single thing to try to improve the EU tech ecosystem.
Some of salaries you hear on HN are insane by US standards and only a few, relatively speaking, offer these kinds of salaries.
https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/media...
https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macroeconomic/media...
By "worker solidarity" you mean laws enforced by socialist bureaucrats? Equality of outcomes, no matter the merits or the work put in? Is that a sustainable model? Does it allow for economic and technical progresses being made?
Socialist movements and ideas, although fair, win votes and elections, especially in tough times like these, even though those ideas aren't financially viable or would backfire in the long run. Because which voter doesn't want bigger wages or bigger pensions, who cares where the money comes form? It's why my Spanish, Greek and Italian friends tell me their countries are sliding downhill economically.
> Is that a sustainable model? Does it allow for economic and technical progresses being made?
It was a sustainable model before the rise of globalization, back in the '50s till the '80s, when it weas the west vs the east, capitalism vs communism, so western labor and governments had leverage over their large corporate entities. Now, in the globalized world, free of trade and capital barriers, not so much.
Tax corporate profits too much to pay for infrastructure, and social services that serve their workforce? The companies will just relocate to Luxembourg, Netherlands, Ireland or other complex tax voidance structure involving some British overseas Territories.
Factory workers want more pay and less hours? They relocate production somewhere else where those aren't an issue.
Corporations have managed to have their cake and eat it too, at the expense of the workers and the environment.
And I guess you don't know much about Sweden in general if your follow-up question is "Does it allow for economic and technical progresses being made?"...
> All Germany's solidarity isn't getting their salaries up to US wages; the money isn't there.
Because USA's wages are the massive oddball here, not the standard. And to be honest, shouldn't be replicated anywhere else, having such a vast part of your population living how the bottom 50% of the USA lives is not really a goal for most developed countries, it doesn't create a healthy society (as you can see yourself by living in the USA).
Comparing purely on a wage basis is a reduction of what societies actually are. Great, you earn a lot more in the USA but now has to deal with all the stresses of living in the USA. Is that really what the average person in an advanced economy should be under? If you believe so, the USA is for you, I don't believe in it.
> The EU can't do tech.
The EU has a large language and cultural barrier that is nonexistent in the USA, it's not only a purely economical output.
ASML is in the EU, are you going to say they can't do tech? Tech couldn't exist without ASML...
On the point of tiny "homogeneous" Nordics:
Each US state is also pretty tiny with a few exceptions, isn't that the model of the USA? Why can't each tiny state also have their provisions for labour protection? Because it's not part of the culture.