Europe's contribution to the Internet

By Jeremy Fain, March 6, 2007

When it comes to Internet technologies, it looks as if Europe’s excellent at inventing, but sucks at innovating (ie bringing inventions to the masses). Here’s a little compilation drawn from recent readings (mainly this week’s issue of Business Week) and thoughts.

  • It wasn’t Dick Cheney who invented the Internet browsing interface World Wide Web (www), but it was made up in Geneva and appropriated later by Silicon Valley.
  • Digital music standard MP3 was invented in Germany, within one of the 56 research partner institutes of the Fraunhofer Society. The Germans invented MP3, but the Americans reaped the benefits of this invention through the Bell Labs (Silicon Valley again) and later Alcatel-Lucent who now owns the Bell Labs’ intellectual property.
  • Some of the hottest services going through the Internet are European: Skype was born in Luxembourg, from a truly European team, and bought by eBay in 2005 for a mere bn$2,6; MySQL, an easy-to-use and extremely well packaged database, was born in Sweden; FON is a Spanish initiative aiming at enhancing the use of wireless hotspots through a community of people willing to share their resources; Last.fm has put together social networking and music to become a leader; and the list could be countless…However, it’s no surprise if Skype was bought by eBay, and Kelkoo by Yahoo!

Europe has a hard time building sustainable world leaders on the Internet as well as making its inventions go from the research lab to the mass market. Can you think of a reason why all leading Internet companies are American and not Asian (yet) or European (yet)?

Related posts:

  1. Minutes of the IE-Club lecture at Microsoft France on European Rising Stars of the Internet
  2. Yet another trip to Silicon Valley?
  3. Catching up on software and entrepreneurship books
  4. 10 reasons why Silicon Valley is the land of entrepreneurs
  5. In Silicon Valley, enjoying

categories Amazon, Business intelligence, Business strategy, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Europe, Google, Internet, MNC, Microsoft, Public policy, Silicon Valley, USA, Venture Capital, Video, VoIP, eBay, innovation, user-generated content

  • Tu peux rajouter l'ADSL par Alcatel et le Divx par Jérome Rota.
  • Hey Laurent,



    Many thanks for DivX, indeed invented by Frenchman, video technology guru and Silicon Valley entrepreneur (DivX Networks) Jérôme Rota.



    ADSL was invented by Alcatel, but this is sort of more 'telco'.
  • Hi Jeremy,



    Nice post, as usual. Keep going !



    Let me add a few things before answering to your question in a separate comment.



    - It's not Vice President Dick Cheney who is said to claim that he "invented the internet" but former Vice President Al Gore. Actually, the truth is that Al Gore never did such a straight statement : that's a misleading rumor posed by George W. Bush during his campaign against him. What is true is the fact that Al Gore promoted the "Information Superhigway" terminology back in the mid 90's. More on the legend of Gore inventing the Internet here : http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp



    - Skype has been created by Sweedish folks. The company is based in Luxemburg for some obscur reasons. Maybe the taxes system ? ;-)

    The explanation is in the article published by Strategy+Business in 2005 : "Messrs. Zennström and Friis, who run Skype out of Luxembourg, claim that it costs their company about a penny to acquire a customer. That compares with about $150 for Vonage, a leader in traditional VOIP."

    You've got it ? It's not in Sweden (nor in France, unfortunately) that they would be able to acquire a customer for such a low expenditure.



    - Kelkoo and eBay were founded by French entrepreneurs, respectively Pierre Chappaz and Pierre Omidyar. Those are two superb success stories "à la Française", right ? Any ' Pierre ' in your buddy list ?
  • - thanks for the precision about Al Gore. But didn't Cheney claim something about the Internet as well?



    - Weren't the Skype guys from Sweden (Zennström), Estonia (Tamkivi), and Denmark (Friis) rather? Interesting explanation about their customer acquisition cost. I had heard once that had Microsoft been founded in, say, Delaware, its market cap would be 30% higher today. So fiscal optimization may not be that bad after all...



    - Yep, Chappaz is French indeed and Omidyar French-Iranian. And yes again, Chappaz is a Centrale Paris alumni (although I'm unfortunately not to be a Centrale Paris alumni although I share classes with engineers, I'm just a visiting student here; my home university being graduate business school HEC Paris).



    Take care, and many thanks for the compliments about my blog. A pleasure to have you as a reader.



    Jeremy
  • Nice overview. It is good to know that we in europe have the chance :)
  • Martin
    Right, and http/html standards where created in part by Sir Tim Burnes Lea (british); the first computers where created in England during the second world war; Allan Turning was the master behind the programmable computer idea; the list of European inventors and thinkers is large and extensive.



    What we fail to do is sell our ideas for good money.
  • "Can you think of a reason why all leading Internet companies are American and not Asian (yet) or European (yet)?"



    You choose:

    - Lack of an exit-market

    - Major focus of private equity on buy-outs

    - Bad link between research and commercialisation

    - Culture based on risk-aversion.
  • That was for Europe btw.
  • A lot of the developers for the open source joomla CMS are from Europe.
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