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The Technology Revolution is Leaving Europe Behind (msn.com) 143

Posted by msmash from the dramatic-collapse dept.
Europe has created just 14 companies worth more than $10 billion over the past 50 years compared to 241 in the United States, underscoring the continent's struggle to compete in the global technology race despite having a larger population and similar education levels.

The productivity gap has widened dramatically since the digital revolution began. European workers produced 95% of what their American counterparts made per hour in the late 1990s, but that figure has dropped to less than 80% today. Only four of the world's top 50 technology companies are European, and none of the top 10 quantum computing investors operate from Europe.

Several high-profile European entrepreneurs have relocated to Silicon Valley, including Thomas Odenwald, who quit German AI startup Aleph Alpha after two months, citing slow decision-making and lack of stock options for employees. "If I look at how quickly things change in Silicon Valley...it's happening so fast that I don't think Europe can keep up with that speed," Odenwald said.

The challenges extend beyond individual companies. European businesses spend 40% of their IT budgets on regulatory compliance, according to Amazon surveys, while complex labor laws create three-month notice periods and lengthy noncompete clauses.

The Technology Revolution is Leaving Europe Behind More | Reply

The Technology Revolution is Leaving Europe Behind

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  • And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ploulack ( 160193 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @08:17AM (#65398309)

    I would prefer to live in Europe any day.
    So all those regulations maybe, just maybe, they make happier people?

    • Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @08:32AM (#65398347)

      Well, let me see. Much less poison in food, clothing, etc.? Check. Tap water is drinkable and no health risk everywhere? Check. Good public transportation? Check. Less privacy intrusion and consequentially less identity theft? Check. Health insurance for everybody? Check. And quite a few other things. No, Europe is not over-regulated, even when the occasional asshole likes to claim it is.

      Yes, I definitely prefer to live in Europe. The only thing I would do with a Greencard is throw it away.

      • In my view, 40% of IT budgets going to regulatory compliance is a clear sign that regulations have gone too far. That's just ridiculous. You aren't children, you don't need to be treated like it.

        • Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @08:59AM (#65398431) Homepage Journal

          And yet look at the abuse that is so normalized in the US that people there can't even imagine companies not doing it.

          If 40% of an IT budget is going on compliance, there is a damn good reason. That company must be doing something that needs heavily regulating to prevent citizens being exploited, and to protect their privacy.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 )

            I guess it is save to assume that that 40% number is pulled out of someones ass.

            As soon as an IT system is running: it follows all regulations. What the fuck would there to be done continuously to keep it following regulations and that costs 40% of the budget?

            • It wouldn't entirely surprise me if the ass-pulling is a collective effort.

              There's the obvious incentive for the oh-woe-is-me-crushing-regulatory-burdens types to want to make being forbidden to shift risks to bystanders sound as cruel and oppressive as possible; and there's the less public-facing but more likely to be systemic interest within IT in using regulatory compliance concerns(often but not necessarily honestly) to push back against things that they otherwise wouldn't have the clout to.

              The sy

            • Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)

              by larwe ( 858929 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @10:15AM (#65398739)
              Auditing, for one, can be very expensive. There may be paper trails that need to be constructed continuously. (Relevant experience: I've worked in highly regulated industries for >20 years - medical for the last 13, previously security/fire safety). So it's easy to see how regulations can create large ongoing costs. But anyway, the reason I even replied to this thread is that reading it I see an exact parallel with offshoring manufacturing to places with lax pollution laws. Move your factory to a country where life is cheap and nobody regulates the environment, and import the end result into your shiny utopia. Well, it seems the US might be the equivalent "who cares what the human cost is, insert money and get product" destination for services and software.

            • As soon as an IT system is running: it follows all regulations.

              But does the way in which the system is applied and maintained follow the regulations? Is the system used in a manner consistent with rules around things such as privacy and data security? Also, regulations tend to change over time, necessitating additional spending on compliance.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Sique ( 173459 )
          The problem with IT is that many of the faults don't affect the business directly, but have a large fallout to other people not involved in the IT departement's decision. If customer data is leaked, the daily business is not affected in the slightest. This means that those faults are not really on the radar of the businesses, because it's literally "none of their business", besides them handling the IT being the cause of the fault. It's like companies duming their waste poisoning the ground water - none of

        • Re: And yet... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by simlox ( 6576120 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @09:40AM (#65398639)
          In a former job here in Denmark, the IT compliance burden actually came from the US, because a part of the company was selling military equipment across the Atlantic.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          And in the US then a huge amount of the budget goes into tracking people in minute detail just to sell ads.

          Whatever you do you are getting a stick with crap in the end.

          There's no really good reason for companies to grow to gigantic proportions. The bigger they are the harder they fail. Too big to fail is an alternative reserved for only a few companies.
            I'm personally not in Facebook, so if it goes down I wouldn't be impacted.

        • You got it backwards.

          You regulate not because the companies would otherwise hurt themselves, you do because other wise they'd hurt others.

          The correct simile would be "we aren't cattle, we mustn't be treated as such."

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

        But do you have almost daily mass shootings? https://www.massshootingtracke... [massshootingtracker.site]

        'MURICA!

      • Less lead poisoning in European schools than the US. It's irresponsible not to seek anyway to immigrant there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        Same. I lived in the US a few months a year from the mid 80s to 2000 and then for 3 years. It was the height of the 'freedom fries' psychosis and that's when I figured that 'merkins were not only widely ignorant but also fucking stupid for the most part. Was offered a permanent position but went back to Europe with no regrets. Some things are lovely in the US. Its people, meh...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Yep. Had an opportunity to visit most US national parks when I was around 20. Very, very impressive! I hear the oragne felon now wants to drill for oil there or something.

    • Judging by the way they seem to be destroying themselves as rapidly as possible, I don't think happiness is the outcome.

    • Re:And yet... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by locofungus ( 179280 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @08:42AM (#65398389)

      I work for a (regulated) american company but am based in the EU.

      One of the problem is the different way regulations are written and enforced.

      In America the regulator comes in, says "You need to do X, Y, Z to get into compliance". We do X, Y, Z and next year the regular is "all good".

      In the EU the regulator comes in and says "These things aren't right. X, Y, Z must to be done". We do X, Y, Z and then next year the regulator is "This isn't good enough, That previous report wasn't a list of things to do, it was a list of things that definitely weren't right".

      This makes it much harder, and much more expensive to comply. Not least because there's a constant conflict between "is this enough?" and "should we spend more money to do more?".

      We now have a good relationship with the regulator but it was a painful few years.

      I don't know much about the asia side but I think the regulations are more strict, easy to accidentally violate when a bug gets introduced, but easier to understand and know when you are and aren't in compliance - therefore at least in our company they're considered easier and cheaper to deal with.

      • Here in America we use those XYZ lists to comply with the letter of the law while violating the spirit of the law.

        Europe quickly figured out companies would do that so they write their laws to say that you can't do that. They lay out the spirit of the law and force companies to comply and if you don't like it get the hell out of Europe.

        Yes it does make compliance a lot more work but it means you can't cheat the law and just ignore it like we do here in the United States.

        It has the added benefit
    • Most European companies are privately held, due to crazy regulations and capital gains taxes which make trading shares on stock markets expensive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      We in the USA can't enjoy most those profits because it goes to billionaires, who use their cash to buy politicians to dereg & foul our water, air, soil, press, elections, and financial systems.

      We get relatively big cars, houses, and toys; but not much else to show for it. Big toys are our "opiate for the masses" so we don't complain about plutocrats.

    • Slave owner, circa 1855 : "Well, y'all, I'd prefer to live on my plantation, being supplied by the work of others. I'm happier there"
      Swiss national circa 1940 : "Well, I'd prefer to live in my alpine place of beauty , living off the work of others. I'm happier there"

  • Silly metrics ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @08:27AM (#65398333)

    ... give silly results. In actual reality, Europe is doing fine. It is just not greed-infested as the US is. The super-rich are not an advantage for a country or region. They are a liability.

    Oh, and "quantum computing investors"? Seriously? Europeans can tell this is all bullshit and are simply not interested.

    This is simply yet another meaningless propaganda piece pushing a non-existing US superiority.

    • Maybe part of the problem is looking at an emerging technology in which the two most powerful nations are investing heavily and calling it BS.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Quantum computing is not "emerging". It was a failure 40 years ago and has continued to be a failure since then. There is no sane reason to expect it to ever amount to anything. The only reason to look into it at all at this time is because of side-results.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mellon ( 7048 )

        There's actually a solid history to show that being a late adopter isn't always a bad thing. There's clearly some value in LLMs, but at this point most of what we are hearing is speculative hype intended to kite stock prices. Basically a ponzi scheme.

        I'm sure that some value will drop out of this in the end. I am not at all sure what it will look like, except, probably not much like what the hucksters are promoting.

        When things are clearer, it will make sense to invest. Right now, it's probably best to let o

        • The case for quantum computing is also pretty heavily tilted by the specific clandestine applications. If you could have one that does RSA factorization of useful sizes earlier than people think you do your spooks will love it; have a fantastic time. Maybe that is worth eleventy-zillion to you.

          If you don't think that is doable, or your spook budget isn't big enough; it's much less obvious why 'quantum' should be different than 'classical' in terms of being expensive enough to manufacture that you can jus
        • It has worked pretty well for Apple. :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There are areas where Europe leads too. High end chip fabrication, some aspects of telecomms, EV development and adoption, renewables...

      Okay, China is giving us a good run for our money, but we are ahead of the US. Intel has nothing on ASML. American vehicle manufacturers are many years behind those in Europe.

      A lot of what people tout as the US leading is of questionable value. You touched on quantum computing, but far worse are social media and AI. We can live without more extremely wealthy companies if it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by irchans ( 527097 )

      I guess the silly metric that we look at the most is GDP/capita. I looked at the Wikipedia IMF nominal GDP per capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and that shows that between 1980 and 2020, the US, Germany, UK, Italy, and France grew by 410%, 326%, 276%, 275%, and 211% respectively (the Berlin wall fell in 1989, so I am suspicious of the cited GDP per capita in Germany in 1980.) If we adjust for inflation using the CPI, we get a real growth of 56%, 29% 14% 14% and -5% respectively. So, by that met

  • ... and forcing foreign talent to leave.

    So Europe will get another chance.

  • In my experience, billion dollar companies treat customers like dirt. They've "made it" so they don't have to keep trying to earn the business of customers. There are a few exceptions, but very, very few.

    • I'm not sure where the exact size is(I suspect that it differs, potentially substantially, based on the margins and barriers to entry in a given industry); but there's sort of a sweet spot where a company is small enough to be hungry but big enough that you don't need to deal with suppliers going out of business all the time. Unless you are doing some "Walmart seeks lowest price for container of toilet paper" thing having vendors who will give you the shirt off their backs isn't actually ideal; since then t

  • Maybe Europe's antitrust regulation is working (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @09:10AM (#65398491) Homepage

    Huge companies do not have the best interests of customers at heart. Europe has taken a firm stand against monopolies and oligopolies. Maybe their regulation is having a positive effect.

    One principle I often rely on, is do business with the #2 or #3 company in an industry. They treat you better than the #1 company in that industry.

    I'm thinking Europe's "failure" to create more huge companies, is a good thing.

  • Per hour? (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @09:23AM (#65398565)

    Per what hour? Are we assuming 8760 hours in a year? Or are we assuming the USA's 1765 hours worked in a year and correcting for the fact that I'm here sipping my coffee listening to music while you guys are a slave to your dollar?

    Personally I'll take my 1430 hours worked over your extra efficiency any day. Especially since I couldn't give a shit if we have a tech giant or not. It's not like we have less tech as a result.

    Jokes aside, efficiency metrics are stupid. A race to the top there is a race to the bottom in quality of life. It's not a race worth competing in. Please keep working for our benefit, just make sure I get the next Google maps update rolled out before I go on holidays. Cheers!

    • Re: Per hour? (Score:3, Informative)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 )

      The American dream is to own a house, then lose it when you are swamped with medical debt. Then live in an apartment where the rent can be increased capriciously according to a secret algorithm operated by a private company. Europeans have no idea what kind of freedom they are missing.

    • Productivity is a hugely important measure; it's just that you can usually tell who is interested by exactly which productivity measure gets trotted out.

      Your ability to have goods and services is fundamentally capped by your ability to produce them or produce other stuff that you can get people to provide them to you for; so a society simply cannot be more wealthy without being more productive. However, anyone who trots out 'per person per year' productivity statistics is usually a member of team "we are
  • This Thomas Odenwald is, according to the beigest social network, an 'independent consultant' described as "Tech-savvy, growth-oriented business executive with strong sales growth record".

    Is there some reason why the article is following him like he is the provider or denier of Europe's hope for technology? It seems particularly weird when much of his experience is apparently with such noted innovators as SAP and HPE. Sure, somebody's got to shovel ERP and commodity boxes with attitudes that have outgrown their value; but that's half spadework and half sales people who look well compensated enough that customers should take it as a warning; not really brain trust of the future material.
  • Historically corporations have been permitted to exist because they can be an effective way of getting objectively desirable things done. Things like shareholder value and market capitalization are at best orthogonal to whatever public goods they may produce. Look at the top ten US companies by market cap: Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Berkshire Hathaway, Tesla, UnitedHealth Group, and Johnson & Johnson. Most of them are widely hated. The assassination of United Health's CEO wa

  • Options make me laugh: They seldom can be cashed, and they usually must be given back when employment is terminated.

    Gimme actual company stock instead.

  • Could be a good thing. We need smaller companies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 0x537461746943 ( 781157 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @10:58AM (#65398883)

    That sounds like a good thing. We need more smaller businesses to provide things instead of huge companies that can just take over industries making it harder for startups to compete. Let dozens of smaller companies provide tech to get more innovation and competition. The number of billion dollar companies a country has can have many meanings.

  • Too Many Rules (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 )

    It's nearly impossible to get anything done over there

  • Sure US, you are the best. ...

    Yawn...

  • Define "value" in a corrupt system. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Friday May 23, 2025 @11:38AM (#65398983)

    Europe has created just 14 companies worth more than $10 billion over the past 50 years compared to 241 in the United States..

    Uh, let's just stop right here and look to define "worth" and "value" before we proceed with selling or believing clickbait bullshit.

    Given how many times the American stock market has crashed in the last 50 years, that perceived "value" within 241 companies tends to smell like shit sold on a silver platter. How many of those 241 companies will exist 5 years from now?

    America has proven time and time again that a $10 billion dollar valuation is NOT the same thing as a $10 billion dollar company.

    Lasting stability may prove far more valuable than perceived "value" in a recession. Watch and see how many pseudo-billionaires will die with the backing of excess. Today's limited edition marketing will be tomorrows extremely limited market.

  • ... by just looking at overall stock value you're being silly.

    Point in case: Shut down the ultra-specialists in Germany, Netherlands or France and global chip production comes to a grinding halt. These companies build devices and technology that others are flat-out incapable of reproducing without significant time and effort going into ultra-high-tech R&D.

    Another example: Airbus is basically by-and-large a Euro-Government project. If you just look at market cap they may seem unspectacular but right now they're the only ones building passenger jet aircraft with good quality. Nobody in their right mind would claim that Boeing is at the same level right now, no matter how high their market cap might rise next week due to somebody moving bazillions of cash into their stock. Same with AI. Sure, the big AI companies are quite often based in the US of A, but look at cutting-edge specialized work with FOSS LLMs and suddenly some provincial university in a mid-sized German town is leading the way in that field.

    I could go on but I think you know what I'm getting at. Proficiency in tech and leading high-tech certainly isn't only measured in gross stock-value. QED.

  • Ugga ugga, Europe good, US bad. Ugga ugga.

  • How many of those 241 companies in the US are actually making a profit and not just only able to stay running and keep the lights on due to regular injections of venture capital?

  • Europe is such a cesspit! Please don't come here. Nothing to see.

  • The value assigned to many new U.S. companies has no rational explanation. I'll bet that there are fewer companies like this in Europe because they have a lot more rules and they do not allow companies to just make up a number for their valuations. During the next wave of corporate valuation collapses that may be be driven by Trump's policies many U.S. companies will be shown for what they are: full of hot air and little else.

  • European counterparts to America's middle class enjoy reasonably-priced effective health care, more personal time, fewer cases of mental health issues per capita, and a much more secure retirement than any Americans other than those that are already in Europe. Plus a much more stable socio-political situation. Honestly, I can see Europe NOT wanting Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, X, and any number of wall Street hedge Fund shysters and bogus crypto-coin projects operating from their sho

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