FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

[FWD] Dot com billionaires [...] in all of Europe (Are there any?) --Declan

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Sat, 15 Jan 2000 10:58:13 -0500
To:             	politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: Europe can't match US technology boom --Washington Post
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

[I can't say this is surprising to me, at least. With due respect to non-US politech subscribers, I don't see European countries, by and large, as having the same cultural appreciation for garage entrepreneurs out to change the world, and of course government regulations are considerably more onerous. I would be interested in seeing a list of the dozens of dot com billionaires in the US compared to the list in all of Europe. (Are there any?) --Declan]

*********

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48376-2000Jan14.html

Europe Can't Match U.S. Techno-Boom

By William Drozdiak Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday , January 15, 2000 ; A1

BERLIN, Jan. 14 – Across a continent that sees itself as the cradle of Western science and civilization, many political and business leaders have reached the alarming conclusion that Europe is rapidly losing ground to the United States in the growth industries of the future.

Just as the NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo revealed a huge disparity in military capabilities between the Old and New Worlds, the merger between America Online and Time Warner has raised fears among Europeans that the United States is surging ahead in locking up an enormous commercial bonanza through future control of the Internet and other technologies.

While Europe has scored a notable success with its mobile telephones, many leaders now acknowledge a basic policy failure of the past decade – subsidizing dying industries in an effort to preserve jobs – has contributed to the overwhelming superiority of the United States in such booming sectors as computers, Internet services, biotechnology and even investment banking.

"In Europe we are being left behind, for we have not been capable of reproducing the successes achieved on the other side of the Atlantic in the 1990s," said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at a meeting of European officials this week in Madrid aimed at stimulating growth of the high-tech sector. "Our problem is not the lack of a scientific or technical base. It is the lack of stimulus for business initiatives, which is key to North America's success."

What astounds many Europeans is the sheer scale of the AOL-Time Warner merger – the combined value of both companies represents about 30 percent of Spain's gross national product. "This is the kind of bold and ambitious way of doing things we need in Europe," said Spanish Industry Minister Josep Pique.

But given that technological advances tend to produce rapid innovation, the wide, popular access of computers and the Internet in the United States is expected to accelerate American predominance for years to come. While around 50 percent of U.S. homes are hooked up to the World Wide Web, only 12 percent of families among the 15 nations of the European Union have similar access.

Similarly, Europe lags well behind in the use of the Web for online shopping. Last year, according to the European Union, revenue from electronic commerce among the 15 EU nations grew substantially to $18 billion, but it still amounted to only about one-third of similar income generated in the United States.

"We need a wake-up and a shake-up at the European level," Erkki Liikanen, the European Union's commissioner who oversees information technology, said at the Madrid meeting. "The role and impact of digital technology is still being widely underestimated in Europe."

[...]

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ------- End of forwarded message -------

Zurück