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Comment by tybris | Hacker News Reader

I thought it was Lond.. no Helsi.. I mean Amst... Oh, never mind.

There's only one thing remotely comparable to Silicon Valley in Europe and that's Ireland. It's where the laws are right for tech. companies and Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and possibly even Twitter got together and are attracting a ton of engineers, which are creating a ton of start-ups, networking events, and even quite a bit of VC.

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AFAIK, Google does not do "smart" stuff in Ireland, they have a datacenter there but the software tricks are done in Zürich. According to their job offers anyway. I also visited an HP factory in Ireland, it makes printer cartridges but does not innovate much. Also worked for them in a phone call center. Again, not really startupy. It seems clear to me that thay all came in Ireland to evade taxes.

Moreover, the atmosphere is not exactly right for startups. The weather sucks. The food is dismal. And when I was there it was expensive as hell, and the bubble hasn't finished exploding yet.

Compared to Silicon Valley (or even the US east coast) Germany as is low-cost country. Developers earn only half the US salary - and can live well with it ("free" (well, tax paid) healthcare, schools, universities,...)

And since a few years, finally a decent immigration policy!

Healthcare isn't actually paid through taxes. We have mandatory insurance and you have to pay a certain percentage of your income so it's pretty cheap if you don't earn that much. Once you earn more you can switch to fixed monthly amounts and if you can't afford it at all the government pays.

Probably better/cheaper than in the US (for most people) but far from perfect.

I think the main trigger for big corporations to set up their European subsidies in Ireland were the significant tax breaks offered.

Now that Ireland is getting bailed out with EU money, it'll be interesting to see if they can maintain the low tax rates.

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