While it's true Europe might not be producing the next Apple or Google, there are lots of alternatives, like national academic login systems, logging into third parties with bank credentials or government IDs... Solutions that depend less on one commercial company capturing the market, that are in place on a national level and work well. It's a different landscape. Factors like current day political turmoil make people much less trusting of "American" solutions. It remains to be seen if this goes beyond sentiment into some actual pan-European solutions that (claim to) safeguard privacy and data.