Europe is less capitalistic, is less versed into risk, and is clearly not entrusting so much money to an IT company like google.<p>It&#x27;s hard explaining to people what exactly google does for so much money. Europe is more &quot;feet on the ground&quot; when it comes to business in general. What does google sells by the way ? Ads, android (which is mostly open), internet services... it&#x27;s hard to really tell. In europe, technologies and research will often rather belong to the public sector than the private sector.<p>The silicon valley is a typically american thing because US business laws and the culture allow it. In europe it just won&#x27;t. The only way you can really thrive as a programmer in europe, is by doing open source, and Torvalds is a good example of that, so by a loose definition it&#x27;s only accessible to people who spent a lot of time in universities. There are no other way you are going to do business and getting money typing code in europe. It just won&#x27;t happen.