We would build our own alternatives. Russia is a much smaller market (120 million people) and they have their own tech companies.

▲ f6v 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> We would build our own alternatives.

Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? The gap between US/China and the EU in AI is becoming wider by the day.

Russia has like 3-4 large tech companies (Sber, Yandex, VK, and maybe Ozon). And they completely rely on foreign hardware. I don’t even want to imagine how could Russia start building frontier AI in these circumstances.

▲ ben_w 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna? The gap between US/China and the EU in AI is becoming wider by the day.

We've repeatedly built things, they often get bought by US companies. This doesn't necessarily even involve them moving office, as for example Deep Mind was founded in the UK (while it was in the EU) and is still there (HQ: London; research offices in France & Germany so still in EU too) despite now being owned by Alphabet.

▲ piva00 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna?

We have, they get bought by American companies as their exit strategy.

If American companies decide to shutdown access then there's no pressure from the behemoths to stamp out competition, it would just be natural that alternatives take over since the market clearly exists and without American tech companies filling that market it would be pretty easy for alternatives to grow.

▲ petesergeant 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Right, and we haven’t because we just don’t wanna?

The EU hasn't because European investors are shy about deploying capital. If you look at European weapons and aerospace, it's clear there's no particular technical or capability barrier.

	▲	f6v 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There was a very real barrier to building tech companies. We couldn't listen to Spotify at work during the time people seriously called Berlin the "SV of Europe" (our office was in the neighborhood called "SV Backyard"). Why? We didn't have enough bandwidth, and the wait time for fiber was measured in years.

▲ maligenligen 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We hadn't because we didn't have to.

▲ hparadiz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's actually pretty sad for the EU that the biggest tech company names on the continent are all Russian.

	▲	ben_w 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not that "largest by market cap" says much, given that it corresponds to "oh look a monopoly" as much as it does "innovation and real growth" (and also "bubble"), but you're wrong. Market caps of Russian examples from above: Sber: $84 bn - https://companiesmarketcap.com/sberbank/marketcap/ Yandex: RUB 1327B (~= $17 bn) - https://tradingeconomics.com/yndx:rm:market-capitalization VK: RUB 176.7B (~= $2.3 bn) - https://smart-lab.ru/q/VKCO/MSFO/market_cap/en/ Ozon: $8.9 bn - https://companiesmarketcap.com/ozon/marketcap/ Market caps of bigger EU tech firms: `ASML: $533.84 B Siemens: $223.14 B SAP: $202.96 B Seagate Technology: $164.43 B` - https://civixplorer.com/post/most-valuable-eu-companies-mark...
	▲	zurfer 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		ASML, SAP, ARM, Spotify, ... How do you define biggest? Can't be by market cap.
	▲	antonvs 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Don’t believe everything you read in Pravda.

▲ bluecalm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a culture thing. There are even smaller markets like Taiwan that developed industries EU didn't. Western EU countries are very risk averse, anti-business and has too conservative hierarchy to develop this kind of culture. You can see it as early as in school system where the focus is on rising the floor while forgetting about the ceiling.

	▲	petcat 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They'll blame it on WWII but both South Korea and Japan were similarly devastated and both managed to develop world-class technology industries in the ensuing decades. Europe is the outlier and it's pointing to something fundamentally wrong that it was only able to produce a handful of interesting technology companies in all these years.