this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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I always wonder what people actually mean by „European Google“ because every single Google service already has a European equivalent, some of which are very popular already like Proton Mail.
Google is infinity more then just it's search engine or mail service. Proton is barely 5% of the services Google offers.
The question is why isn't their a major international European company that can compete with Google at their full power and on their full plat field.
Functionally the reason is European laws around copyright basically allowed old companies to squash and shit on any start ups in the growing tech sector of the 70s though the 90s and stopped any growth.
So Europe was 20 years behind the US and China since your old companies kept killing your new ones till the laws changed.
Nowadays yeah there are lots of small European tech companies doing small parts of what Google does. But you will never see a European company able to compete fully with Google.
That ship has sailed at this point. Google would have to fall first and a lot of laws would have to change.