Comment by musicale

> It’s not because these companies are so fantastic or that their products are so amazing that countries would face local uprisings if they tried to keep them in check

Local uprising seems like a bit of hyperbole (countries have successfully banned Apple, Google, etc.) but Apple (for example) has produced many category-defining products. Google Search and Gmail were also category-defining. NVIDIA developed CUDA and (perhaps more importantly) an entire GPU software ecosystem around it. Etc.