I think the EU provides a pretty good example of what could happen. They seem much more aggressive with anti-trust and as a result they aren't very competitive on the global tech stage.

There are a handful a tech companies from Europe that operate globally, but they're usually niche (Spotify, Minecraft, Qwant).

Adyen, Booking.com, ASML, Just eat, Nokia, Shazam, Skype, Zalando, Hello Fresh, Takeaway.com, NXP, Nginx, Rasberry Pi, Waze

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.

I think the combined market cap/revenue of all the companies you mention would still be less than any of the 4 biggest tech companies of the US. Even the Chinese companies are way bigger.

> 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.

Europe has plenty of very big companies. They are just not in tech (as in consumer computing, social media).

Check the top companies in Europe, it's mostly the same companies founded 100 years ago or something. The increased regulation in Europe just helped existing big companies, not new ones. Compare this with the US where the list changes every 20 years or so. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2019/05/15/eur...

That deserves a challenge. Many significant contributors to US GDP are long-standing (>100yo) firms. Ford (founded 1903), General Motors (1908), Walgreens (1901), McKesson (1833), IBM (1911), Kroger (1883), Boeing (1917), Wells Fargo (1852), General Electric (1890), Johnson & Johnson (1886), Phillips Petroleum (1917).

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.

17.5% of the S&P 500 is Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. What percentage of the top European companies are that new?

New? Microsoft was founded 45 years ago, Apple is 44.

Top? The S&P 500 is riddled with mediocrities and rent-seekers.

17.5%? Five out of five hundred is 1%.

Microsoft and Apple are still new by European standards. The only newish European megacorp is SAP, which is older than Microsoft and Apple.

17.5% of the market share.

Not sure what that number means to you, but see above about why it’s so low; established money protects itself.

Half of the companies in your list were bought by a big American tech company. Splitting up American tech companies will allow Chinese giants to buy off the bite-sized chunks.

A counterpoint, although perhaps an exception, to the idea that diversified law and culture results in smaller companies in Europe might be Airbus.

Good luck telling Thales, Airbus, BAE, Siemens, Nokia, SAP, Bosch, Ericsson (and that's just off the top of my head) they are not true Scotsmen.

Fun fact: Nokia now owns Bell Labs.

Isn't this an example that you don't want to break up the companies?

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

Companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Google are so large and powerful that they are bad for consumers or society.

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.

But I am just responding to the parent right.

Why are European companies not competitive? Why not break up US large companies and expect them to be competitive with other global companies

Economic competition is generally a good thing. Breaking up monopolies fosters competition within a country, and competition promotes progress. Historically, companies in free societies have generally performed much better than govt granted/allowed monopolies in more centralized countries.

Sure you can get some economies of scale as a monopoly, but it comes with a lot of corruption, incompetence, and anti-competitive behavior.

I agree with everything you’re saying.

I also think that a hamstrung western company will be steamrolled by international companies with significant state backing/support.

This isn’t a simple equation, there are second and third order effects that we can’t appreciate until after the fact.

Level playing field how? What's the US going to do, regulate other companies in foreign countries? Magically convince China to de-integrate its tech companies in the same way?