alt Hacker News>EU didn't fail because it never even tried.
Of course the EU tries to compete with the US and in some industries it has done so successfully (e.g pharma or aviation). EU companies have also tried to compete in information technology - with some limited or temporary success.
ARM was founded in the EU. DeepMind was founded in the EU. Olivetti and Siemens had CPU designs and made computers. Nokia once dominated mobile. Ericsson was/is a leading telecom equipment maker. Skype used to be one of the most successful messaging apps. Spotify is a success. ASML is a success.
A certain Finnish university student started the operating system that now dominates the cloud, but for some reason I really do not understand, EU cloud providers like OVHCloud have failed to compete with the likes of AWS, Azure and GCP. And now the AI wave has completely washed over Europe.
The cloud situation is a mystery to me. Nothing stops EU companies like OVHCloud from competing there. Any anticompetitive behaviour is a very weak excuse. Europe can't even compete with something as mediocre as Palantir. Now everyone is calling for protectionism. Ridiculous.
AI is easier to understand. It requires huge capital investments. The US has far superior capital markets and far healthier attitudes towards risk taking. Europe's failure here was easy to predict but the consequences could be dire.
>Of course the EU tries to compete with the US and in some industries it has done so successfully
I was talking only about SW and HW in the context of the current AI race. Not about legacy industries like aero and pharma. Everyone knows EU is only good at legacy industries, well except cars, they're getting ass whipped there too.
> Olivetti and Siemens had CPU designs and made computers.
None of those domestic designs ever competed commercially with the X86 or amd_64, which is why I made that specific reamark. Please read my comment again and don't try to argue in bad faith by moving the goalposts.
>ARM was founded in the EU. DeepMind was founded in the EU. Nokia once dominated mobile. Ericsson was/is a leading telecom equipment maker. Skype used to be one of the most successful messaging apps. Spotify is a success. ASML is a success.
Most of those have massive US shareholders/financial backing or have outright been brought up by US companies or PE firms or US shareholders. And Spotify being called a succes is laughable given they bootstrapped thanks to initially distributing music they stole off the torrents, and then shafting their smaller artist once they became a multi billion dollar music streaming monopoly.
>Europe can't even compete with something as mediocre as Palantir.
France is copying Palantir to make their domestic version. Chaps Intelligence.
>A certain Finnish university student started the operating system that now dominates the cloud
What does it matter if he's Finnish or not? Linus is an American citizen now living and working from the US, mostly consulting on linux kernel topics for US big-tech. Why did he leave lovely Finland for the "third world" US? That's the question EU gospelers can never answer. He didn't like having walkable cities and free healthcare?