It is pretty embarassing that we completely rely on Americans for tech. And that's despite larger population and higher density, better Internet connectivity, free higher education in many places... I don't think it's Google's fault though.
I'm curious why Europe is in such a situation. There seems to be something pathological behind trend. I'm not sure what.
I've seen free higher education, or at least heavily subsided education. There is a great safety-net available too in most European countries. These two should make for a greater tech culture, at least abstractly.
Now I've worked with Americans and Europeans who had an MS or PhD in CS (full disclosure I started to get a MS, but had to stop because I couldn't do that, a marriage and 60 hrs a week for work). Most couldn't code worth a damn. They could probably discuss abstract CS concepts. They couldn't leverage those to solve a problem. It could be that the higher education is perhaps a hindrance to getting things done?
There could be a difference in how the two see failure. America seems to be open to it. Europe seems to be opposed. I think this is reflected in the history of the countries. America wanted the people who felt penned in by their countries hierarchy. Europe wanted those people gone.
Perhaps it's a combination of the two that's lead to the European problems. Education is seen as an end in itself, while the environment is such that people are told not to aim to high lest they melt there wings?
> There is a great safety-net available too in most European countries. These two should make for a greater tech culture, at least abstractly.
Quite the opposite actually. The better your life if you don't take a risk, the less likely it is that you will take a risk. And because people usually overestimate risk, risks are usually worth it.
I agree with this. I've recently started my own company. My wife has a job which covers our bills. I don't have a fear that we're going to get totally wiped out. As a result I don't focus as much as I should on it. Instead I work around the house or get lost on the Internet on HN or Reddit.
1. The internet was developed in the USA.
2. Language.
The first point simply means that whatever was done with the internet, the USA got the first crack at it. In american TV it's common now to tell people two tweet about the show they're watching, with hash tags on screen and whatnot. In germany, europe's technology powerhouse, it's still extremely common for a person to have never even heard of twitter, if they have internet at all.
Further: Anything you do in tech has profits that scale with the audience you can reach. Companies starting out in the USA are able to access all of the USA, all of the UK, and anyone from any other country who has learned one of the most wide-spread languages on the planet; with exactly zero special consideration at any point. Companies in Europe have two choices: Either they build with localization in the product from the start, which is hard, and provide both their local language and english, which also costs more; or they ignore the local market and work entirely in english; or they stick to their own language entirely and ignore the world.
In addition to that, due the great employee safety neat, which also means that employees have protection from things like capricious firings, taking risks is more expensive for european companies.
Whichever way they go, european companies either have to live with less growth potential, less ability to take risks, or spend more to get the same opportunities as their american counterparts.
Why does adding English cost that much? I thought that a good number of European companies have English speaking people in them. They don't have to speak perfect English for a lot of tech. Just enough to label a UI mostly right. Americans will overlook grammatical errors.
Why is the Internet lacking in Germany? Is it because there are few German sites?
@dunmalg I guess that I find odd is that, at least for Java, i18n is really the design goal. Most web frameworks provided that ability. Wicket, Spring, etc. JSPs had tags that knew how to fish out content based on local. Android has is built in with English as the default, but with localization being additive. Heck, I'm doing that right now on my Android app.
As for Engrish, why is that bad on a first release. Yes, American's will laugh at it, but I doubt it will be enough to kill something that provide real value. Heck, Americans produce Engrish. That's never stopped us. If a German company tried to get ok English for their service/app/whatever version 1.0, they could take the money and improve for 1.4.
Adding english costs, depending on what your site is, roughly a half, to two employees, since, for one, the developers have to implement localization, which is not easy, and everything has to be translated. In most german companies i've worked at people were able to understand written english a little, but were unable to produce fluid english. So you have to hire translators. It might be easier in other countries.
> Americans will overlook grammatical errors.
I'm saying without proper translators you end up with engrish.
> Why is the Internet lacking in Germany? Is it because there are few German sites?
General lack of interest, and smaller set of offers.
Keep in mind that the east half of germany didn't even have a telephone net into most people's houses until 1989, when germany was reunified. As for the content: Just recently it was brought up that in the usa elder people increasingly turn to youtube. An example brought up was a wealth of wood-working videos. Trying to find german wood-working videos on youtube only gives you semi-commercial advertisements for big machines.
Localization in general adds a whole additional dimension of complexity. Every place you would normally just stick a word or phrase between quotes now suddenly has to pull that in from an array or database somewhere.
This is the correct answer, and that has cultural and economic system roots that date to the very origin of the United States.
The rest of the answer is that the US possesses an integrated, massive, comprehensive economic system. From capital markets, to VC markets, to every major industry, to the top universities on the planet, to a massive existing infrastructure related to science, engineering, programming, internet services, a total ecosystem from top to bottom. No other country on earth can match the total sum, and Europe as a whole is not integrated well at all.
