I just heard that the European Commission admits having lost 9 million euros in a Youtube-like multingual site and 5 million in a Facebook-like site. This is the third time the EU Government burns money trying to copy American successful experiences. I remember a European search engine, Quaero, leaded by France and the European Wikipedia, Europeana, whose servers went down almost inmediately.

It’s clear that the EU is behind the US in the social web. But this has a lot to do with a lack of a really common market and huge cultural differences among the different European countries. The European Commission should invest its resources in changing these conditions and not in creating artificial products which would come out of the European companies if the right conditions were there. We need a real Europe. Services will come later.