Mt baldy that’s the shit, and nowhere near Anaheim so you must really be traveling lol. Since you were in that direction, did you happen to visit the mining town on the Nevada side? Epic views imo
Honestly... I think your university rankings are a bit... shall we say inflated? Not that it isn't also the case for certain US universities (e.g. I'm not sold on Harvard being all they're talked up as either). Juggernaut companies aren't just a matter of a strong education pipeline though... I suspect it has more to do with the regulatory environment.
The US is far more tolerant of monopolies than they really should be (compare how the US and the EU treated Microsoft's browser shenanigans, the UK was in the EU at the time). They also let them get away with more legal damage for much longer... to the point where it runs away from them and they couldn't put the cat back in the bag even if they wanted to. Often by exploiting seemingly grey areas like Uber does with whether someone is a contractor or an employee. This is something that I was seeing rulings on in the UK maybe even a decade earlier and those rulings were generally coming down on the side of them being employees. And as far as I can tell from a quick search, that was upheld when it came to Uber as well:
"**Uber now treats all 70,000 of its drivers in Britain as “workers”** entitled to a minimum wage, holiday pay and pension plans. It comes weeks after the country's Supreme Court upheld a ruling that its drivers were workers, not independent contractors.Mar 18, 2021" --quoted from my Google search results, Google implies it comes from this article: [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/uber-is-reclassifying-uk-drivers-as-workers-heres-what-happens-next.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/uber-is-reclassifying-uk-drivers-as-workers-heres-what-happens-next.html)
It's probably for the best that the UK doesn't produce mega companies (at least in the interest of the average UK citizen). In the US, people still suffer heavily even from monopolies that were supposedly broken up at the time. Even after Bell System was smashed in 1984, the separated companies operated regionally, effectively leaving local monopolies. And to this day the US appears to be fairly unique in the cooperation between device manufacturers and retailers with phone companies to lock customers into long term phone contracts at purchase with strange financing options. E.g. you cannot buy an iPhone at Best Buy without signing a cell phone contract. You have to go direct to the Apple store to get one without contract in the US (or slightly shady methods, unlocked imports on Amazon, eBay phones that who knows..., etc.). This level of anti-competitive operation is mostly not legal in the UK and EU.
Likewise, when these companies go overseas, they often have US government support even when they operate in ways that aren't normally locally legal. Less egregiously (maybe?) these days, but the term Banana Republic refers to governments beholden to US firms operating in South America (Honduras, Costa Rica,...). Of course British companies were able to operate that way back in the days of the British Empire, but these days the UK has less political and economic weight to throw around in that respect. The British and Dutch East India companies started as local monopolies and again, benefited from the projection of power globally. Mega companies require political buy in to have favorable policies and procedures through regulatory capture. More robust political involvement and stronger regulatory authority and independence would be expected to put a damper on such massive enterprises.