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It's a bit of a weirdly worded article. I think what actually happened was the German government funded it. The EU approved of them doing it, which had to be ch

It's a bit of a weirdly worded article. I think what actually happened was the German government funded it. The EU approved of them doing it, which had to be checked under the EU state aid rules. This is very different to what you stated. https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/28084-eu-clears-state-aid-for-german-multimedia-search-engine-project https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/28084-eu-clears-state-ai...

sunshine-o 3y ago
At the end it is always the same type of scheme. The search engine story made the news because it sounded so ridiculous. The EU (and its members) does that for every key technology. For cloud they did it at least 2 or 3 times. I vaguely remember a bunch of alternative "clouds" were created so they have a sovereign cloud, and then bought back by a big telco linked to the state. Then the big telco have it managed by Huawei [1] [1] https://www.orange-business.com/en/press/orange-business-services-strengthens-its-international-cloud-strategy-with-new-public-cloud https://www.orange-business.com/en/press/orange-business-ser...
- jimnotgym 3y ago
  Of course they did, when the aeroplane was invented lots of countries made their own aeroplanes. They still buy them from Boeing, but they could make their own if they had to. This is how governments protect their countries, they have a back up plan. If access to MS Office, Oracle, AWS etc was restricted by the US government, or began to be priced unreasonably high, effective replacements are ready to go live. Until then it makes sense to stick with the ones everyone else is using
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > Of course they did, when the aeroplane was invented lots of countries made their own aeroplanes. They still buy them from Boeing, but they could make their own if they had to. Airbus is the dominant commercial airplane maker, beating Boeing in orders and deliveries, not to mention quality, for years in a row. And yes, it started as a bunch of European countries merging their national (sometimes government owned, sometimes just closely guarded) aerospace manufacturers.

sunshine-o 3y ago

At the end it is always the same type of scheme. The search engine story made the news because it sounded so ridiculous. The EU (and its members) does that for every key technology. For cloud they did it at least 2 or 3 times. I vaguely remember a bunch of alternative "clouds" were created so they have a sovereign cloud, and then bought back by a big telco linked to the state. Then the big telco have it managed by Huawei [1] [1] https://www.orange-business.com/en/press/orange-business-services-strengthens-its-international-cloud-strategy-with-new-public-cloud https://www.orange-business.com/en/press/orange-business-ser...

jimnotgym 3y ago
Of course they did, when the aeroplane was invented lots of countries made their own aeroplanes. They still buy them from Boeing, but they could make their own if they had to. This is how governments protect their countries, they have a back up plan. If access to MS Office, Oracle, AWS etc was restricted by the US government, or began to be priced unreasonably high, effective replacements are ready to go live. Until then it makes sense to stick with the ones everyone else is using
- sofixa 3y ago
  > Of course they did, when the aeroplane was invented lots of countries made their own aeroplanes. They still buy them from Boeing, but they could make their own if they had to. Airbus is the dominant commercial airplane maker, beating Boeing in orders and deliveries, not to mention quality, for years in a row. And yes, it started as a bunch of European countries merging their national (sometimes government owned, sometimes just closely guarded) aerospace manufacturers.