These are all huge companies in my view.

In addition to them there are also countless small to medium sized companies that nobody's ever heard of, that don't experience hypergrowth but have slow and steady growth - especially in the B2B sector. I've worked at some such companies.

I agree actually, my use of "medium-sized" was not best, in my personal view a medium-sized company is in the 200-500 employee range. These are definitively larger than that, however I assumed the person I replied to took "medium sized" to mean "significantly smaller than Apple/Google/Amazon/… …but not unknown". Because if I were to pull up a list of thirty unknown actually medium-sized companies pretty much nobody would recognise the names.

These companies may be smaller than FAANG, but I also feel that if BASF disappeared overnight it would have a larger impact on the world than if Facebook disappeared.

HN is sometimes incredibly biased towards consumer tech.

Define "impact on the world". Facebook has massive impact (arguably net-negative). I haven't heard of BASF since 5.25 floppies, though I'm sure they produce some very important things. Did you mean positive impact? Physical impact?

Hmmm, let's see - a lot of the chemicals for polyurethane foams. Ammonia, acetylene, formic acid, butanediol.

Engineering plastics used in automotive and electronics applications. Styrenes for same.

Automotive OEM and refinish coatings - one of the bigger suppliers. Industrial coatings and paints.

Some of the bigger fungicides, herbicides, insecticides.

Catalytic converter components, battery components, cathodes, etc.

Are you working in a business that buys chemical products for manufacturing? If not, why would you interact with BASF?

This is exactly what the GP was saying: you're looking at B2C companies as if they matter more, when in reality the vast majority of commerce (but not profits) is B2B.

> I haven't heard of BASF since 5.25 floppies

Oh, you know, it's only largest chemical producer in the world. Oh, I'm sure they produce some very important things, but it can't hold a candle to Facebook.

Siemens has 330,000 employees. I'd always consider that huge.

Only twice the size of mega-corps like Apple.

All of this seems reasonable, and I see the value in keeping things competitive.

I do have one concern though.

Established markets are more entrenched, and hearing that smaller companies may have "slow and steady growth" here seems excellent.

Yet emerging markets move incredibly fast, and the goal is to discover those trenches and occupy them. Being held back in such a market can be troublesome.

So this is what I'd worry about.

> Yet emerging markets move incredibly fast, and the goal is to discover those trenches and occupy them.

Well, only if you make it a goal to occupy all the trenches. The EU has realized that it does not want all possible trenches occupied. For example: There is a lot of market share to be had in waste disposal by dumping it in the rivers and oceans. Regulation generally prohibits this, because we don't want our rivers and oceans full of waste.

Capitalist market self-regulation wouldn't have done this without external pressure (regulation, litigation, etc.) because the capitalist market would externalize all costs if it would increase profits.

Bad example. Dumping waste cheaply illegally is a trench that is continuously filled with really bad stuff. Regulations needs more Oumph, it is just too cheap to do in an dishonest way.

Where are the software companies that compete with apple though? Wasn't that the question?

No it wasn't. The question was that if regulation creates more competition with Apple what are the markets with this competition?

European companies compete with US companies, including Apple, in areas where there is competition. In music software, music streaming, engineering and finance software, services and so on.

Apple has around 33% smartphone market share in Europe. Where is the US competition? Google at 3%. The actual competition is non-US in Samsung and Xiaomi. You can argue that Google competes with the Play Store, but then there is no competition with the Play Store on Android from the US.

Big US tech companies don't compete with each other as much as one might think. Most of their revenue comes from dominating one area or platform, with little competition from the rest.

So therefor the common conclusion that Europe should be more like the US to have competition also doesn't make sense as the big US tech companies don't have serious direct competition in the US in their core businesses.

You can't compete with the big tech companies by creating a Google with 3% market share in smartphones to compete with Apple, a Walmart with 6% online retail market share to compete with Amazon, or a Microsoft with 4% search engine market share to compete with Google.

Apple has <60% market share in the US. It's pretty dominant, but there are definitely still real competitors.

If we're categorizing companies by headquarter location, where are these competitors located?

I'm sure you could look that up for yourself pretty easily if you were actually curious and not trying to make some unknown point by asking the question.

That's why the DMA exists.

Significant about your list is that most of them are businesses who sell to other businesses, not to consumers. That's what is propping up the European economy, since European companies don't seem to be able to make an export that foreign customers are interested in. With some exceptions of course, mostly food and luxury goods. Nokia could have been a forerunner for lots of other European companies taking on the world, but sadly it fizzled out.

Small nitpick but FYI Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia merged. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise still exists but is just the bit nobody wanted.

> Competing in category [...]

Also, this is not true. These are categories huge enough to be meaningless. They are stock market classifications (at best) which do not reflect market competition.

All the companies that I've heard of that you listed were all founded before the EU.