There is most definitely innovation in Europe. It just gets bought by the US, who is quick to forget where the technology came from.
As for unicorns and trillion dollars companies... some may say it's a feature, not a bug. It's great to claim to have free speech and competition, but when a few people own a few big monopolies and control the media, is it real? Regulations are not bad.
Cope much?
As a European I'd rather not have half of our industries critically depend on AWS and Microsoft, especially now that the US has fully embraced governance by RNG. The choice isn't having or not having your own digital infrastructure, it's either having your own or having to depend on someone else.
People need a trillion-dollar company for even simpler tasks like exchanging messages with their friends and families.
Why? Because the UX and reliability of that option is superior to anything else. Which of course means Billions of users flock to that service. Which brings insane revenue and economies of scale. Which can be invested into improving the UX and reliability further than the competitors. Now the company has a big moat around its business and a Trillion dollar valuation.
Just because you consider ONE product from a large company good, doesn't make every single big tech product the same. Meta is from a completely different sector from the one I was talking about, and its other two money-making main products are riddled with tracking and dark-patterns.
My point stands: nobody needs a trillion-dollar company to host a website.