Why, oh why?

The man in charge of new media at the Guardian makes sensible point (that has been being made for about 61 years now):

And I also know that thanks to the net; and thanks to the fact that a small team of really smart coders can build something that flies round the world - there is no physical/ geographical/ economic reason why del.icio.us/ Flickr/ Furl/ Foldershare or any one of a dozen other smart tools couldn’t have come from this side of the Atlantic.

But they don't, do they?
Why is this?