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As technology upends industries and lifestyles at breakneck pace, the Old Continent is not producing any of the online giants like Google, eBay or Facebook. Its best and brightest prefer to emigrate to Silicon Valley, or sell their ideas on to U.S. firms before they have a chance to establish themselves.
The European Union's top executives in Brussels are trying to rectify that with a long-term plan of reforms and incentives but face an uphill battle. The 28-nation bloc is, above all, lacking in the risk-taking culture and financial networks needed to grow Internet startups into globally dominant companies.
Europe's relatively cautious attitude to investment stands out as one of the biggest hurdles—and among the most difficult to change. Investors in Europe want to see that a young company can generate revenue from the start. Europe's many high-technology companies are focused on manufactured goods that can be sold right away to generate revenue—industrial equipment, energy turbines, high-speed trains, medical devices, and nuclear energy.
By contrast, Internet companies often have little to no revenue at the beginning. Twitter and Facebook, for example, first focused on building up their user numbers. Only once they were established as global forces did they put more attention to making money, through advertising and other strategies.
This difference in mentality stands out as one of the key reasons that Europe has fewer venture capital firms and less investment in startups than the U.S. or Asia.Over the past five years, U.S. venture capitalists spent $167 billion on new business ideas compared with some $20 billion by their European counterparts, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-europe-isnt-googles-facebooks.html
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zugedneb on Wednesday September 23 2015, @07:43AM
Some things are not in our culture... facebook gathers people with a certain mindset, and it was started with the aim of gathering and selling information about the users. There has not been much market for these things over here...
The people who backed up facebook had their reasons; they were not benevolent and bold people helping a startup, they were sly as hell, and knew exactly what facebook was menat to be.
If facebook would vanish, nobody over here would make a fuss, and even of local sites would emerge to replace it, they would not grow that big.
Google was started by young people, there was no telling at that time, what it would grow to.
Ebay: a lot of countries has their own versions, but the postal services in Europe are expensive... Nobody over here would have thought of creating a site for selling junk internationally, when the transport cost is almost half the price of your education.
I have lots of examples where people bought things from asia or US by EBay, but never anyone who have shipped from Europe...
Counterexamples, anyone?
Also, although we do consider each other enemies from time to time, nobody think of the fellow european as actual idiot, and there are laws over here... That is why making enourmous amounts of cash by selling personal info or showing advertisement is a far away thought...
Now, take skype and minecraft, that come for sweden...
Minecraft is a sad story. Some guy gets billions, when others have also implemented the idea, probably because Microsoft did not want to pay tax in the us, and burned the money on something like that...
Skype was mostly used by immigrants and exchange students from india to make the daily obligatory phone call home. In europe there are some who talk and some who don't. Italian, spanish people talk all day. East and nordic people dont really need skype..
I consider it a punishment to talk to relatives often.
So even if I have the knowledge in signal processing and programming to make skype, I would have asked for a lobotomy if I would have conjured up the idea...
So, no, maybe europe is not the place for big internet things...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2, Insightful) by brocksampson on Wednesday September 23 2015, @10:28AM
It is also hard to build a monolithic Facebook in Europe because the population is fragmented culturally. Each country seemed to have its own version of a social media whatever until Facebook eventually bought them and/or destroyed them. That is where some of the conservatism in European investments come from as well. It's hard to back a startup promising some killer app written by some kids in Sweden or whatever because it is unclear how it will scale and how localization will affect it, but the markets for trains and medical devices are self-evident. But Americans by-and-large participate in a monoculture; they watch the same TV shows and movies and buy crap they don't need from the same national chains. That and taxes. The US gives strong tax incentives for investors to take risks in a variety of ways.
Of course, European companies don't shy away from making money selling off people's information (or setting up tax shelters for giant tech companies). They might not start the companies, but they are happy to mine data and sell it off to whomever and to buy into all the Big Data trends. I can't even go food shopping now without my mobile company and grocery chain tracking my movements and shopping habits. Good thing small outdoor markets are still a big thing here.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday September 26 2015, @10:44AM
I consider it a punishment to talk to relatives often.
We must be related! XD (Oops! Sorry…)
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