

The American Way of Tech, and Why Europe Trails - petethomas
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/business/the-american-way-of-tech-and-europes.html

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crdb
No.

The real reason Europe/Asia/Latin America/Africa trails the US in tech is
because none of these regions have even the same order of magnitude of
funding, period. 2014: 225 deals in the UK for a total of GBP 1.7 billion (2.7
USD) so approx USD 12m/deal [1]. Same year: USD 48.3 billion in the US in
4,356 deals for approx 11m/deal [2]. That's 18x as much money. 18. Same deal
size.

There's plenty of excellent programmers all over Europe, particularly (based
on open source experience, and previous hiring) in the UK, Germany and
Scandinavia. They're cheap, willing to do startups, capable of moving without
a visa all over the region. Regulation is honestly not that bad; a bit more
taxes, sure, but probably easier overall than California.

But if you have 18 times as many competitors, you're going to take more
medals.

[1] [https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/united-kingdom-venture-
capit...](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/united-kingdom-venture-
capital-2014/)

[2] [http://nvca.org/pressreleases/annual-venture-capital-
investm...](http://nvca.org/pressreleases/annual-venture-capital-investment-
tops-48-billion-2014-reaching-highest-level-decade-according-moneytree-
report/)

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dylanjermiah
Why does the US have more funding? Investors will invest where they can get
the best return, there is no bias to country lines.

~~~
crdb
In theory yes. In practice, investments, particularly in early stage
companies, require effort and time and other invisible costs (you can line up
20 meetings in San Francisco in the time it would take you to fly to Singapore
and back for one), and there are other aspects such as reflexivity and the
correlation between funding availability and company success that keep Silicon
Valley as the global tech centre.

Why it became so is a long story with several aspects including large amounts
of government spending half a century ago and cheap property values.

------
dylanjermiah
"antitrust fervor in Europe seems to have hit fever pitch. Apple, Google and
Facebook are all subjects of investigation, and Amazon is now the focus of at
least three separate inquiries."

It's no wonder why Europe is trailing so far behind in technology and
innovation.

~~~
ionised
Each of these companies direly needs investigation.

The alternative is to let each of them get away with anti-competitive
practices and privacy violations.

The US tech industry is obviously leagues ahead of anywhere else in the world
but it has brought some seriously shady anti-consumer goings on with it.

In a toss up between adequate consumer protection and a heavily pro-corporate
economy I'd side with the consumer every time and take the industry hit.

Fortunately it's not a zero-sum game but the US is frighteningly lax on
consumer protections in my view and it's festishisation of everything
'business' just leads to worsening standards for everybody.

A lot of this has been brought up as a point of debate in the Eurpean TTIP
opposition, specifically the US trying to push it's much lower standards on
Europe to the detriment of the average citizen and the benefit of big
business.

~~~
dylanjermiah
What about Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon 'direly' needs
investigation?(Genuinely curious) What can the government do to aid said
problems?

~~~
ionised
Exactly what I said.

Just a couple of examples I can remember from recent news;

Facebook's facial recognition, data policy and tracking of all visitors
whether they have a profile or not is against EU law, so they are being taken
to court. This is a good thing in my opinion. We have slightly better privacy
and data protection rules in the EU countries and rather than weaken them they
need to be strengthened and enforced to protect citizens. The EU reponse has
been to draft new data protection rules which are being debated currently.

Microsoft was slapped with a heavy antitrust lawsuit years back and ended up
paying a significant fine. This was the correct decision. Google are going
through something similar at the moment although I am unsure of whether they
should be found guilty or not. The point is, it's good that they are asking
the antitrust question the first place.

You can find a lot of examples of the conflict between EU data law and
industry competition standards and these few particular massive technology
companies.

The question people would ask is whether the EU's laws on these matters are
needlessly restrictive to businesses that operate in this industry.

Perhaps parts of it are but I wouldn't say so myself. If anything they need to
be made stronger. There's far too much emphasis on the corporation over the
citizen already and we need to start going in the other direction (highlighted
by the large opposition to TTIP).

The downside might be that the EU countries never have a tech sector as great
as the US but man, in the end it's worth it to protect the people from anti-
consumer behaviour.

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dylanjermiah
>The downside might be that the EU countries never have a tech sector as great
as the US but man, in the end it's worth it to protect the people from anti-
consumer behaviour.

Thanks, and I can see your point. Except for this last part, I'm having a hard
time understanding the rationale. Do you mind talking more about how more
government intervention and regulation could benefit consumers, compared to
the current situation. How will 'the people' be protected? How will the
government make better decisions than they can make for themselves? I don't
understand how a smaller technology sector correlates to less 'anti-consumer'
behaviour by companies?

