The average consumer respects companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle based on their products and their capitalization. It's totally understandable because this is what they put out to the public, this is what is glamorized by the media so it looks like that's all they all.

The typical software engineer respects the above companies for their architecture and infrastructure, Google has the third largest piece of the cloud storage market and has a programming language they created, Microsoft has the second largest cloud storage piece of the cloud storage market, they have several fantastic programming languages, they have whole architectures that powers most of what people interact with on a daily basis as well as other resources that make life easier for software engineers.

Amazon and Oracle also have cloud storage services, with Oracle holding on to Java and other industry standard resources. However, if you were to ask the average software engineer which company they wouldn't want to live without, it would be Microsoft. Microsoft has ensured that whether or not you use their programming language as a software engineer they'll still have you under their umbrella through their IDE, script editor, educational resources, database management systems and other products that they offer developers mostly for free.

The added products that these mega corporations offer are part of their competitive advantage, developers build products, clients use products, if developers have an attachment to these companies then the clients eventually will too.