> The same thing that stops anyone from starting a new Google or Microsoft or Apple in the US, probably. And that's apparently not regulations.
The reason why there is no other Google in the US currently is because for the average person Google works fine so if you go to a VC fund and ask for USD 100M to build the next Google, you are going to have to sell them on your vision and explain how you are going to do things better and maybe just maybe someone will be crazy enough to invest.
As of this moment that has not happened but it certainly could.
However for Europe it is not the same calculations. Everyone keeps repeating that Europe is too dependent on US tech but what do we do about it? Not much.
It should be a top priority to start a competing search engine that is better than Google in Europe and it should be so good that people start using it without being forced to do so by bureaucrats in Brussels.
Instead, the risk aversion is such that no VC in Europe will ever consider that for one, it is doable and that two, it warrants such a massive investment (which it does). So the conclusion remains the same. There will be no European Google and there will be no European Apple.
> Who says that? I don't. What I say is that the big bad monopolies stop others from competing properly.
I am only repeating your words. You say big bad monopolies stop other from competing properly. I am not seeing the evidence for your claim. Anyone can start a competing OS in Europe. Is Microsoft somehow stopping everyone from doing so?
If not, why is there no European Windows or European MacOS? Is it because of these monopolies?
You put the blame of the big bad monopolies and I say that the reason these monopolies exist in the first place is because we haven't even tried to compete and therefore de facto we are giving the entire market to the US tech.
> whenever the EU tries to apply antitrust laws, they get bullied by the US.
The laws are not going to fix this issue when you have no other competing products to replace the US tech products. Is there a better search product out there than Google (despite all its flaws) for the average person? A better Windows?
Secondly, the fact that the US can "bully" Europe is simply a second order effect of the problem we are facing now. Since there are no good competitors in the critical tech sectors of Europe then the US knows there is nothing the EU can do.
That is why the "bullying" as you put it work here and it doesn't work in China which has developed it's own ecosystem of apps and tech companies and it doesn't have to bow to the US on that front.
> Again, a handful of companies completely dominate the software industry in the US, too. Is that because of ridiculously low salaries and unreasonably high tax burden in the US? I don't get the reasoning.
The average salary of tech worker in the US is higher than in Europe. Denying this fact is simply putting more blinders on.
If you want to make good products you need talent. If you want innovation you need talent and you need to have people who are motivated to start something new and usually for most people motivation takes the form of money.
Then to get talent you need to pay them properly and/or they need to understand that they will reap the rewards of their labor somehow.
That is why you see so many founders going to the US to found their company there instead of Europe. That is why some of the founders who start in Europe end up moving to the US when they get big enough because they know that there they can get the best talent and they stand to make some potentially life changing money if their company does well.
Then these founders exit their companies and what do they do next? They invest in other companies, the create their own VC fund, they foster the next unicorns and then these unicorns come knocking on Europe's doors with their product and once gain Europe has no response or a very weak response because there are no competitors or very small ones that are merely a blip on the US's radar. Then the cycle repeats again and again.
At the end of the day, if you take into account the potential risks, the legal hurdles, the lack access to capital, the potential monetary gains and the access to talent, then the conclusion is simple: The US wins every time.
Does that mean that everyone who creates a company in Europe eventually leaves or that no company get started at all? Certainly not. But since the incentives are not there, they are just less companies getting started, less unicorns being built, less access to capital, less access to talent and if you compound that year after year you end up in the situation we are in now.
And if you think that this is somehow misrepresenting the current state of Europe, it is not. Mario Draghi himself has tried to explain these things to the EU governments and made many recommendations in order to try to close the gap. 1 year later and basically nothing or almost nothing in his report has been implemented.
The EU likes to cry foul every-time a US tech giant comes in and steamrolls the competition in Europe and it thinks that just one more law, one more regulation will fix the problem.
If the EU/Europe was instead fixing the real problem which is the lack of good competitors in Europe, then we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place because the monopolies you mention would not exists here.