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As a German I would like to point out, that German companies are (as always) too late to the party. Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor clo
by kalaido 4y ago
As a German I would like to point out, that German companies are (as always) too late to the party. Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor cloud space came out of Germany / the EU within in the last decades. It's embarrassing :(
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoI wonder how much of this is due to the vast tech salary discrepancies (especially in areas like AI and cloud) between Europe and the US. I bet the Lidl cloud engineers are getting paid at most a third of their AWS counterparts. If you want AWS quality, you have to pay AWS salaries.
- geogra4 4y agoIt's sad, even sap runs a lot on aws
- shp0ngle 4y agoI thought they have their own “SAP cloud” but maybe it’s just some marketing BS
- m00dy 4y agoExcept for the pharmaceuticals. We still rely on the inventions that happened in WW2.
- shp0ngle 4y agoOn the other hand, you created Lidl and Aldi. So that’s not worth nothing.
- barry-cotter 4y agoIt’s not a German thing. It’s a European thing. Lots of Europeans have made huge contributions to technology working in US companies, mostly in the US because that’s where the money is.
- yayachiken 4y agoThey don't even have to work for US companies. As a recent example, the Dirty Pipe vulnerability was discovered by a German Engineer working for a very basic website hoster. He found it when he was investigating a customer complaint about corrupted log file downloads. There is still in-depth high-value engineering happening, even if you don't work for the flashy silicon valley VC unicorns. In fact, such a basic support request would probably have been closed as "could not reproduce" in a highly competitive environment.
- kazen44 4y agoanother Good example of this is the work RIPE is doing in regards to its work in securing the internet/bgp peering the model of ixp's as a community compared to how it works in the US.
- lwkl 4y agoThat's probably due to market size. Germany has a market of 80 Million people and the only countries you can easily expand to without a lot of additional overhead are the DACH-region. Compare this to the US and their population of 300 Million people and how influential US culture is in the world and how many people speak English. A US company has a potential market of 300 Million people and use that to support your expansion into smaller markets later. There are probably other factors in play here but it's not surprising to me that Europe didn't produce a Microsoft, Google or an Apple.
- est31 4y ago> Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor cloud space came out of Germany / the EU within in the last decades. Let me list some: * Teamviewer: used to be more famous in the past but it is still a known brand to people world wide * Cherry: more of a hardware thing, but they are known world-wide for their MX switches * Deepl: a xoogler founded startup that is better than Google translate * Soundcloud: well known all over the world, was founded in Berlin * Suse: founded in the 90s and had steady growth since * SAP: world leader in ERP software. Seriously people underestimate how well entrenched they are. In the last two years, three of these companies had IPOs, two of them as unicorns. Sure, its is dwarfed by the US tech Cloud/AI/software sector but there are certainly world wide players from germany in the digital industry.
- ushakov 4y agothese are exceptions US produces more unicorns per year that Germany managed in 20 years https://news.crunchbase.com/unicorn-company-list/ https://news.crunchbase.com/unicorn-company-list/
- fomine3 4y agoThe US is exceptional.
- est31 4y agoGermany is #5 on your provided link if you click on "Countries with most current unicorns". But yes, the USA has 20 times the number of unicorns, and I've said that the german tech industry is dwarved by the US one. More than half the unicorns on that website are in the USA (665 in the USA, 1328 - 665 = 663 outside). My point was that Germany definitely had some world known brands in software, it's more than zero.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoTo be fair, apart from SAP, none of those are hugely profitable or hiring like crazy.
- karmakaze 4y ago
- quadcore 4y agoI think we (Europe) need a Shenzhen-like zone (probably between France and Germany). That is a tax-free (15%) english speaking tech zone.
- sschueller 4y agoYou mean "Schengen" not the Chinese city Shenzhen right? The agreement allowing free travel/work between EU countries and Switzerland as well as some others signed in Schengen, Luxembourg.
- hocuspocus 4y agoAfaik both countries have tax incentives for R&D already. What the EU needs is : - a proper vision - the balls to implement it, even if that means booting lobbyists off and annoying the US We have OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak, Proton, Nextcloud, and plenty of smaller companies, some heavily invested in open source. There's also a mechanism to fund flagship projects with billions.
- npteljes 4y agoI agree. I'd love to see European institutions to begin using European software and infrastructure. I feel like we have lots of puzzle pieces already, I'd add ONLYOFFICE to the mix, which would be very important to replace Google Drive / Docs / Sheets or Microsoft 365. They even have a free personal tier to test the waters.
- danjac 4y agoHetzner at least is a pretty good competitor to Linode and Digital Ocean.