SAP is also 51 years old. There is no shortage of big, old companies in Germany. There is a visible shortage of successful young companies.

In my comment edit, I mentioned the 20 year limit specifically, because the ossification in last decades is real. The US generates a lot more startups, even the London scene is livelier than the rest of Europe taken together.

There are roughly 1500 mid-sized companies in Germany which are among the world-leaders in their tech sector. You may never have heard it, but Elon Musk runs his factories with process automation from Germany (he bought a company) and robots from Kuka/Germany.

Germany alone has roughly half of all so-called hidden-champions world-wide. Many of them are in High-tech.

Europe lacks the large internet and software companies. Though T-Mobile is German and known in the US. SAP provides the software which runs large enterprises. But high-tech is much more, it's factory automation, it's aerospace (think Airbus), it's biotech (think Biontech), ... Soft- and hardware are a crucial factor for those.

The Mittelstand is pretty much the only reason why Germany's prosperity is still a thing. Countries like Italy and Spain, which lack this backbone of mid-sized companies, are in deep trouble and unlikely to get out of it.

But there were times when German companies actually were world leaders in the big things as well, not just reliable suppliers to foreign big players. Don't you count this as a regression?

> But there were times when German companies actually were world leaders in the big things as well

We have the world leader in civil aerospace in France/Germany, Many high-speed trains in the world are coming from France or Germany. There are many large high-tech sectors.

It's nice that Estonia is successful, but it's not where the next big chip manufacturing sites will be build. Intel and TSMC are in talks to move to the former East Germany (Saxony has roughly 70000 employees already in the chip manufacturing industry). The big Internet exchange node is in Frankfurt.

The EU has a lot to catch up in many countries, but it's not that we have no high-tech.

"The EU has a lot to catch up in many countries"

The trouble is that this has been known since at least the late 1990s, discussed quite often, plans made, and yet the gap hasn't grown appreciably smaller. It has arguably widened. 15 years ago, you could choose from a plentitude of European feature phones. Now the vast majority of our own mobile phone market is dominated by US or East Asian products.

The more important is to use the EU to create the large market which is needed.

Btw., I'm a happy user of a bunch of US tech products. It's not that I need to replace all that. I want the EU to be competitive, but I'm also using other stuff. Apple in the recent years made some excellent product technology, like their chips, which are produced in Taiwan, also with a lot of technology from Europe.

There is, unless I miss someone, only one US ohone player left, Apple. Everything else is Asian.

Google is American!

And their phones are made by whom now? Still LG?

I love trains -- but planes are usually a better solution than high-speed trains.

They will be an even better solution when we have small electric jets, especially for inter-European flights.

Do you think the first practical electric jet will come from a subsidized EU development plan -- or from a VP funded US company?

> love trains -- but planes are usually a better solution than high-speed trains.

Not for short to medium distances they're not. Everything under 3-4 hours of train is faster, more comfortable and with much less hassle than flying (going to an airport, security checks, uncomfortable seating, interruptions for take off and landing, long queueing).

> but planes are usually a better solution than high-speed trains

I was traveling this week with both, an Airbus from Lufthansa and high-speed trains from Siemens.

And which one was taxed and which one was subsidized?

Both? Good and broad infrastructure is expensive. I was using a new plane with onboard Internet, two modern airports, three modern high-speed trains, three large train stations, driving through a clean and nice landscape. My local train line in my home town is fully digitalized and prepared for autonomous trains. Plus I made a stop in a town where Carl Friedrich Gauß was born in 1777, which was inspiring.

> I love trains -- but planes are usually a better solution than high-speed trains.

Sure if you think its a good idea to blow lots of carbon in the air and a punch of emissions with led all over the continent.

Trains absolutely make sense in the waste majority cases in Europe.

And having high speed dedicated lanes also has the additional benefit of removing capacity from older lines and allowing more regional and more cargo.

Building trains, both conventional and high speed is a huge win.

P.S:

The current lead in terms of electric viable plains I would say is Heart Aerospace from Sweden.

> Many high-speed trains in the world are coming from France or Germany.

Sadly that isn't that many. And China and Japan are doing their own. The US plans to use Japan technology (Texas). So does Indonesia.

Its just a smaller industry.

The US plans. Will it ever leave the planning phase?

Siemens signed with Egypt (8 billion Euros), Turkey, ...

Deutsche Bahn is investing ten billion Euros in modernizing their fleet.

SAP legitimately seems to be to be one of the least innovative software companies out there. Are they doing anything even mildly interesting? And it's not like they've found some global optimum - they just benefit from having been around so long that trillions of dollars now depend on them. Not due to any other merit though.