The parent post does provide evidence: no EU tech companies have hit Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft scale. That's not a cultural difference, it shows that EU has not been as successful economically on the internet.
SAP and Accenture are up there. I get your point though.
If you look at fortune 500, 143 companies are north American and 143 are European
But in 2001 215 were north American while only 158 were from Europe
EU market is just more fragmented not less innovative
I'm not really talking about technical scale here. I'm talking about economic scale. In those terms, it does indeed seem that the EU is falling behind.
Also, it is not just a show of power, because these companies are reaping economic benefits from their power.
> But it has little positive balance on everyday life.
That's really your personal opinion. Many people (me included) would argue that the scale of these companies definitely makes a difference in your everyday life.
Many people would then be arguing sideways past the GP comment, which made no claim to the extent of the difference, rather that it was not a positive one.
As you say, though, it's definitely objectively clear from an economical standpoint.