12 ms·
These people keep acting like they're so clever for figuring this out, yet in reality all they're doing is giving death sentences to European companies by makin
by dhdgrygev 4y ago
These people keep acting like they're so clever for figuring this out, yet in reality all they're doing is giving death sentences to European companies by making them unable to use industry standard products.
- baxtr 4y agoPeople think this will hurt MS, but in reality it will also make doing business in Europe more expensive. Almost all big companies use M365. It will keep these already slow organizations busy trying to find and implement alternatives. Instead they could focus on growing their businesses. Good luck Europe.
- xwolfi 4y agoWell Im european and I can tell you from the inside, it's not the same mindset at all. We dont want to grow companies, in fact we barely give a fuck at all. It s hard to understand for capitalists, and I disliked this mindset so much I moved to Hong Kong, but that s what the people vote for: they d rather have no growth and no Microsoft 365 than put their data there. People in most of Europe are truly convinced finance, money and growth are mirages made to enslave them in eternal pursuit of an unreachable state, and instead prefer to cool it down. It's not a pragmatic strategy because it ignores we re not alone.
- baxtr 4y agoI’m also European. Thanks for the insight. I don’t agree with you. So think about that next time you say “most Europeans”.
- admissionsguy 4y agoI am an European, too, and I do agree with xwolfi. Therefore "most European" is an accurate statement.
- baxtr 4y agoYeah. It’s called the European way of doing stats.
- tomrod 4y agoWhat's funny is that many Europeans I have spoken with from across the continent have the attitude that you come to the US when you are young to make money then retire to Europe to take advantage of the social safety net. Perhaps not yoir personal opinion, but definitely one that is anecdotally common among white collar workers.
- calculated 4y ago@tomrod is completely right. Here in Bulgaria people have this exact mindset. Some also might just never return.
- tomrod 4y agoIndeed. I've heard it from Serbians, Bulgarians, Irish, Scottish, Swedish, German, Italian, Romanian, and Belgian folks that I can recall offhand, maybe more that I'm not completely recalling.
- calculated 4y agoI'm actually surprised of this since I've always though of Sweeden, Germany, Italy, Belgium as very good countries. I can only speak for bulgarians as I know how the mass thinks here.
- mantas 4y agoMaybe they’re good precisely because of this mindset?
- api 4y agoThat’s very unsustainable for Europe and great for the US since the latter gets the most productive years.
- tomrod 4y agoRight? European policy makers should look to determine what incentives they encourage that generates this fairly common attitude.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- croes 4y agoJust because you disagree doesn't contradict "most Europeans". Or how many are you?
- baxtr 4y agoThat was exactly my point.
- xwolfi 4y agoIt's a vast place, maybe you're german. They're pragmatic and care about work, efficiency, building stuff, growing companies. I'm French, the motherland is a constant source of sad despair for me.
- admissionsguy 4y ago> It's not a pragmatic strategy because it ignores we re not alone. It's worse than that, it's delusional and hypocritical. Here in Sweden people will proudly write "We are not like the Americans" on their iPhones, drive Teslas and generally base their whole lifestyles on the foundation created by the American capitalism and possible thanks to the protection of US military.
- thrwawy74 4y agoI don't disagree that finding alternatives will be expensive, but I think this is the same harmful thinking we have in the US where people disagree with regulation that adds necessary protection at the cost of business. So we have a "regulation is bad" mindset. Most prominently I wish we could convince companies here to believe handling/retaining unnecessary data is like handling something radioactive. Until we convince these companies it's a danger to themself, we won't see change. Sure, in the near future US companies will have an advantage continuing to use Microsoft 365, but harm to our privacy and beyond that is demonstrable. I haven't used a computer like its my own private space to think in decades because of what I know is collected with telemetry. My creativity and passion for computing is harmed by what Microsoft engineers its products to do, and glean from my daily use. If Microsoft wants access to a large customer base in Europe, they should make changes to their products that respect consumer privacy laws in that area. I hope we benefit tangentially. Something-something auto makers conform to California emission laws, same argument.
- baxtr 4y agoI am not even sure where to start. What are we afraid of? What can happen with the data? In Sweden all tax filings are public. No one cares.
- pixl97 4y agoSo let me ask, are you OK sharing all your work documents with China or Russia? The US commonly uses corporate data in geopolitical moves. Buy using Microsoft cloud products you're sharing all your data with us.gov
- kklisura 4y agoHave you been paying attention to all the TikTok scare in the US? Lot of people care.
- pibechorro 4y ago
- viraptor 4y ago> Almost all big companies use M365. I think that's a bit more nuanced. There's definitely a lot of "nobody gets fired for MS", and lots of big companies use O365 because of existing licenses. At the same time, there's lots of small companies using Google suite. There are companies relying on specialised software. There's lots of those that don't use anything beyond a simple text editor where switching is trivial. And yeah, huge companies rely on O365, but those will get fixes that get them to compliance very soon.
- api 4y agoGoogle suite is the absolute worst thing you can use for privacy. Every keystroke that comes near Google is data mined.
- croes 4y agoWe'll wait and see when the next MS security appears. How many data was copied because of the MS chain of Windows->Exchange->Office?
- andreysolsty 4y agoNot being able to use Office is a death sentence?
- y42 4y agoIf your business processes are based on that: yes. You may argue "adapt your processes" but that's not something that you do within a week. Besides that it's also about exchanging information. Excel is a quasi-standard in some cases. Again you may argue "change that, its ridiculous". Still it's not something that you "just do".
- rbanffy 4y agoIt's not great for Microsoft... I have to admit though that O365 is handy for collaboration. I hope we can do something like a LibreOffice-based similar thing that companies can star using as a platform for online collaboration. Where I work we already have lots of regulations on what we can and what we can't store on SharePoint or work on O365. My job is mostly safe from those inconveniences, but one of my first jobs was to build an asset delivery system that would comply with a number of US and EU regulations on what asset can be delivered to whom from where. Took lots of meetings with legal.
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoMicrosoft 365 is extremely widespread in companies in the EU. Not because they love Microsoft but because this is a relatively simple setup. Like Google (US) or Zoho (Indian). I do not know European companies providing a cloud solution easy to deploy (I wild truly be glad to know one).
- SomeDog76 4y agoYou could look into NextCloud and their NextCloud Office if you haven't heard of it yet. If you have are there any point that speak against it in your opinion? It's open source so you can even self host. Should be more than enough for most comapnies. Not sure how difficult the set-up process for an enterprise environment is, I only used the docker version before. But should be viable and if a company has Money for Microsoft365 they should have money to pay to someone to set it up manage for them. https://nextcloud.com/office/ https://nextcloud.com/office/
- alufers 4y agoOr it will force the European market to innovate instead of directly sending cash to US Megacorps.
- lnxg33k1 4y agoIts harder as Europeans are scared of debt, its just a system based on misery and poverty where the rich are richer and the poor just produce cheap migrant workforce for northern europeans
- dfvefvfdvv 4y agoWorks very well for Cuba and North Korea
- IdiocyInAction 4y agoBoth China and Russia eschewed US tech and they have much, much healthier tech industries than Europe. The US also doesn't really believe in foreign competition ("Buy American", recent huge industrial subsidies as part of the IRA), so I don't really know if Europe should kowtow to the US here. If the US gave up on the CLOUD act none of this would be a problem anyway.
- skeeter2020 4y agoIf you think Microsoft is a "US Megacorp" you are tuly underestimating their global reach and ownership.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- olivermuty 4y agoThey mean in the sense that its an american company first and foremost. Having worked there a few years I can certainly attest to that, even if they do put a nice enough veneer of local adjustment for their non us orgs.
- pixl97 4y ago
- fhd2 4y agoLet me fix that for you: "industry standard products" -> "monopolist's products". Microsoft spent decades aggressively lobbying European governments and companies to use their stuff. Even if this finding has any short term impact (see the other comments about this point), I find it hard to believe Microsoft wouldn't swallow the pill and simply become compliant. If not - yeah, companies who are entrenched in Microsoft products have to find alternatives, which is gonna cost them significant efforts, but also open the door to more competition. Sounds like a short term problem for European businesses even in the worst case scenario.
- xiphias2 4y agoIt's not just about swallowing the pill: MS has a close relationship with the US government, and NSA having a backdoor to workings to all other countries is a part of US keeping its power, so it's national security critical for US (just like for EU).
- tremon 4y agoThe main problem for them is that it's not in Microsoft's power to be compliant here, as the problems are created by the US CLOUD act, not Microsoft's own policies. The only way for Microsoft to become compliant is to carve out its European business into a separate organization (not even a subsidiary -- it could be that even a joint venture would not be enough to escape the reach of the CLOUD act).
- fhd2 4y agoIf they can do a double Irish with a Dutch sandwich to pay fewer taxes in Europe, I doubt they couldn't find a creative way to deal with this. They only have to be compliant enough for the fines and repercussions to be lower than their profits.
- voidr 4y agoOne other way to see this is that this will stop MS360 from being the "industry standard", it doesn't take that much effort nowadays to make an alternative that is good enough, we are past the days where collaborative editing is considered "cool". People from the US tend to underestimate the EU, the EU could easily give a bit of cash to a competitor along with some juicy contracts, the US is not the only bloc that can throw millions at a problem.
- mantas 4y agoYeah, for example some China company :D
- johanneskanybal 4y agoYou think all eu companies will die because microsoft will have to update their product? That’s a bit rash and random.
- Kukumber 4y agoI don't think Microsoft products are "industry standard", an email is I think they'll do just fine without Microsoft harvesting your precious data I think they'll do just fine without being forced to use Microsoft products I think they'll do just fine without having Microsoft as only choice I think it's important to fight lobbies and monopolies I think it's sad that many European companies died because they couldn't compete with Microsoft lobbies Europe is the home of many big open source projects and open standards Maybe this will result in a proper open alternative to Microsoft 365
- croes 4y agoMaybe the companies and the US government should respect European laws and people's privacy. Instead MS brought back productivity-tracking. That's a No-Go and MS only gets away with it because of their desktop monopoly in the industry.
- jbotz 4y agoMonopoly is not the same as "industry standard". And specifically in the case of Microsoft Office / O365 there is very little actually benefit of using it over any of the more open (and even free) alternatives... rather than being an "industry standard" it's really just an "industry default", i.e. what most companies use because no IT manager ever got fired for deploying it.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoYou're a SRE, I'd argue that you have absolutely no idea about what is the industry standard when it comes to office productivity suites. Having this discussion on HackerNews is useless, because people here are at best very light users of Office and at worst don't use it at all. How many hours per week does your work involve Office software? Because for a lot of people it's 40, but those people are not on HN.
- Robotbeat 4y agoMS Excel is much better than the open and free alternatives (I say that as someone who uses both Excel and LibreOffice fairly regularly).
- Etheryte 4y agoBusinesses operated just fine before O365 came along and they will operate just fine after O365, this is a pretty moot point. "But they can't use what they're using right now!" Yes, that's the point, because what they're using right now is breaking the law.
- pixl97 4y agoBusinesses used Microsft office before 365 for decades now. In many industries all software integrates with office applications and with Microsoft pushing everything to 365 subs moving back to standalone office will be difficult enough.
- marcosdumay 4y agoYou mean MS Office? Yeah, right. Plenty of companies will fail if they are forced to use some of the almost perfectly equal alternatives.