Tech innovation, once it has resulted in sufficient financial advantage becomes a 'winner takes all' game, where the people that won the previous round have a better than average chance of winning all subsequent rounds as well until there is some outside imposed limit. They are either able to throw more resources at the same problem or they can afford to buy out the successes elsewhere and claim them as their own.

The same argument could be made about the European film scene (check out how many Hollywood blockbusters are remakes of great European movies), the European music scene and the European literature scene to greater or lesser degree.

But you know what? It's fine. There is plenty of quality software in Europe, and as long as those companies don't get bought out by the handful of runaway American successes they can grow and do just fine. They tend to be better at customer service, they tend to be better at addressing multi-lingual markets at an earlier stage in their development than their American counterparts and they are active in important fields.

The thing that America excels at is advertising and simply making money. But there is more than that in this world.