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

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

#261

Post by romanoderoma »

WanderPanda wrote: post #226
bluecmd wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Germa…

It tells us that Israel have the same industrial military complex that US have

Put it in another way: their success is due military application of technology

Besides: what does counting unicorns proves?

Is Israel GDP per capita higher than Germany?

Is Israel richer than Germany?

Europe values other metrics more than simply pure market valuation

For example WhatsApp only employed 50 engineers when already had 900 million users

In Germany, and Europe in general, we prefer businesses that increase the general population employment than pure profit margins

EDIT:

a few resources about military industrial complex in Israel

https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel...

https://www.tni.org/es/node/13511

https://www.jstor.org/stable/174246

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0140239830843716...

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

#262

Post by raverbashing »

bllguo wrote: post #229
raverbashing wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> getting things to work at scale is nontrivial

Agreed, non-trivial but also not rocket science (at least not now - I guess it's easier today than at the beginnings of twitter and fb for example) and throwing money at the problem usually helps.

Agree on the other industries, and maybe their innovation is building things more cheaply than other places (externalities aside)

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

#263

Post by yorwba »

WanderPanda wrote: post #226
bluecmd wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Germa…

Using unicorns as a proxy for innovation is maybe not a great idea, because it's just looking at a few outliers of heavily concentrated capital. It doesn't tell you anything about the majority of companies that are not unicorns and will never be, but that might nonetheless be highly innovative and profitable.

For example, if you look at foreign direct investment, the Netherlands lead the pack in 2017 with $4.888 trillion invested by residents of other countries. [1] Yet apparently there's only one Dutch unicorn (team.blue). Evidently there's a lot of investment going to other companies instead of betting on a single unicorn.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

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

#264

Post by 317070 »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #225
fvdessen wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So did a Dutch one... (For the record: it's TomTom)

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

#265

Post by wombatmobile »

vidar wrote: post #246
gumby wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is for example no way a swedish mapping company could have competed with google maps Not Swedish, but Danish founders, working in Australia. Google purchased the company and made it google maps

That does not mean it would have succeeded without the Google acquisition

The commercial value proposition of Maps is its applications to advertising - as a platform, and as meta data that informs Google where users are, which provides context for what ad they might click on next.

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

#266

Post by AsyncAwait »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #225
fvdessen wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Waze was acquired by Google, am not sure that counts.

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

#267

Post by dgellow »

rjknight wrote: post #249
vin047 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the arguments for Europe being less innovative or risk taking is because these companies seem to start first in the US and then come to Europe, not the other way round.

There is no "Europe", though. France and Germany speak different languages and have different legal systems. Spain is different again. And Poland. And Greece. And Ireland. And Italy. Put it this way: if products depend on viral growth, then European countries are socially distanced from each other as a result of these barriers.

People downvote this comment, but it is correct, the EU has A LOT of fragmentation at the national level.

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

#268

Post by warrenq »

ainiriand wrote: post #241
Aerroon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more of a case of "most electronics and everything that runs on it is not made in Europe". I'm a European posting on an American company's forum using a browser made in the US running on an operating system made by an American company running on a phone designed and built in China with components made in a variety of countries that aren't in Europe. The same goes for using a desktop PC. Even most of the…

Linux was developed by finnish guy and the www protocol was developed by a brit.

30 years ago and 40 years ago, respectively

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

#269

Post by FriendlyNormie »

gigatexal wrote: post #230

Xenophobia and nationalism sure don't help. We used to import the smartest most capable people from all across the world to develop and market their inventions and ideas and maybe even become rich in the process. Now, not so much.

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