#Ecosia facebook free#

These factors mentioned are some of the many reasons why it’s complicated to get Europe running as a whole. The European culture usually gets divided into Northern, Central, Southern and Eastern Europe as it’s an easy way to aggregate countries that share similar languages, values, gastronomy and social norms. It often gets overlooked, but culture is also an important matter to point out, especially when it comes to social networks. While language comes into play in various stages of starting a new business, when it comes to launching an app or service for customers, stats show that launching only in English would be the best choice to reach a big audience, but not good enough. The four most widely spoken (as a first or second language) are English (38%), French (12%), German (11%) and Spanish (7%). The European Union is made up of 27 countries and has 24 official languages. While it’s not a big issue for digital and internet-based startups and companies, it does present roadblocks in commercial transactions. It’s also important to mention that while most countries use the Euro, nine other currencies exist in the European Union countries. On the other side of the Atlantic ocean, the United States is a single English-speaking market of 320 million people within which to grow. Because business laws and languages differ from one country to another, it’s complicated to expand operations across the continent. The continent consists of 44 countries and if we narrow it down to the European Union, there are a total of 27.

#Ecosia facebook free#

How is it possible that Europe can build amazing tech solutions but hasn’t yet, been able to create an international social network or a search engine? What needs to change for the old continent to make a Google or Facebook?Įven though there is free movement across the EU and it’s quite easy to travel, work and export around the continent (non-EU and non-Schengen area), Europe is not a single market. While Europe is home to globally renowned startups like Spotify, Glovo, Revolut and Bolt, just to name a few, it hasn’t created and put out a search engine and social network quite like the giants Facebook and Google. When it comes to search engines, Ecosia is gradually gaining traction as their initiative to plant trees appeals to many, but reaching ‘Google level’ seems miles away. Still, all of these slowly started to die when Facebook took over the market. Have you ever stopped to think why there is not really an equivalent to Facebook in Europe? Of course, there are some country-based social networks like Tuenti in Spain, Lokalisten in Germany and Hyves in The Netherlands.