What does the existence of mentioned companies have to do with the quality of life in a country? For their employees, maybe, but I don't think FB/GOOG/MSFT employ most of the US population?
The GP said nothing about startups, though. They were only talking about access to a good Internet connection at a reasonable price. Not to mention, GOOG etc. is not a startup, is it?
Anyway, going on this tangent, Europe is different. We've had our share of global domination already (which was expensive and unsustainable in the long run), as well as our share of innovation-by-any-means-necessary (which resulted, among other things, in pollution and WWI). We've decided we don't really need either to live a good life. We can still easily buy whatever innovation you come up with if it proves to be safe and useful. We're happy to leave beta-testing to others.
