I want the LHC with a functioning rail system that can accelerate a 1x1 brick 2-3 times before it disappears into the target.

I like the essay’s highlighting European contributions to software and technology, but it doesn’t quite answer the fundamental question of its title:

Why there’s no European Google?

The essay’s answer is [paraphrased] “…because we don’t need it.”.

I don’t quite understand that position because if a Google wasn’t needed in Europe then Google could disappear from Europe and no one would notice or care. Yet that isn’t likely the case. If Google disappeared overnight it would likely have massive impacts on business and personal lives across Europe.

I guess my answer to the article’s question as to “Why is there no European Google” is that creating Google (or a European Google) is extremely resource and financially expensive. Unless the funding for that effort comes from somewhere, it won’t just happen in Europe spontaneously without replicating the same private business model that many dislike about Google.

P.S. Another European created technology that should be added to the list for accolades is the creation of Deepmind machine learning/AI. This also lead to the creation of Google Gemini. While this is owned by Google, it was created out of the London offices.

A really nice essay, I agree with the sentiment of it. We don’t need European tech billionaires, we need government support for open source