Comment by WarmWash
1 day ago
Europe, if you want good tech businesses you need to create a tech business friendly environment.
Banning US tech companies without creating (really) fertile grounds for business is just going to be shooting yourself in the foot. A replacement Google won't grow on a farm only fed worker/consumer fertilizer.
It's almost diabolical that the only way Europe can get rid of the US, is to be more like the US.
There is plenty of technology companies in Europe.
It might not seem like it for the HN crowd, who mostly make a living stringing web libraries together.
Apple is the same size as Europe's tech sector...just Apple.
Of the top 50 tech companies on Earth, 3 are European and 30 are American.[1]
Europe has a seriously lacking tech scene. The situation is borderline catastrophic.Even just this past week the OpenClaw guy ditched the EU for the US, calling out the EU's infertile business scene[2]. These are exactly the kind of people the EU should be clearing a path for and rolling out a rug. Wake up.
[1]https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b... [2]https://www.businessinsider.com/openclaw-creator-slams-europ...
US tech is so dominant because the US was the worlds benevolent superpower.
You've changed, we're adapting accordingly.
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> calling out the EU's infertile business scene
lol, it's always because of money. European tech startups often sell out to US investors because they offer more money.
I've worked for companies that plodded along nicely privately owned, 20-50 employees, but they got "offers they couldn't refuse" from US companies and sold. Usually just buying us to stamp out potential competition/buying a customer base
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Apple is a bit of a terrible example. They're not profitable unless they offshore hardware assembly, and their service revenue is considered an anticompetitive monopoly even domestically. The only way they got to this point was by fucking over American labor and the free market.
If you account for the market damages that Apple is responsible for, the situation is already catastrophic. The EU has every justification to decouple themselves from capricious and unaccountable businesses like Apple, Google and Microsoft.
On the other hand, if US tech businesses want to keep access to European markets they shouldn't support US politicians who want to override the sovereignty of those nations.
Businesses exist to fill a demand. And the market will pay accordingly. For example:
Spotify SE == Napster US
Netflix US == Lovefilm UK
Craigslist US == Gumtree UK
Hmm. Where was http invented? Where was ARM invented?
Great. Where are the trillions of dollars that came from those inventions? In the US and China.
A huge chunk of those trillions come from European and other non-US sources. Capital controls (or triggering the EU anti-coercion legislation), a truly integrated EU capital market and a few failed USD treasury auctions could very rapidly re-direct those flows.
If https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IIPUSNETIQ starts reversing, you'll see a lot of US & EU tech re-pricing (and not in the US's favour). Europe's tech talent is excellent, it's the structural financing disadvantages (and loaded trade agreements, see: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-01-01...) that have historically held it back.
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And the web browser, Linux, GSM, EUV Lithography (ASML), Python, Turing, Babbage, Lovelace...