Given that the productivity per capita in France or Germany is maybe 10% lower than in the US, and that those are highly developed countries with centuries of industrial knowledge, you might want to adjust your definition of "tech company" a bit, because if those countries had no technology firms, they'd be quite a lot poorer.

The US has incredibly strong advantages in fields like the semi-conductor industry, but in transportation, pharmaceuticals and aerospace Europe is quite strong. And when you look at hidden champions and the integration of technology into small and medium sized firms, the US heartland has a big problem.

Some may argue that to remain competitive in today's environment, some tech companies require a diminished amount of customer privacy, otherwise their foreign rivals will be able to do more and be more successful in the long run.

For the EU, if there is a belief that their tech companies can't out-compete against foreign rivals (Think search engine, social media, cyber sec, etc) and that their data could be used against them in the near future, it may seem intuitive to put privacy checkers to get foreign entities in line with your interests.

Or when you value privacy.

We do have tech companies but we don't let them grow beyond reason and extend their tentacular grip on almost all areas of society. Are you implying it's a bad thing?

Regardless of regulations that still doesn't counter the prevalence of American companies in Europe.

Are you implying there are zero tech companies in Europe?

Not zero, but compared to US the state is kinda sad. Quite a few EU startups move to US sooner or later too. Meanwhile vice versa ain't happening. It's one way road for both engineers and companies.

You mean tech as in internet based, I assume. Technology (in the actual sense of the word) based companies make Germany an economical powerhouse.

The large european companies with a big "stake" in the internet are non-technology based companies like publishers. These publishers hate the internet and they hate Google and Facebook because they see them as competition.

The result is shenanigans like Article 13. Also, the GDPR, with its anti Google and Facebook overtones, has received nearly nothing but applause from these stakeholders. So friction was light when it was pushed through by people who actually cared for the privacy aspects of it.