The fact is that Europe is a lot of things. You have the British class system (not that hidden), you have French and German bureaucracy, but you also have the unique combination of egalitarianism and mercantilism in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, and the zeal of Polish progressivism, shared by a number of their former east block neighbors.

There are places in Europe where you can easily achieve a higher standard of living (on average) than the US, and there are places where you can't.

I believe the reason that Europe is behind on commercial software is just economic: Solid, standardized solutions were available coming from US companies, and they were seen as low-risk for decades, so why would any company try to compete? Network effects apply to things like office suites and e-mail clients just as much as social media. Microsoft doesn't have any serious US or Chinese competitors in this space either.

That's not to say there aren't problems: The pipeline from startup to big tech firm is extremely difficult in Europe, largely because capital is much more conservative, stemming from the fact that European capital tends to be concentrated in things like pension funds. For years, successful European tech startups have at some point or another hooked into the US Bay Area ecosystem (capital, talent pool, etc.), because the local environment was way too risk-averse.

But I think you, like many, have succumbed to anti-European propaganda, which comes in a couple of forms: pro-corporatist, pro-Putinist, orientalist/sinophile, etc.