The thing about Europe: it's the actual land of the free now

> There are few unicorns in Europe, alas, and too little innovation.

There is most definitely innovation in Europe. It just gets bought by the US, who is quick to forget where the technology came from.

As for unicorns and trillion dollars companies... some may say it's a feature, not a bug. It's great to claim to have free speech and competition, but when a few people own a few big monopolies and control the media, is it real? Regulations are not bad.

Yes, I agree: unicorns are, by and large, a failure of capitalism, not an example of success. They result from a system that doesn't value competition but values winning.

That's not to say that the European tech sector is doing fantastically. Still, as an end user, I'd rather have a thousand companies like Proton, Filen, Tutanota, Tresorit, Infomaniak, or DeepL than one Google.

Exactly. ONLY Proton rings a bell. Made by a Taiwanese person ;-)