There are a handful a tech companies from Europe that operate globally, but they're usually niche (Spotify, Minecraft, Qwant).
Sure, they are no Google or Amazon, but they are or were nothing to sneeze at either
I'm also highly doubtful that this is mainly because of anti-trust laws.
A much more likely reason to me seems that Europe is much more diversified in law and culture, a Paris company has a much harder time expanding to London or Berlin than an San Fransisco one will have for Los Angeles or New York. This naturally leads to more, smaller companies.
> A much more likely reason to me seems that Europe is much more diversified in law and culture, a Paris company has a much harder time expanding to London or Berlin than an San Fransisco one will have for Los Angeles or New York. This naturally leads to more, smaller companies.
I am not sure that's the case. The EU car companies had overtaken the US car companies, inspite of the above scenarios.
Or the large companies that are repackaged versions of much older companies, with lineage back to the 19th century. Exxon & Chevron, for example, trace back to Standard Oil (1870); AT&T and Verizon (from Bell, 1877), Dow/DuPont (1897 or 1802, take your pick), Citigroup (from Citicorp, 1812). Banking often goes further back: BofA (Massachusetts Bank, 1784), JPMorgan (Manhattan Company, 1799).
Moving cuts of the pie around is a shell game. For sure the US is less regulated than Europe, so labels change more often, but the old money doesn't.
Top? The S&P 500 is riddled with mediocrities and rent-seekers.
17.5%? Five out of five hundred is 1%.
17.5% of the market share.
Fun fact: Nokia now owns Bell Labs.
i.e. EU companies are not as competitive, presumably lack scale for lower pricing, lack scale to invest into expensive R&D
And that's bad for consumers
Google can, and has, change the web single handedly. Other companies and browser-makers have no choice but to follow due to Chrome's enormous market share and Google's massive market change in services.. I wouldn't call that good for consumers.
AMD has significantly better processors at the moment on a sliver of Intel's R&D budget. Innovation is happening at startups and small companies (which are then bought by the incumbents). I highly contest your statement that Google size is necessary for the best consumer R&D.
Why are European companies not competitive? Why not break up US large companies and expect them to be competitive with other global companies