You can have an okay economy without tech heavy hitters, but the point is that being dependent on US internet tech or Russian natural gas or whatever can be a significant vulnerability.
That’s why the respective actors are taking actions to fix it.
Another argument is that not having heavy hitters but more evenly spread diverse businesses is a better thing.
US’s economy is tied to extremely large consumerism. An argument is that as humanity we should reduce consumption anyway.
That’s why I would stick with quality of life indicators instead of top list and charts of the economic indicators.
Even Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle. Service contracts have to be fulfilled, and making a living off of social media like Instagram, YouTube and Twitch isn't just an American phenomenon, actually come to think of it, most of the YouTubers I follow aren't even American. They're mostly in Europe or Australia.
And don't assume they'll just be fine without Facebook either, as far as digital advertising goes, Facebook and Google are pretty much the only game in town. Some small businesses do depend on being able to get business through advertising referrals.
Europe is a rich continent, it's not like they would be destitute if the rich wonders of American tech companies just evaporated from their part of the world tomorrow, but you're not replacing most of them overnight either, so Europe instead is trying this thing where they can at least try to control them.
I mean, I don't see it working out in the long run but in the short term they've shown some muscle, because after all: Europe is a rich continent. Australia, Canada and New Zealand are market-wise, about the size of three US States put together, which is nice, but Europe is pretty much the only large and rich viable market for most tech companies outside of the United States and Japan without putting yourself in a position of having to kiss Chairman Winnie the Pooh on the ring.
Ok, if that is the case then why would those content creators want a country locked market place to publish their content on? If I were in the shoes of a European content creator I would publish on the platform with the most reach. I don't have to care about which nation the platform is hosted from.
How do you manage a utility that tends towards monopoly, but that is also recognized as an entitlement? The answer is to create a state-run monopoly. What does the Ma Bell for advertising even look like?
Could the Europeans have attracted those monopolies to their shores? What did they do wrong?
If Facebook/Google went away from Europe tomorrow, Europe would adapt around their absence just as they adapted to their presence, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt and hurt actual people. You don’t need state monopolies, you just need to let hungry entrepreneurs continue to look for opportunities just as Facebook and Google did at one point in their existence and exploit those opportunities.
Do they riot? Do they just download an alternative? Does the disruption in business communications cause such a negative impact that it reflects in GDP?
You can also predict that wathever emerges will be based on direct or indirect add revenue, and require massive sustained investment for years, thus making it again most likely to be US petrodollar backed, or, if not, petrodollar bought or else just brought to heel or extinguished.