• scarabic@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The question here is why weren’t Google and the Mac and eBay all originally invented in Europe. Not why don’t the tech barons of 2026 all live in Europe.

    The question is even more pointed because some of the people who invented the above were immigrants from Europe. Why did they have to leave to do their world-changing work?

    Google was world-changing before it was the big tech nightmare it is today. So stop hiding behind the glory of GDPR and face the actual question.

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      European laws back in the 80s and 90s basically kept killing off anything that could have grown into a Google competitor.

      Draconian copyright laws screwed Europe over rather hard. Took a long time for them to fix it, and by then it was too late.

      Hard to build a search engine back then when you just got sued into the ground.