> If Europe wants to have its citizens (and companies) rely significantly on European-operated software, it has no choice but to develop better software,
Europe is at a permanent disadvantage with language. You either target your local market in your local language, or you do English first. If you do English first, your market isn't even in your home country. Even culturally England and the USA (and AUS/NZ) are a bit different to France, Germany, Sweden and so on.
Only one "European" success I can think of whilst typing this: Spotify (anglo-swedish).
America on the other hand has access to a literally flood of venture capital money.
From a technical perspective, yes. Most frameworks worth their salt provide good-enough mechanisms for that.
Where i18n becomes nasty is when you have to find, evaluate and constantly coordinate with n external translation agencies. Working from Germany on an international product, this is a nightmare. From a technical standpoint we can release features within a minute thanks to our CI/CD setup, but as soon as some user-facing text is affected we have to hold changed back until all translations were collected.
Agreed, but i18n of your software isn't really what I'm talking about.
There's other things like GDPR, local taxation, many cross border laws, and by culture I mean a variety of things: you'll see university graduates flogging themselves to death in Silicon Valley, but a start up in London will be slightly more relaxed by comparison. In the US, "free VC money" means there's an incentive to get to market asap, monetize, and move on. That doesn't really exist in Europe.
Fortunately most of the above mentioned is harmonized in the EU. Culture is a fair point, but I suspect much of it is chicken and egg problem. Thin VC money, less lively M&A market, fewer reasons for gold rush.
Europe is at a permanent disadvantage with language. You either target your local market in your local language, or you do English first. If you do English first, your market isn't even in your home country. Even culturally England and the USA (and AUS/NZ) are a bit different to France, Germany, Sweden and so on.
Only one "European" success I can think of whilst typing this: Spotify (anglo-swedish).
America on the other hand has access to a literally flood of venture capital money.