I feel like this sentiment comes at least partially from American companies(especially Microsoft) habit of buying successful European tech companies, making people believe they're American and not European.

There is plenty of European tech success stories, but plenty of them will be mistaken for American ones after Microsoft bought them(and more often than not ruined the product, see Skype for example)

That might be your feeling, but it isn't reality. It comes instead from EU companies not even being in the same galaxy as US ones when it comes to revenue, size, and market impact. There is literally no comparison. It's not like the major leagues compared to the minors, it's like the major leagues compared to tee-ball.

https://www.voronoiapp.com/markets/Comparing-the-Largest-Com...

I think we're comparing different things. While you appear to be talking about financial size, I meant in terms of technical capability.

Financially, yes. American companies are obviously larger. How else would they be acquiring all the European companies?

In terms of technical capability, European powerhouses like ASML doesn't even have competitors from America as far as I can tell.

It's entirely possible to argue they don't have competitors at all. For certain categories of products (EUV), they literally don't!

Deepmind is another good example, as is ARM.