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Europe, especially Germany, has this general consensus that EU needs it's inhouse large cloud providers. So think about state subsidies, preferring european par

by fsloth 6y ago

Europe, especially Germany, has this general consensus that EU needs it's inhouse large cloud providers. So think about state subsidies, preferring european partners and stuff like that. With enough capital and will they will get to somewhere. You can be sure the political establishment likely has their back.

luckylion 6y ago
And Lidl/Schwarz especially has a strict No-Amazon-Policy. They see Amazon as a competitor, so if you want to work with them on a corporate level, you must not use AWS to process or store anything relating to their business. They do make exceptions, but you better be prepared to make a hell of a case for your product for them to reach up to upper management and ask for an exception to buy your services. And it makes sense, of course. If you rely on US-companies, you're dependent on the US. Any political or economical conflict will result in Washington pressuring US-companies and you'll be in a bad place. Given that most European governments (and Germany's especially) are very unhappy with the current US administration, it's obvious that they'd want to reduce dependencies.
- oneplane 6y ago
  I still think it's weird that companies think this helps anything. AWS isn't the same as the Amazon shop. Yes it shares the name and if you go enough levels above management you end up with Bezos but other than that their computers != their shop. Sometimes people then point to the fact that it's still a US company but ironically people try to make that point on their US-created computers using websites on a US-owned gTLD with US-owned software. Generic cloud resources seem like the smallest issue to me in that chain.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Amazon said (to Congress, no less) that it does not let it's own team responsible to deciding on which products to buy & sell access confidential sales reports of third party sellers that use their platform. And then it was revealed that they regularly do get access to these information. There's no reasonable expectation that Amazon will not use any data it can easily access to make decisions. I don't find that your argument regarding "using US created computers" and "US-owned gTLD" holds water. It's very hard to build e.g. CPUs that will contain very advanced backdoors that are totally hidden but can easily be targeted remotely to gather information, and the same goes for secretly using a domain. Additionally, the cost of doing so is astronomically high: the total loss of trust in US chip makers and internet companies. They may very well do that during major wars, but not to steal some company secrets. On the other hand, it's easy for Amazon to siphon off data from AWS and even just using meta data (e.g. looking at how and when a customer scales to what size) gives you valuable insight into their business. And if they get caught? A few politicians will be annoyed, a few media articles (but hey, they may overshadow reports on unionization, so it's not all bad) and potentially a few companies leaving their platform, while others will undoubtedly say "I have nothing to hide from Amazon, so what?" In other words the threat model is dramatically different.
    - why_only_15 6y ago
      >It's very hard to build e.g. CPUs that will contain very advanced backdoors that are totally hidden but can easily be targeted remotely to gather information Wasn't IME a thing for years but people still don't have a great understanding of how it works?
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Yes, but it's not hidden, people are aware that it's a threat. And these things do get checked at least, people fuzzing opcodes to expose hidden functionality. It's still generally a terrible idea, but it's not yet "backdoor in a box" like the (so far unfounded as I undestand) allegations against Huawei. Still, if I'm Cisco, I don't run my Wifi off of Huawei access points.
        oneplane 6y ago
        If you're Cisco you might not run a 1:1 competitor's products, but they do use Huawei hardware, i.e. LTE equipment. Same goes for things like mobile phone manufacturers, they are competing with Samsung, but they will still buy Samsung LCDs for their own phones. Samsung is a SoC manufacturer, but they will happily buy a SoC from Qualcomm. Same with DRAM, they make that too, but having Micron DRAM doesn't scare them either. And the circle back to Cisco: they happily use Broadcom switch chips in their Cisco switches.
    - oneplane 6y ago
      Sounds like a lot of conspiracy that isn't going be limited to Amazon so it still doesn't make sense to single out their computing company. If you encrypt your data on your public cloud (like you should), then no, the AWS retail company cannot 'get' your data from the AWS Web Services company.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Sure, Google or Microsoft might look at your stuff aswell - but why would they? Neither of them are in retail so they aren't competitors. If you're developing a new search engine that rivals Google, yeah, I wouldn't host that on Google's infrastructure. Have a serious contender for Microsoft's money cows? Maybe not put your code and issue tracking on GitHub.

by fsloth 6y ago

luckylion 6y ago

And Lidl/Schwarz especially has a strict No-Amazon-Policy. They see Amazon as a competitor, so if you want to work with them on a corporate level, you must not use AWS to process or store anything relating to their business. They do make exceptions, but you better be prepared to make a hell of a case for your product for them to reach up to upper management and ask for an exception to buy your services. And it makes sense, of course. If you rely on US-companies, you're dependent on the US. Any political or economical conflict will result in Washington pressuring US-companies and you'll be in a bad place. Given that most European governments (and Germany's especially) are very unhappy with the current US administration, it's obvious that they'd want to reduce dependencies.

oneplane 6y ago
I still think it's weird that companies think this helps anything. AWS isn't the same as the Amazon shop. Yes it shares the name and if you go enough levels above management you end up with Bezos but other than that their computers != their shop. Sometimes people then point to the fact that it's still a US company but ironically people try to make that point on their US-created computers using websites on a US-owned gTLD with US-owned software. Generic cloud resources seem like the smallest issue to me in that chain.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Amazon said (to Congress, no less) that it does not let it's own team responsible to deciding on which products to buy & sell access confidential sales reports of third party sellers that use their platform. And then it was revealed that they regularly do get access to these information. There's no reasonable expectation that Amazon will not use any data it can easily access to make decisions. I don't find that your argument regarding "using US created computers" and "US-owned gTLD" holds water. It's very hard to build e.g. CPUs that will contain very advanced backdoors that are totally hidden but can easily be targeted remotely to gather information, and the same goes for secretly using a domain. Additionally, the cost of doing so is astronomically high: the total loss of trust in US chip makers and internet companies. They may very well do that during major wars, but not to steal some company secrets. On the other hand, it's easy for Amazon to siphon off data from AWS and even just using meta data (e.g. looking at how and when a customer scales to what size) gives you valuable insight into their business. And if they get caught? A few politicians will be annoyed, a few media articles (but hey, they may overshadow reports on unionization, so it's not all bad) and potentially a few companies leaving their platform, while others will undoubtedly say "I have nothing to hide from Amazon, so what?" In other words the threat model is dramatically different.
  - why_only_15 6y ago
    >It's very hard to build e.g. CPUs that will contain very advanced backdoors that are totally hidden but can easily be targeted remotely to gather information Wasn't IME a thing for years but people still don't have a great understanding of how it works?
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Yes, but it's not hidden, people are aware that it's a threat. And these things do get checked at least, people fuzzing opcodes to expose hidden functionality. It's still generally a terrible idea, but it's not yet "backdoor in a box" like the (so far unfounded as I undestand) allegations against Huawei. Still, if I'm Cisco, I don't run my Wifi off of Huawei access points.
      - oneplane 6y ago
        If you're Cisco you might not run a 1:1 competitor's products, but they do use Huawei hardware, i.e. LTE equipment. Same goes for things like mobile phone manufacturers, they are competing with Samsung, but they will still buy Samsung LCDs for their own phones. Samsung is a SoC manufacturer, but they will happily buy a SoC from Qualcomm. Same with DRAM, they make that too, but having Micron DRAM doesn't scare them either. And the circle back to Cisco: they happily use Broadcom switch chips in their Cisco switches.
  - oneplane 6y ago
    Sounds like a lot of conspiracy that isn't going be limited to Amazon so it still doesn't make sense to single out their computing company. If you encrypt your data on your public cloud (like you should), then no, the AWS retail company cannot 'get' your data from the AWS Web Services company.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Sure, Google or Microsoft might look at your stuff aswell - but why would they? Neither of them are in retail so they aren't competitors. If you're developing a new search engine that rivals Google, yeah, I wouldn't host that on Google's infrastructure. Have a serious contender for Microsoft's money cows? Maybe not put your code and issue tracking on GitHub.