Europe is absolutely behind, yes. (I live there.) But not for lack of talent.
I'm a pretty flaming liberal and I stand behind unionization of traditional industries 100% - when you get to the point of large capital against a large population of workers, I believe Europe's model is not bad and far better than the travesty we witness in America, where the government is solidly on the side of capital. But most of Europe is absolutely horrible for small business that isn't working with a very, very stable business model.
In other words, if I'm opening a metalworking shop in Swabia, everybody knows what I'm doing, and it's going to be enough just to turn out solid work and treat people fairly. My market is predictable, and when I hire people, it's fair to expect me to have to jump through some hoops to let them go, because they have a right to expect some stability in this well-understood market.
But if I'm trying out a new idea - Germany ain't the place to try that unless I can essentially do it by myself or with a couple of friends. Their incremental, stable business attitudes are great for hardware, bad for software (although there are small software companies there that really kick ass, of course - in my experience, often tools used in industry that can work on the same industrial business model).
Fast iteration and early fail is not something Germans excel at - individual Germans, sure; German society, no no no. And that's true to a lesser extent throughout Europe. But it's been a key to success in Silicon Valley. How that gets implemented, I'm not sure.
But in terms of getting Europe off the American cloud - this isn't a problem. The concept of the cloud has been proven (except for privacy/security issues, obviously), and so it's far less likely that a given iteration in that space will fail. It's a good setup for European companies in that sense.
And again, I want to stress that the problem is not a lack of talent and that anybody that thinks that a lack of talent is the problem is deluded.
I'm a pretty flaming liberal and I stand behind unionization of traditional industries 100% - when you get to the point of large capital against a large population of workers, I believe Europe's model is not bad and far better than the travesty we witness in America, where the government is solidly on the side of capital. But most of Europe is absolutely horrible for small business that isn't working with a very, very stable business model.
In other words, if I'm opening a metalworking shop in Swabia, everybody knows what I'm doing, and it's going to be enough just to turn out solid work and treat people fairly. My market is predictable, and when I hire people, it's fair to expect me to have to jump through some hoops to let them go, because they have a right to expect some stability in this well-understood market.
But if I'm trying out a new idea - Germany ain't the place to try that unless I can essentially do it by myself or with a couple of friends. Their incremental, stable business attitudes are great for hardware, bad for software (although there are small software companies there that really kick ass, of course - in my experience, often tools used in industry that can work on the same industrial business model).
Fast iteration and early fail is not something Germans excel at - individual Germans, sure; German society, no no no. And that's true to a lesser extent throughout Europe. But it's been a key to success in Silicon Valley. How that gets implemented, I'm not sure.
But in terms of getting Europe off the American cloud - this isn't a problem. The concept of the cloud has been proven (except for privacy/security issues, obviously), and so it's far less likely that a given iteration in that space will fail. It's a good setup for European companies in that sense.
And again, I want to stress that the problem is not a lack of talent and that anybody that thinks that a lack of talent is the problem is deluded.