[HN Gopher] European alternatives for digital products
___________________________________________________________________
European alternatives for digital products
Author : s_dev
Score : 259 points
Date : 2021-12-20 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (european-alternatives.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (european-alternatives.eu)
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| So why does Europe have such hard time popping new software
| ventures like the US? Is it market fragmentation? Languages? Is
| it capital allocation related problems?
|
| I feel that the ability to bootstrap projects in all the large EU
| countries is way harder than the US, or smaller euro ones (like
| the Netherlands or Estonia).
|
| In Spain for example, the cost of something similar of an LLC is
| way higher than in the US, not to mention that you have to pay
| almost 400EUR/month (at minimum) just for owning the company as
| Social Security fee, even if I'm also working for someone else
| paying my social security through my salary.
|
| It's a huge burden if you're in my situation, which is having an
| average salary, not a lot of savings and you don't have a family
| that bails you out.
|
| Also, this listing lacks a few more that I listed here:
| https://iagovar.com/mapas/european-web-hosting-alternatives
| macco wrote:
| I think the biggest problem is the small home market /
| fragmented market.
|
| While the EU has a very well integrated market for industry
| goods, for services (where I would include software) the market
| is less than perfect.
|
| The language barrier is the biggest strangle for EU software
| entrepreneurship / platform business in my opinion.
|
| The second-biggest obstacle imho is funding. If you want to
| grow really fast, it is hard to get enough money.
|
| Third, I would rank ecosystem in general, besides money.
|
| I think over regulation is not as bad as it is often said. All
| developed countries have regulations in place, some more some
| less.
| baxtr wrote:
| I think this has been debunked? Just look at Sweden as an
| counter example or Israel.
|
| I believe it's just the lack of massive capital and the power
| law of VC investments. Start 1000s companies with smart
| people and a tiny fraction will get insanely big.
|
| We're starting to see this in Europe too now.
| chrischen wrote:
| This is probably true, because I know many Europeans that
| come to America and start their startups. So it may not be
| that there are few European startups, just few startups
| targeting that market.
| ars wrote:
| > I think the biggest problem is the small home market /
| fragmented market.
|
| That doesn't explain why Israel doesn't have this problem,
| they have an even smaller home market. They just sell
| internationally.
| jcfrei wrote:
| Israel is economically very tightly integrated with the US,
| they have the oldest Free Trade Agreement with them (1985).
| One third of their exports go to the US and having such an
| old FTA means it has become very cheap for companies to
| setup branches overseas.
| mc32 wrote:
| If language were a major barrier; then, how does one explain
| the US doing well in the EU?
|
| I get that home markets may not be big and provide a
| springboard perhaps to other markets but even the big
| countries there don't seem to dominate the small countries in
| terms of Software.
| theplumber wrote:
| >> If language were a major barrier; then, how does one
| explain the US doing well in the EU?
|
| By the time US companies reach the EU they are already big,
| worth billions.
|
| That being said I believe the main issue in EU is funding.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| One good entrepreneur said that focusing first on 2 markets
| would be ideal when starting out. They went for 5 markets
| and said it was too much hassle. In the end focused on
| US/Polish market.
|
| IMO language is big barrier as just testing different text
| in UI is a lot of hassle when starting out - not to
| mentions laws, cultures difference, dealing with business
| partners etc. is much harder due to that.
|
| IMO common law/company to easily hire people across EU
| would help.
| skratlo wrote:
| > So why does Europe have such hard time popping new software
| ventures
|
| So what makes you think that "popping new software ventures" is
| a good thing for society? Isn't there enough software already?
| The problem is the mediocre quality of it, and decline (hello
| Adobe). Popping new software ventures is hardly a solution.
| HPsquared wrote:
| New ventures is a solution for decline of old ones. The
| circle of life... It's a necessity, in fact. Cells need to
| divide and renew, organisms need to reproduce. Companies are
| the same.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| This is not even debateable. Software is eating the world and
| there's still a lot to eat. Europe won't be selling leather
| bags for much longer. The fact that it excluded itself from
| the future of the internet is a crime for the future
| generations.
| Puts wrote:
| I would turn that question around. How have the US become this
| hub for tech-companies? Probably culture and momentum. The same
| reason a small country like Sweden managed to become the third-
| largest music exporter in the world.
|
| And also European companies are moving to the US to start
| and/or grow their businesses there. Why is Spotify even listed
| on the NY stock exchange?
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| probably because software engineers don't get paid nearly as
| much as in the US.
|
| Also, there's less of an entrepreneurial mindset in europe. DO
| a good job, get paid, work life balance. Very different set of
| goals from america
| adventured wrote:
| You're oddly being downvoted for that. Not being paid nearly
| as highly in tech in general, detracts from how much money is
| in the ecosystem for doing start-ups.
|
| If you can sock back a retirement working for big tech for
| 10-12 years (counting equity), it frees you up massively to
| do whatever you like, whether funding as an angel, or self-
| funding your own start-ups. It's not uncommon for people you
| know in tech in Silicon Valley to pitch in on early small
| funding rounds if you've started something new and are
| rounding up some early funds. Multiply that wide process by
| the scale of the US tech industry - at the small and large
| ends - and all the wealth that has been created in it over
| the past 30 years.
|
| 1.3 million software developers with a median salary of
| $110,000 is a lot of money just from the software developer
| worker bees every year (save N% per year of that pile, now
| it's available for investment in one form or another; and
| that's ignoring the equity value they're yielding).
| jacquesm wrote:
| It doesn't. The problem is that anything that begins to show
| promise gets acquired by a US company before long. Europe works
| fine as an incubator.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| 'gets acquired', or chooses to go to the US because it sees
| no future as a european startup?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that too happens. Gitlab is a good example of this.
| Jonanin wrote:
| This isn't really a plausible root cause. These companies in
| the U.S. that are supposedly acquiring everyone (and they
| aren't: there are record numbers of unacquired unicorns and
| IPOs recently) were small once too. That just begs the
| question: How did the U.S. get all the large acquirers in the
| first place?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| because the internet got big in the U.S first and thus
| there were more companies being started over there and some
| of the companies started over there ended up the big ones?
|
| in short, because time exists and effects all else in our
| reality.
| elric wrote:
| For many, Big Government is probably a big part of it here in
| Belgium. The public sector is so big that many software
| engineers can spend their entire career as overpaid government
| contractors.
| test0account wrote:
| 56% of GDP in public spending in no rush to become more
| efficient. In fact, quite the contrary.
|
| Compare this with the cut throat competition in Sillicon
| Valley or the international arena.
|
| That's how you end up with non existent tech offerings in
| Europe.
| legulere wrote:
| The amount spent does not say anything about efficiency if
| you don't consider what is provided with that money. Lack
| of free healthcare and education are some of the biggest
| complaints about the US after all.
|
| Europe is also doing pretty well in several fields and you
| don't explain at all how tech in particular is affected by
| public spending.
| test0account wrote:
| 56% of GDP amounts to around 20k euro per person and year
|
| Would you rather get the public health and education, or
| keep the 20k euro and find a solution for yourself?
|
| I reckon that my health expenditures are 1000 per year,
| and I am self-taught, so I don't need the government for
| anything.
|
| What we need is to make the public services Opt-in/Opt-
| out, so people who find it competitive like yourself can
| keep enjoying it.
| raphaelj wrote:
| Well, you will pay these 20k only the 40-ish years you'll
| work, while you'll pay your US health care insurance
| until you die. The average American pays more for
| healthcare over their live than the average European, and
| the outcomes are objectively worse.
|
| Also, EU governments provide retirement benefits while
| the US's doesn't. This is the main expenditure for these
| governments.
|
| Not saying that your argument has not some truth in it,
| but it's definitively wrong in the case of healthcare.
| nostrebored wrote:
| The outcomes are definitely not objectively worse, to the
| point that the U.S. is a huge medical tourism
| destination.
|
| The US population not taking care of themselves is a
| public health problem not a medical care quality issue.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The US government provides extensive retirement benefits
| similar to the EU in both type and dollar value. These
| are some of the biggest spending line items in the US
| budget: Social Security, Medicare, etc.
|
| My US government provided pension will be something like
| $3500/month when I reach retirement age. This is in
| addition to any personal retirement savings.
| test0account wrote:
| 20k of GDP per capita means in any year of your life,
| even after 65.
|
| People migrate to the US before the EU. Besides, US
| lifestyle (also a high tax country btw) is not the only
| possible alternative to european style quasi socialism
| (56% on the way there)
| Gigamo wrote:
| Society and the world at large doesn't revolve around
| individuals. Despite not having had any major health
| expenditures myself (for now), I have absolutely no
| problem with supporting a system that allows for those
| less fortunate to not have to worry about it, among other
| things. Frankly, anything else is simply barbaric.
| test0account wrote:
| test0account wrote:
| jcfrei wrote:
| Public spending is not the biggest issue. The problem is
| that having lots of government employees in cushy jobs
| starves the labor market of talent. Why take on a risky
| job at a flimsy startup when you can have a nearly
| guaranteed income till retirement in a 9-5 job?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Military-industrial contracting in the United States seems
| to suck up a vast amount of developer talent, and that's
| all public spending. I'm not sure how you're distinguishing
| developers working in the fields of public health care,
| public education, public infrastructure etc. from those
| working under the secrecy umbrella of the military-
| industrial contracting system in this argument?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Cost of incorporating; cost of hiring and firing (this is a big
| one); and fragmented market in terms of policy, culture and
| language. Capital availability, until recently, but I don't
| think that's an issue anymore.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Someone else already said acquisitions but the other half of
| the answer is finance. The US has the most rich and ruthless
| financial system in the world, with gigantic flows with
| comparatively little oversight. There's simply enough built up
| to finance eternal unicorns.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Taxes and bureaucracy.
|
| It is _beyond_ insanity. And should you succeed in France
| /Belgium/Spain you'd be seen as the evil capitalist responsible
| for all that is wrong in the EU.
|
| The whole mentality is rotten.
|
| The EU has _one_ big software company and it 's... SAP. SAP is
| a drop in the bucket compared to the big US or Chinese tech
| firms (I don't think SAP is worth even 1/10th of any GNAFAM).
| But there's worse: I think SAP's market cap is worth basically
| as much as the next 50 or next 100 (or maybe basically _all_
| the others) EU software companies. Something crazy like that.
|
| So one successful software company (thankfully we have Germany
| in the EU and SAP if, of course, German).
|
| It's a failure whose level of failure cannot be understated.
|
| A complete, total and utter failure.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| I'd guess that the biggest factor is their Venture Capital
| firms are way more risk averse. The US in general has a more
| entrepreneurial culture, and therefore a bigger risk appetite.
| zerkten wrote:
| The costs you list are dwarfed if a company scales to any
| reasonable size and by that point they have enough of a team to
| consider moving elsewhere in the EU to better manage them. In
| fact, moving to the US might open up as an opportunity which
| some people take.
|
| The biggest problem is funding due to the risk aversion of EU
| institutions and limited alternative sources. You have to be
| incredibly qualified to acquire the funding need to drive a
| startup forward in the way that happens in the US. This ranges
| from the small angel investors through to the first series of
| VC funding.
|
| In the EU, if you are a business like a biotech or pharma you
| may be able to navigate this because those are well trodden
| paths with high risk adversity baked in. A software company has
| many unknowns, so you encounter problems with expectations. You
| can't fail in the EU because you only have one shot and won't
| get back again with another company/idea. In reality, it's very
| likely you'll stumble a lot initially and won't have the leeway
| that you have in the US. If you compared bankruptcy on both
| sides of the Atlantic you'd notice similar patterns.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I know those costs are nothing when a business grow, but
| having low barriers of entry means a lot more people trying.
| fleddr wrote:
| It's capital. We simply don't have it, or it's not allocated to
| tech.
|
| All these silly fees you mention are marginal. It would
| actually be much cheaper to hire devs from Europe, so cost is
| not the issue at all. It is simply a lack of capital
| altogether. Nor is there the risk taking that is required.
|
| Europe has no VC.
| s_dev wrote:
| >So why does Europe have such hard time popping new software
| ventures like the US?
|
| The US has a very mature and developed tech VC scene. Where's
| Europes isn't as mature. Also clustering is a thing -- why
| didn't Silicon Valley happen in New York either -- many of the
| conditions were there just like California but it didn't
| materialize and Europe was simply a mess in the aftermath of
| WWII there weren't going to be many tech revolutions taking
| place there.
|
| In fact ironically enough there was such a congregation of
| talent in Berlin in the 1930s that some have predicted a second
| "Renaissance" was inevitable were it not for WWII.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| You can look at the two world wars as an elaborate suicide
| attempt of Europe which resulted in handing over the world to
| the US. It's quite depressing really.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| British limited companies are probably among the simplest and
| cheapest to incorporate and manage in the world but, well, the
| UK is no longer in the EU...
|
| I have never understood why countries slap so much red tape and
| so many fees on this. The UK has got it right, IMHO: make it as
| cheap and simple as possible, there are only upsides [Edit: for
| society/the state] to people starting up a business.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Yup, costs PS12 to incorporate, and it can be done entirely
| online. Then PS12 a year to maintain.
|
| The last time I incorporated a company in the UK it took a
| grand total of 35 minutes from start to actually having an
| incorporated company.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >there are only upsides to people starting up a business.
|
| that is not true at all. The majority of business ventures
| fail and a lot of small businesses aren't productive, and at
| the end of the day someone needs to pick the tab up. Even
| Thiel used to say, don't start a business until you have a
| very good reason to.
|
| What you actually want is to incentivize the kind of people
| to start a business who have a high chance of driving
| innovation and bringing about large, productive firms, you
| don't really want an army of self-employed people with low
| capital formation in a developed country.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I meant that there are only upsides for society and the
| state. Sure the people and investors who start a business
| take a risk, but the state does not: If the new business
| fails the state loses nothing, if the new business succeeds
| then wealth and taxes are produced. So make it as simple
| and cheap as possible to incorporate and to run a business
| and reap the benefits later.
|
| (I have edited my previous comment to clarify)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >but the state does not
|
| the state takes a pretty big amount of risk and costs.
| Who pays healthcare, who pays maternity leave and social
| security in a fast and loose labor market like that? The
| answer in the US often is, nobody or the federal
| government.
|
| In a country like Germany, France or in Scandinavia
| running a business is harder because there's an
| expectation that businesses can take care of their
| workers. A lot of red tape exists to make sure that a
| business can shoulder these things. In fact in
| Scandinavia _eliminating_ unproductive firms through
| measures like wage compression was deliberately part of
| their social model to drive concentration and creation of
| productive firms.
|
| There really are a lot of implications to creating the
| sort of environment that the US or to a lesser extent the
| UK has, and it doesn't work well with the economic model
| of most of Europe.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| > Who pays healthcare, who pays maternity leave and
| social security in a fast and loose labor market like
| that?
|
| Are you from Scandinavia? Because the state pays these
| things ( _except_ maternity leave) in Denmark, whether
| you 're in a job or not, so no there really isn't a risk
| to the state. The only thing the business is paying for
| is your salary, pension (if they offer it) and other
| "bonuses" (if they offer them).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _In a country like Germany, France or in Scandinavia
| running a business is harder because there 's an
| expectation that businesses can take care of their
| workers. A lot of red tape exists to make sure that a
| business can shoulder these things._
|
| That's not true. Red tape is red tape, it serves no other
| purpose that perpetuating itself (and since we're on this
| topic there is much less red tape in the UK than in
| France or Germany.
|
| If you're a business an hire someone then you have to pay
| their salary and any taxes to finance healthcare and
| other benefits. OK. There is no need for red tape for
| this or to make it difficult upfront to incorporate a
| company, just make it clear and simple to know what to
| pay and how to pay it when or if you hire someone.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| This has been discussed before. Although the EU is a
| marketplace of 27 countries, it is not a digitally homogeneous
| marketplace. Adoption and acceptance of digital tools varies by
| country. Language is also important - the tech giants localise
| their apps and tools. But many software companies in larger
| European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK etc)
| concentrate on their home country first before they focus on
| international reach. That makes sense. However, in smaller
| countries, where the software market is also smaller, software
| companies have a more international outlook (i.e. eyeing the US
| market).
|
| Even when there are local apps available, many small businesses
| (and larger ones) will stick with services from big, well-known
| tech companies. Why? I guess because of inertia, or simply
| because those products feel safe and familiar.
|
| Where are the pan-European equivalents to eBay, Etsy,
| KickStarter, AirBnB, Shopify, AbeBooks, etc? Europeans use
| these services entensively. You'll probably find local
| equilavents in each European country, but they are not pan-
| European or global in scope.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| if anything the opposite should be true: A small homogeneous
| market with a language barrier is a great testing ground
| where a new product can grow and then become global. Facebook
| started in harvard, and some EU fintech startups are doing
| well in Sweden, i hear.
|
| Global expansion is not an issue; every american company can
| easily reach the whole of EU. And there are many many
| european startups whose main market is america. Unless you
| mean that, products are so tailored to their home market that
| they don't have global appeal.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The reason is that EU is an open economy that is not even
| TRYING to become independent.
|
| China knew that America will try to crush them. It's a real,
| literal, life or death situation for them to come up with a
| Chinese Google. They have pumped trillions into the tech
| industry over decades.
| maartn wrote:
| I don't know who runs this but it's definitely incomplete. Too
| bad the "European alternative" to webchat doesn't even work on
| mobile. Maybe that's the reason why it's so incomplete
| marbu wrote:
| Weird that no service provided by seznam.cz is listed (I would
| expect at least their maps or email to be mentioned, while the
| search engine is tailored to czech language only so listing it
| would be less useful to most people outside of Czechia).
| spixy wrote:
| yeah their maps are the best tourist maps there (and classic
| maps are also decent), and are also used outside of Czechia
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| mapy.cz is miles better in terms of hiking maps,
| sattelite/plane maps and regular maps compared to Googe Maps
| - at least in Czech Republic and Slovakia. And their apps
| have offline mode.
| ColinHayhurst wrote:
| They should be mentioned and also incorrect. Those listed are
| not search engines but search services, mostly using Google or
| Bing.
|
| Self-diclosure of bias but they also missed our independent no-
| tracking international search engine (own crawling/indexing)
| https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-...
| maxdo wrote:
| Deutschland EU Uber Alles ? Digital nationalism?
|
| I don't really get this fragmentation in a free world. Why should
| i use product that is less competitive just because companyX
| servers a located in a country that is theoretically more
| friendly? Even that is a big question.
|
| If you live in Poland or any Eastern European EU member, in this
| case GB, US do more to protect you from absolutely real War risk.
|
| Germany, France, Austria government is absolutely corrupted they
| lead to situation when Russia think it can claim rights on other
| sovereign countries. Half of eastern Europe felt left behind.
| Same with China relationship. How many people will lose their job
| because china is building their capital on not fairly regulated
| market, stolen Intellectual property. EU don't care. No real
| protection. They afraid tensions(polite form of saying corrupted)
| even when this tension means protect own citizen.
|
| At the same time ex german counselor works at Gazprom to Lobby
| corrupt interests. He got an official title. Russia takes this
| money and execute, poison people, blow up military objects in
| European countries.
|
| But EU built a nice website to support corrupted governments via
| taxes. Maybe first get some responsibility and do your job?
| paulus_magnus2 wrote:
| Who said the product is inferior? Have you checked any of
| these?
|
| More discoverability of alternative offerings is always better,
| for both the customer and supplier, unless the supplier is a
| monopolist.
|
| In my experience middle sized companies that still have to
| prove themselves and build good will offer (much) better
| servivce / product than mature corporations run by beancounters
| who are focused on "monetising" their userbase most
| effectively.
| maxdo wrote:
| because that what market shows. One market has 0 regulations
| and it strives. Other with all regulations and theoretically
| bigger population by almost 50% still struggles to be at
| comparable size. One pays up to $500k a mo for a dev position
| other pays pennies promising you some kind of pension.
| Classical regulated vs free market
| blibble wrote:
| seems a bit odd that "EU" is green (good) but Switzerland is
| yellow (not as good)
|
| bit of a stretch to say Switzerland isn't European
|
| (and there seem to be zero UK companies)
| martin_a wrote:
| Switzerland, as others have already mentioned, is not a state
| of the EU, which means that GDPR rules for third party
| countries apply to them.
| s_dev wrote:
| Switzerland is in some EU institutions like Schengen.
|
| Thus EU membership has lots of asterixes and grey areas unlike
| the US which is a federacy the EU is a confederacy (Look at
| Brexit). Switzerland is somewhat unique in that it's both EU
| and not EU. Take the UK for instance -- their grey area is
| "Northern Ireland".
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Switzerland and the UK aren't in the EU. The website name is
| abit of a misnomer.
| test0account wrote:
| It's quite off-puting branding, playing with the flag of a
| bureaucratic institution like the EU.
|
| If it was about what Europeans create, I would be receptive.
| Instead, they are promoting whatever is in the European
| Commission agenda, which is radically different to what I need.
| 627467 wrote:
| EU adopted it's flag from and existing institution of which
| virtually all European nations as part of.
|
| It seems like a case of appropriation until you realize that
| most European supranational organizations share similar
| origins, goals and members.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Europe
| test0account wrote:
| outside1234 wrote:
| Its not in the EU in terms of being part of all of the accords.
|
| (In particular, free movement of people in the bloc as I
| understand it.)
| jahnu wrote:
| There is free movement between EU and Switzerland
| qnsi wrote:
| if u want to travel sure, if u want to work u need a
| permit. So not a freedom of movement in the full EU way
| jahnu wrote:
| It's almost exactly the full EU freedom of movement. In
| theory Swiss have to provide priority to Swiss nationals
| but otherwise there are no restrictions.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_for_w
| ork...
| blibble wrote:
| the page is labelled "European Alternatives" not "EU
| Alternatives"
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| But its logo has the 12 gold stars of the EU flag over a
| blue cloud.
|
| And it has the EU TLD.
| blibble wrote:
| that flag was the Flag of the Council of Europe before it
| was ever associated with the EU
|
| (similar to the same way the EU has attempted to
| commandeer the term "Europe" to mean itself)
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The EU is using every tool in their passive aggressive arsenal
| in order to guilt Switzerland into no longer being neutral! /s
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I just clicked on the first one I liked (grape - in
| telecommunications), and it was just closed down due to
| insolvency. It mentions it had 500,000 users, which baffled me
| that they couldn't find investment for such an obviously liked
| and used product. EU startup landscape looks a bit depressing
| honestly.
| najqh wrote:
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >Support local businesses
|
| Sorry, but that's not a reason for me to buy something. I prefer
| solutions that perform good over something whose only merit is
| that it has been made by my neighbor.
|
| Instead of trying to guilt-trip people into buying why not come
| up with products that can compete in the global market? There's a
| few - I mean I'm a Spotify customer. But most EU tech is just
| garbage.
| nopcode wrote:
| I'm interested in products that are not made with slave labour
| or under dictator regimes. I feel like the site is trying to
| imply this... but Europeans are actually really good at modern
| day slave labour.
| shakermakr wrote:
| Gonna get some hate of course but where's SAP here? SaaS, private
| cloud in Rot, BW, Germany, and stringent data privacy as it's a
| German company. Executes entirely under GDPR, ticks every of the
| boxes.
|
| Europe's biggest software company, never mentioned...
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| SAP is like Salesforce or SoftBank, in that nobody can figure
| out what they make or do, but the suits keep shoveling boxcars
| full of money at them for some reason.
| foepys wrote:
| A company I worked for introduced Salesforce shortly before I
| left. The license costs are off the charts, it's insane.
|
| Lidl wanted to introduce SAP and after investing 500 million
| Euro into it, they stopped and aborted the project entirely.
| s_dev wrote:
| Because SAP isn't an "alternative" it's the dominant player of
| it's own field. What alternative does the US have to SAP might
| be another perspective worth examining?
| nopcode wrote:
| Salesforce, Oracle, Workday, Microsoft
| lucumo wrote:
| How can we add to this list? It's missing some notables.
| toastedwedge wrote:
| There is an address (email) on the Imprint: https://european-
| alternatives.eu/imprint
| jmfldn wrote:
| Why does the US dominate digital products?
|
| 1. Enormous internal market
|
| 2. Extremely wealthy
|
| 3. Well-developed capital markets for investment
|
| So it's an enormous, wealthy country where there is lots of
| investment. Obviously there are other factors but these seem
| blindingly obvious as starting points.
|
| I find the UK's inability to compete with the US web giants
| depressing. I don't like the idea of relying on a few American
| companies for search, cloud infra and so on. I'd love to see us
| build a British Google for example. I don't like the guy at all,
| but I agree with Dominic Cummings that we should focus our
| efforts on something like this.
|
| I'm not arguing for web service nationalism but, for economic and
| security reasons, way more nation states should be looking to
| encourage the building of their own web backbone companies. It
| would also be good for general Internet resiliency to not have so
| few companies and single points of failure.
| Hakashiro wrote:
| I just recently saw someone posting on LinkedIn that 500k for a
| Senior Engineer role was too low.
|
| Half a fucking million.
|
| All good European engineers are leaving to USA. And I would
| too.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I will take my 250k in London vs 450k in New York any time.
|
| USA is just a third world country with a Gucci belt. My
| family's value system is completely incompatible with how
| America operates and what drives people and organisations.
|
| I have many senior dev friends who think the same.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| 250k in London is an extreme outlier, I can only guess you
| work in finance? Most adverts I see are offering 50-80k.
| onorrhoea wrote:
| jmfldn wrote:
| I guess this is a Silicon Valley megacorp right? Who could
| afford those wages?! Over here in the UK, if you're
| absolutely shit hot, principal engineer type material, I
| guess PS150k + is common. Maybe more if you're a true elite
| engineer, but US wages are surreal. As others point out
| though, we get a lot of great public services, state pensions
| and so on. All a tradeoff.
| nostrebored wrote:
| In what world are you valuing good public services at like
| 200k a year?
|
| Regardless, even in Australia wages for tech workers are
| higher than most of Europe.
|
| Europeans are truly in denial about what they're getting.
| Nationalism is a great blindfold.
| jmfldn wrote:
| I'm not valuing it at 200k. You're basing that number on
| some extreme outlier 500k wage that was plucked out of
| the air. Hardly the norm in the US.
|
| Fwiw, I'll grant that the US is ahead in big tech but I'd
| never move there. The quality of life is pretty poor
| compared to wealthy European countries. I've spent a lot
| of time there and I'm sorry to say, you seem a bit
| delusional to us over here. Life is hard in the US to
| many people here and kind of uncivilised in terms of
| social safety nets, inequality and any number of other
| metrics.
| ColinHayhurst wrote:
| > I'd love to see us build a British Google for example.
|
| There is one, and with users globally:
| https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/05/no-tracking-search-how-does-...
| Self-disclosure: CEO
| tekkertje wrote:
| Great initiative! It's getting more important to be able to find
| local vendors, making it easier to comply with privacy
| frameworks.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Yikes - what a sad list. I think this might be a hint that
| perhaps people want something else.
| k__ wrote:
| Some products like ProtonMail are pretty good.
|
| But, yes, the cloud computing stuff is pretty sad indeed.
| Kimitri wrote:
| UpCloud is rather fantastic for what they offer. Of course,
| it's no AWS or GCP, but for my needs UpCloud has been just
| about perfect.
| test0account wrote:
| maxdo wrote:
| US has no regulations, no GDPR, nothing. Just fair competition.
| If you are EU based vendor, there is 0 issues to work with US.
|
| So yeah, regulations will definitely work :) It will just create
| more lazy corps that have no motivation to be competitive
| mrich wrote:
| Hetzner is missing!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hosting isn't even a category, it only has 'Cloud Computing'
| but that's not the only way to host your stuff.
|
| Leaseweb, OVH (is mentioned in the cloud section), Hetzner all
| deserve a mention.
| colbyhub wrote:
| I love the idea behind this, a "support local" spin on digital
| products.
|
| Myself and others would appreciate one for Canada! Perhaps I
| should build it.
| martin_a wrote:
| > Perhaps I should build it.
|
| Do it! Be the change you wish for. :-)
| inaprovaline wrote:
| EU investors, banks are too conservative, they only invest small
| amount of money and they are not comfortable taking risks. US on
| the other hand has built a much high tolerance for taking risks.
| They are ok with taking risks and loosing big time.
| neither_color wrote:
| Not sure if it's listed or not but one I'm pretty happy with is
| smallPDF based in Switzerland. https://smallpdf.com/
|
| I got pissed off when I wanted to rotate a PDF 90 degrees on my
| dad's computer and adobe wanted to charge for it, then I found
| that smallPDF could do that and a whole lot more like edits and
| signature collections. I ended up subscribing him but the free
| tier already does several things that adobe would charge you for
| so I encourage anyone to use this service.
| elric wrote:
| pdf90 (and 180 and 270) is available on just about any Linux
| distro. It's a single command. Not quite the same as smallpdf,
| but if all you're after is rotating ...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"I wanted to rotate a PDF 90 degrees"
|
| I am continually frustrated at just how difficult of a problem
| simple PDF operations are on Windows PCs. Even looking for
| alternative PDF readers is a complex and confusing task. And,
| every top result wants to either charge or require an account
| to use it. The FOSS tools aren't great either. Why can't
| Microsoft make a product like Preview for Mac which allows for
| such things?!?
| nip wrote:
| Shameless plug: I built https://simplePDF.eu as I was
| similarly frustrated by the lack of a good PDF editor when
| filling French paperwork.
|
| Checkboxes for example did not seem to be available in any of
| the tools I found.
|
| I also figured that if I had to spend the time to position
| the fields, someone else shouldn't spend that time too:
| crowd-edited PDF if you will (the document never sees my
| server)
| nathan_phoenix wrote:
| Wow, works actually amazingly well! Thank you!
| druadh wrote:
| Basic PDF manipulation has been a constant thorn ever since I
| started using a computer. I still don't have a single source
| for it, either. Definitely looking into smallPDF
| WalterBright wrote:
| pdftk can do many of these things. I use it frequently.
|
| https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/
| rzzzt wrote:
| NAPS2 is primarily a scanner app, but it can also import
| existing PDF files, following which you can re-arrange
| and manipulate pages: https://github.com/cyanfish/naps2
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Why can't Microsoft make a product like Preview for Mac
| which allows for such things?!?
|
| I presume it's some nonsense application of antitrust laws
| preventing this.
| drcongo wrote:
| I was baffled reading the OP as to why anyone would need to
| pay to do that. This explains it, thanks.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| These listings seem limited from a cursory glance. And what does
| European mean?
|
| If a German company hosts everything on Google or AWS is it still
| considered European? Or if a Romanian company moves HQ to New
| York and still does development mainly in Romania like UI Path?
|
| Or what if you are an American company with all or most of your
| dev team in say Sweden or Hungary? Does that make you European?
|
| And if you are say a non-European company but meet all the
| European data protection and compliance requirements and the
| European counterparts do not?
| karussell wrote:
| Good questions ... e.g. look where the founders of Elastic come
| from (Israel & Netherlands & Germany) and they initially
| incorporated in the Netherlands:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_NV
| s_dev wrote:
| > And what does European mean?
|
| In this context "European Union" and the company is registered
| primarily in the EU and where the vast lionshare of profits are
| declared. The companies mentioned do appear tastefully (or
| limited in your words) curated are definitely EU based and
| lends some credence to the overall claim and purpose of page.
| I'm not seeing controversial 'European' companies that are
| actually American like Stripe. (Sometimes people claim Stripe
| to be Irish) -- Adyen is definitely Dutch for example and
| Mullvad is Swedish.
|
| I'm not seeing anything with a Union Jack on the page and the
| UK would normally have some entries here. Switzerland and
| Norway are part of the EU institutions like Schengen and the
| EEA -- just not full members. So the author of the page does
| appear to have very good working definition of 'European' but
| it's not clear what exactly that is -- it's not in the terms
| page for instance.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| To complicate matters there are "European" companies like
| Booking that are totally Dutch but owned by a hands off US
| holding company.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking_Holdings
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| sschueller wrote:
| I think the idea is companies that do not have a conflict of
| interest with the US. Although Microsoft claims their data in
| European data centers can not be given to the US government the
| US government doesn't see it that way and there are court cases
| being fought over this.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Microsoft can claim whatever they want, they must respect the
| USA law.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's that why they don't operate the one of the Azure
| datacenters in Germany? It's managed by Deutsche Telekom
| and Microsoft doesn't have access.
|
| Edit: They may have changed that, it's a Deutsche Telekom
| company that managed the physical access, that seems a
| little pointless, if everything is available via the
| internet.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I don't know, but it could be one of these older deals in
| which local companies could operate some kind of Azure
| datacenters. We had one like this in Norway with Evry
| before it stopped and got replaced by two Azure
| datacenters operated by Microsoft.
| sebow wrote:
| nicofo wrote:
| Cool! nice initiative. For me is important my privacy, and using
| EEUU apps/services/dns/cloud/third parties things for using
| internet it should pass through EEUU services, threath analysis,
| NSA, FBI, Goverment interest, that's why this kind of initiatives
| are important.
| ggambetta wrote:
| FYI "EEUU" only makes sense in Spanish-speaking countries
| (AFAIK). When writing in English, for English-speaking
| audiences, use "the US". Otherwise everyone will be very
| confused, especially in the context of an article about the EU.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| now i m curious why it is written like that
| pessimizer wrote:
| According to some guy on Quora, it's a way to pluralize
| initialisms.
| bragr wrote:
| Five Eyes and Club de Berne think you are adorable :)
| mathverse wrote:
| Because Europe is just a bunch of countries that play kinda nice
| with each other.
|
| Success of a company in Germany means jackshit for an engineer in
| France.
|
| Europeans still treat each other as 2nd tier citizens and it is
| often the case you will be discriminated against if you work for
| german company in Warsaw.
|
| I dont want to move to another country in Europe and learn their
| language. I dont care about their local culture or language at
| all no matter how interesting they think it is.
|
| It is simple as that.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| But europeans are generally familiar with remote work, why
| would that be a problem?
| mathverse wrote:
| Tax residency.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Uhm, generally curious is anything you mentioned sans the
| language barrier and the tribalism which might come with it
| in some places really be that different from the US?
|
| You got local taxes, why would the success of a company in
| SV mean anything to an engineer in NY? People move around
| EU all the time, London, Stockholm and Berlin are full of
| engineers from all over the place. Just like in the US,
| people move where there are jobs to be had and they care
| about success of companies.
|
| Are there places which are keen on keeping to themselves?
| Sure maybe, but they are not the majority? Really hard for
| me to see your point with such sweeping generalizations.
| caust1c wrote:
| Notably absent: Social Media Services. Weird! /s
| ilhamsgenius wrote:
| sz4kerto wrote:
| This list is just sad. I was thinking about what else could I
| say, but it's just sad. There's no area listed with an European
| solution that's comfortably in the top 3 in the world in its
| field. Maybe it is because this list is deliberately listing
| areas where the alternatives are less known (someone in another
| thread brings up SAP as an example).
| wutwutwutwut wrote:
| I just looked at VPN section and as a Mullvad user I disagree
| with you.
| kornelijus wrote:
| I would consider DeepL to be comfortably the best translation
| service for the 24 languages they support. Their decision to
| support a lot of the less spoken languages in the EU (which
| have quite terrible support in Google Translate) has made the
| internet much more accessible for older people in my country
| who generally can't read English.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's even sadder that we can't have this discussion in a
| european forum. Are there any, really?
| bserge wrote:
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