As this divide grows, I worry that Europe may resort to protection mechanisms as a way to shield local companies and give them a chance to "grow".
The future is more protectionism and less free trade. And that's not good for anyone.
Unfortunately for Europe, making empty excuses won't help (as the past 20 years has overwhelmingly demonstrated).
Free trade does not imply putting monopolies into check, as all monopolies are not an inherent restraint on trade. Besides that, there is no free trade anyway. It doesn't exist anywhere. When you sign trade agreements what you have is not free trade, you have structured trade agreements, not a scenario where anything goes. Trade agreements are specifically a restraint on trade, by agreement. Free trade is entirely an intellectual con. It can't exist, it has never existed, it will never exist. There isn't a single major nation that actually wants free trade, either.
And further, Europe is more protectionist than the US is and that has always been the case throughout all of US economic history. It will always be the case, due to the extreme nationalism that will always exist in Europe and the nationalist forever-conflicts between nations there which also will never cease.
Google wasn't a tech giant before it had an aging, entrenched monopoly? Of course it was. Google was one of the world's largest technology businesses by 2008, a mere decade after its founding.
Apple doesn't even have a consequential monopoly anywhere on planet Earth. In the US it has half the app store market, that's it. Outside of the US its position is dramatically smaller.
Amazon doesn't have a monopoly in anything other than e-books.
Microsoft was one of the world's largest technology businesses before they acquired their desktop OS monopoly.
Intel was one of the world's largest technology businesses before it acquired a monopoly in PC microprocessors.
And Facebook - well absolutely nobody is stopping European nations from creating their own globe spanning social networks. The Europeans haven't done it and can't do it, for obvious reasons (fractured, incompatible markets).
There are no nations in Europe eager to hamper their own giants, either. Germany isn't eager to cripple their auto giants (now or in the past). France isn't eager to cripple LVMH. Italy isn't eager to cripple Luxottica's monopoly. Spain isn't eager to crush Inditex. The Europeans wouldn't be rushing to destroy Airbus if they were to acquire a monopoly aerospace position. And so on.
Europe and USA are not playing on a level field. The USA has a truly unified market (commerce / law / language) which lets its companies grow faster to monopoly, and from there sheer size and network effect prevent any competition from emerging. It is hard to blame European entrepreneurs from failing to compete with Google / Facebook when Americans can't seem to create any competitive alternative either. The nature of the game is whoever gets to monopoly first wins, and at that game a fragmented Europe is at a fatal disadvantage.
The only counter is to prevent American monopolies from operating in your market to let local companies survive their slower growth. China has applied that strategy successfully, I hope Europe starts doing the same.
Wrong, Apple has a bigger market share in Japan than in the US.
The list is skewed by propped up high growth stocks with much more built in risk than we might imagine to their long term growth.
I don't see how Facebook necessarily has fat margins and growth for the next 20 years - they could conceivably go into decline.
All the measures are crude but Revenues might be the best, because frankly 'profits/earnings' are more of an investor thing, that doesn't take into consideration all the other members of the value chain.
Maybe 'Gross Margins' might be even better though difficult to determine, because Wallmart and Amazon (retail) operate on thinner margins, 'most of their sales' go down the value chain.
By 'Revenue' Germany is actually batting above it's weight, Europe could probably do to have some kind of continental winners in certain areas but that's a really hard thing to do. Even with EU integration ... nobody wants to give up their national champions.
The biggest negotiation ever that could happen in Europe would be for Germany/France/UK to maybe to agree on different sectors and allow/promote acquisitions along those lines. That will never happen of course. That could happen but more by large funds driving it to happen.
94B and 58B respectively, both comparatively new companies. It’s just less easy to scale up here than it is in the US with a huge economy and one language.
Prosus is also there on the first page
The Federal reserve
The World-Bank
The IMF and in general all the Bretton-Woods establishment designed and operated to ensure US economic supremacy. It is just not "those silly old-fashioned Europeans" playing the protectionism game.