In case you didn't know, we send out a carefully curated weekly newsletter every Friday afternoon, and it's always chock-full of links to interesting news, data, or just plain good reads on just about everything that happened in the European tech scene.
This week is no different, but I thought I'd try something in addition from now on. Continuously monitoring dozens of sources from all over Europe, across multiple languages, is challenging enough, but sometimes it's also difficult to determine what the truly major events where.
Allow me to present you with an overview of what I think are the five main take-aways of this week in European tech:
1) Web Summit in Dublin is growing by leaps and bounds
If you weren't one of the 22,000 people who attended the Web Summit in Dublin this week, here's some numbers to give you an idea of its current size:
- 22,000 attendees from 109 countries - 614 speakers - 2,160 start-ups exhibiting - 700 investors - 1,324 journalists (myself included) - 432,000 tastings of Irish beef, lamb, pork, duck, chicken, fish, seafood, fruit and vegetables - 10,000 tubs of Ice Cream and sorbets handed out
It was absolutely massive. For better or worse ...
2) German media giant Axel Springer bows to Google
Germany's biggest news publisher Axel Springer has withdrawn its demands that Google pay for access to some of its content after restricted access caused its traffic to plunge.
Axel Springer's head honcho, Mathias Doepfner, said on Wednesday that the company would have "shot ourselves out of the market" if it had continued with its demands for the US-based search and advertising giant to cough up content licensing fees.
3) Spotify overtakes iTunes in Europe, report says
Kobalt, a company that helps collect music royalties on behalf of thousands of artists, says that in the last quarter in Europe, revenues from Spotify streams were 13 percent higher on average than revenues from Apple’s iTunes for its customers.
4) Europe back on the map for US investors
Dörte Höppner, chief exec of the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EVCA), says US-based institutional investors are warming up to Europe again.
It is a statement backed by facts, as German venture capital firm Earlybird showed in a new report that US VC investment in Europe is increasing steadily.
5) Google comes to Brussels to discuss - again - the 'right to be forgotten'
Google reps landed in Brussels on Tuesday, the last stop on a seven-city tour of Europe to discuss the so-called 'right to be forgotten', which was established by a landmark May ruling by the European Court of Justice.
A senior EU official subsequently criticised the series of public meetings held by Google, saying the meetings were part of lobbying efforts against EU data protection rules.
Bonus link: PCH founder Liam Casey shares his views on the hardware revolution
Enjoy the read(s) and your weekend!
Featured image credit: Gunnar Pippel / Shutterstock
