Why Europe Doesn't Have a Google—and Why That's a Strength

The question "Why is there no European Google?" is frequently posed by politicians and economists, often with a tone of disappointment. The implication is that Europe is falling behind in the global tech race, that its failure to produce a trillion-dollar corporation like Alphabet or Meta signifies a systemic weakness. Yet, this framing misunderstands Europe's role in the technological landscape. Europe hasn't failed to produce a Google; it has chosen a different, arguably more profound, path. Its success is measured not in market capitalization but in the creation of universal, open infrastructure that underpins the digital world.

The World Wide Web itself is the quintessential European invention. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British citizen, and Robert Cailliau, a Belgian, developed the HTTP protocol and HTML format while working at CERN, a European research facility in Switzerland. The building was on the border with France, and historical evidence suggests the first web server may have been operational on French soil. This was not an endeavor aimed at creating a proprietary platform for profit. The Web was released as a common good, a protocol for open information exchange. Contrast this with the contemporaneous American project, Gopher, which sought to retain licensing rights. Gopher faded into obscurity, while the open, collaborative nature of the Web allowed it to flourish globally. Europe’s contribution here was not a company, but the foundational layer of the internet as we know it.

This pattern repeats with another cornerstone of modern computing: Linux. Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, created the Linux kernel in 1991 and released it under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a copyleft license that ensures the software remains free and open for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. Torvalds never sought to build a billion-dollar company; his goal was to create a robust, free operating system. Today, Linux is ubiquitous. It runs on the vast majority of web servers, powers Android smartphones, and is the backbone of cloud infrastructure and countless embedded systems. Its success is not measured by the wealth of its creator but by its pervasive, essential role in global technology. Similarly, Torvalds later created Git, the version control system that has become the industry standard for software development. Like Linux, Git is open source, a tool for collaboration rather than a product for sale.

The European ethos extends beyond operating systems to social and communication tools. In 2017, as concerns grew about the monopolistic practices, data harvesting, and algorithmic manipulation of major social networks, a German student named Eugen Rochko launched Mastodon. Built on the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon is a decentralized, open-source alternative to platforms like Twitter (now X). Its copyleft license ensures it remains a community-owned project, not a corporate asset. The goal is not to maximize user engagement for ad revenue but to create spaces for humane, privacy-respecting conversation. Similarly, the Gemini protocol, initiated by a developer living in Finland, offers a minimalist, text-based alternative to the modern web, designed for longevity and simplicity, free from the complexities and commercial pressures of mainstream platforms.

This focus on the common good is also evident in tools for everyday use. VLC media player, the most popular media player globally, was created by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Kempf. He has consistently refused lucrative buyout offers to keep VLC free and open-source. Likewise, LibreOffice, a full-featured office suite, is maintained by the German-based Document Foundation, a collective of hundreds of contributors worldwide. These projects are not designed to capture market share in a traditional sense; they are designed to serve users without cost or restrictions.

The underlying philosophy is a fundamental divergence from the American "success culture," which often equates achievement with individual wealth and corporate dominance. In many European contexts, success is viewed as a collective endeavor. It is measured by the longevity and utility of one's work, by its benefit to society as a whole. The ambition is not to build a company that will be acquired or that will dominate a market for a decade, but to create something so fundamental that it becomes part of the technological commons, enduring for generations.

Consider the alternative. A European Google Maps would be a proprietary, profit-driven service. Instead, Europe contributes to and relies on OpenStreetMap, a collaborative, open-source map of the world. While companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta may rise and fall—history suggests large corporations are not immortal—their proprietary platforms could vanish. The Web, HTML, Linux, and Git, however, are now inseparable from the fabric of global communication and computation. They are infrastructure, not products.

The critique that Europe lacks tech billionaires is, from this perspective, a feature, not a bug. It reflects a societal choice to value different outcomes. The question is not whether Europe can produce a Google, but whether it should want to. The current model prioritizes short-term economic growth and shareholder value over long-term, foundational innovation. By focusing on creating open, common goods, Europe has arguably made a more lasting contribution to humanity's technological progress.

The choice, as the author suggests, is about what we choose to admire. Do we celebrate the entrepreneur who builds a walled garden for profit, or the engineer who plants a tree whose oxygen will be breathed by future generations? Europe’s legacy is in the trees—the open protocols, the free software, the collaborative projects that form the bedrock of our digital world. In an era of increasing digital enclosure, this commitment to the commons is not a sign of weakness, but a profound and necessary strength.

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