I think the two biggest contributions would be RepRap giving the world open access to FDM printing, which was the catalyst for modern 3D printing, and microcontrollers like the RasberryPi and Arduino (again open).
But it's true that Europe doesn't produce massive advertisement or tech companies, largely because our consumer laws would frankly make it impossible to grow by monetizing privacy data if you also had to respect European law. The real question, is why we allow foreign companies to do so, but I'm not sure anyone really wants to discuss that in earnest.
Spotify who set up shop in the US at the first indication of viability? Not very promising for the EU when the majority of their employees are in the US.
and yet, better infrastructure and common rules give better systems overall, in europe we used gsm way before the americans, and so chip credit cards, bank transfers are free (no need for paypal or anything), etc etc (just to pick some example). why this? regulation.