It was tried:
For example, before Facebook, in Germany there existed studiVZ, schülerVZ, meinVZ (basically the same social network of the same company for different audiences). But this social network wasn't a commercial success, even though for some time it was much more popular in Germany than Facebook.
Generally, many successful German software companies were simply bought by US-American companies:
- SuSE was bought by Novell
- DLD (company: Delix; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Linux-Distribution ) was bought by Red Hat
- Star Division (the company behind Star Office) was bought by Sun (which again was bought by Oracle)
- In 2023, Software AG was bought by the private equity company Silver Lake
- Recently, Hornetsecurity was bought by Proofpoint.
So, innovation in the EU (contrary to the assertions everyone seems to be making here) that was absorbed by bigger companies from the US (making it an acquisitions/capital/monopolistic issue, not one of startup ease)?