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Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

bbc.com

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Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#221
post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

The EU is nowhere as culturally unified as the U.S is. So the pool of resources available isn't as large.

I'd also not be so quick on the regulation front. Looking at the (lack of) environmental regulation in the US right about now or the absolute astonishing cost of any medical emergency, I'd say they went too far in the other direction.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#222
post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

What metric are you basing this determination on? Is it purely about “big tech”?

It seems from my perspective that most European countries are pretty decently innovative, in particular with a variety of companies offering advanced engineering and technology services.

Is there actually a lack of innovation, or is it specifically a lack of “innovation” in the “there is no Airbnb so Europe sucks” sense?

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#223

"This high skills immigration is crucial to American competitiveness, global competitiveness, building these new companies and so forth," he said. "America does not have enough people with those skills." Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.

Put another way, our already overpaid highnesses want higher and higher salaries, without having to work for it. So it goes both ways.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#224
Google search is controlled by large (Chinese) botnets. Given that Google has >= 90% of the search market, the ball seems dropped right there. For instance, a botnet includes thousands of sites including xxxcommitted, pornsextube, qastack, thecouponholiday etc

edit: thanks for down vote Xi

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#225
post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

There was still not that long ago an incredible amount of innovative companies and products in Europe. But at that time companies were still built for their home markets first and on that regard the USA is big and unified. Since software is mostly winner takes all it means that when the USA companies came to Europe they had already won the USA and could steamroll the local competition There is for example no way a sw…

> There is for example no way a Swedish mapping company could have competed with google maps

An Israeli one did.

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#226
post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

Since you mention regulation, I think it is something to be proud of. GDPR, Germany saying hell-no to forced Facebook accounts, etc. As for innovation? US isn't even top 10 when it comes to Nobel prize per capita ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_l... ). IKEA, SAP, Beretta, Airbus, Spotify, Linux, Prometheus, Grafana, Booking.com just from the top of my head of things that are proof of Euro…

> Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: United States (136), China (120), India (26), UK (15), South Korea (11), Israel (7), Indonesia (6), Singapore (4), Switzerland (4), Hong Kong (4), France (3), Portugal (3), Sweden (3), Australia (2), Belgium (2), Canada (2), Germany (2), Luxembourg (2), Spain (2), Ukraine (2) and ten other countries (1 each)

Israel has more than 3x more unicorns than we in Germany that tells one thing or two...

Re: Ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt: US 'dropped the ball' on innovation

#229
post #195

Tangential, since this article is about the US and China. But if the US has dropped the ball, then Europe (or the EU specifically) didn't even bother to go to the game. The only thing we're innovative at is coming up with regulations. And I say this as someone who thinks the US tech sector should be under much heavier regulatory scrutiny.

I kinda agree with you. But the issue I see is that innovation is a bit like herding cats. You can't really push for it. And even in the US, most of it is located on 2 cities. And of course, being on SV it is much easier to get you a check for 10Mi dollars for a worse idea than 1Mi or even 100k in Europe I don't see China's "innovation" as being much that (maybe except in AI and maybe ByteDance is a new thing, still)…

getting things to work at scale is nontrivial. I would expect hn of all places to understand that

and other industries they have a lead in include drones, solar technology, EV (arguable).. considering the unparalled hardware ecosystem in Shenzhen/the PRD, I expect more and more industries will be getting added to the list

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