9 ms·

US tech rules the European market

94 points by devonnull 1y ago

bigyabai 1y ago
Wait until they find out whose market Taiwan rules.
betaby 1y ago
Somewhere in 2005-2010 mail was declared for some reason a hard problem and outsourced to Microsoft and Google. The rest if the history.
- esafak 1y ago
  All apps simply moved to the cloud. It was not just email. Let somebody else worry about it.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > mail was declared for some reason a hard problem and outsourced to Microsoft and Google lobby and corruption. But i repeat myself.
- smnrchrds 1y ago
  My alma mater moved from self-hosting email to Microsoft after a major data breach. Keeping high-value internet-connected things secure is indeed hard.
  - ruszki 1y ago
    You can misconfigure your SaaS too. And it’s not that difficult to learn how to secure your system… you just need to want to learn it, which is rarely the case. The topic itself is not that difficult, you don’t need to know cryptography in details in reality to make something secure. You just need to care. But most of the people are fine with copy-pasting from StackOverflow level of caring, which is absolutely not enough with security. But once again, you have the same problem with SaaS. The main reason to switch to SaaS is that it’s less of your responsibility anymore. The decision is made mainly not because of technical but legal or budget reasons.
    - tallanvor 1y ago
      Saying "you just need to want to learn it" is oversimplifying. It's not just learning how to secure it once, it's constantly watching for announcements regarding new vulnerabilities and being able to patch at short notice or being able to pull the infrastructure offline if you can't patch right away. The world is a different place now with what virtually amounts to criminal companies trying to find every vulnerability that allows them to get into your system and either holding your data for ransom, extracting it for their own uses, or both. Even if you really do want to employ someone solely to stay on top of patching and watching for vulnerabilities, it's safer and often cheaper to let one of the big companies host your data.
      - ruszki 1y ago
        You are completely right. I just wanted to say that people fail even doing the right thing at a given moment, and they absolutely fail when the right thing is even changing.
- astrange 1y ago
  Receiving mail is a hard problem because of spam filtering. Spam filtering works better the more different email accounts you can see at once.
- daft_pink 1y ago
  i think most technology professionals just prefer to outsource mail in general. people really freak out when it goes down or you screw it up. i’m willing to roll my own of most things, but I don’t want to roll my own mail server or phone server. these things are just so specialized and publically exposed and the penalties are too severe if you fuck it up or lose data.
dijit 1y ago
> 74% of Europe’s publicly listed companies rely on US-based tech like Google and Microsoft. Only 74%? That feels wrong. I don’t know a single company off the top of my head that wouldn’t suffer serious damage if you null-routed Google and Microsoft’s servers. Excel rules the world, and even if it didn’t: nobody is running libreoffice on linux professionally, at least not that I am aware of- and hosting mail? Conventional wisdom is that you should outsource that: I don’t seriously believe that people would outsource mail and not go with Google/Microsoft and get a productivity suite “for free”.
- rich_sasha 1y ago
  I worked for two companies who ran two separate stacks. One was all Windows and was a glorified email / Excel thing for talking to clients. All the business logic was on a separate network and was all Linux. If Windows pulled the plug, it would be a major PITA but no more.
  - kazinator 1y ago
    FOSS may not be exactly "US tech" but from the perspective of the EU, it's perhaps even worse. The EU doesn't control FOSS any more than it does US tech, and it can't threaten it.
    - pbmonster 1y ago
      I think the EU would be very happy with every major company running their own FOSS stack instead of handing their money/control to US tech firms. Sure, this doesn't mean the EU would have control over the FOSS stack, but it would keep the data/money/soft power away from the US. And the EU would have a much easier time enforcing its security/privacy laws on those EU companies running FOSS on hardware inside the EU.
    - Kim_Bruning 1y ago
      Because the EU is relatively low-corruption so far EU goals trend towards transparency, privacy and interoperability (despite some efforts to the contrary). FLOSS naturally aligns with these goals, without needing extensive threats or control .
iknowstuff 1y ago
> Big Tech companies dominate, not because they’re better, but because they have the first mover’s advantage Uuuh says who? I think they dominate because they are in fact better for business for one reason or another.
- esseph 1y ago
  Being good at other things can have them generate enough money to blow trying to be good at a $NewThing that smol players only doing $OneThing can't hope to match.
- unethical_ban 1y ago
  Google drive is awful, completely atrocious to navigate and reason about.
  - iknowstuff 1y ago
    Cool but GCP or AWS is overall running circles around OVHCloud. GSuite and O365 are better for businesses than uhhh… what is the european equivalent even? Tutanota and protonmail + libreoffice?
  - SllX 1y ago
    People aren't using Google Drive for the Drive per se or the crappy online file system UI, they're there for the apps: Docs & Sheets are the killer apps: good enough as a word processor & spreadsheet combo for any basic tasks, real-time collaboration that is still first-class and maybe unmatched (or at least the closest matches I can think of are still American vendors), and plenty of people are educated in their use, especially anybody who went to school any time after 2008. Also you know, Gmail: still a great webmail service, and part of Google Workspace too.
  - satvikpendem 1y ago
    I store a lot of things in Google Drive, works just fine for that purpose.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
vachina 1y ago
You need talent to make tech that people want to use. Europe does not have that talent pool nor do they actively retain or attract such talents. Also them being fully subscribed to capitalism: let other people solve my problems.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  We have plenty of talent. And we don't care as much about money. I chose to move to a lower income country within the EU just because I like life there better. I would never move to the US. In fact I wouldn't even consider visiting, even if my work asks me to. The reason tech isn't so big here is that there's more regulation and less loose capital. Both aren't bad things IMO. Venture capital is pure gambling in the US. We don't subscribe to the American unrestricted capitalism here (well except for the UK and Netherlands which are heavily influenced by America)
  - edg5000 1y ago
    Never heard about NL and UK having US-like venture capital situations. I always hear complaints that it's harder to raise in the EU. I've never heard NL and UK meantioned as an exception before. I understand the close US ties, but can you elaborate more on the venture capital thing?
    - burnerthrow008 1y ago
      The Dutch invented modern capital markets, so it tracks that they might be more US-like in that regard.
      - LAC-Tech 1y ago
        I mean the British invented railways, doesn't mean they have a good train system in 2025.
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        Yeah but our country was one of the more socialist ones in the period 1965-1990. After that it all went downhill, the neoliberals took over and ruined everything. It's now a total shithole, I really hate it. There's a lot of hate against foreigners (they're being blamed for all the issues when it's actually the neolibs that caused it), the housing market is broken, all construction is locked because of nitrogen deposits, and nobody dares to reduce farming (which is the main cause of this problem) because the farmers set the country on fire when such plans are raised. Social housing is down to nothing with many years waiting lists. Social welfare and mental health has really declined and people are even driven to suicide when there are any suspected irregularities. A fascist party got 30% of votes last election because they pretend to have solutions. Basically none of these problems were even remotely tackled in the last 20 years and now everything is beyond repair. All they cared about was money and externalising any environmental or social cost.
edg5000 1y ago
I agree with the premise of the article. It really bothered me when I realised I couldn't delete my business listing Google Maps, only set it to "permanently closed". And my bank, my countries' largest, one year ago dropped NFC in favour of Google Pay. Not to mention the Google popups that seem to appear on what seems every website (how did the manage this?!). Personally I've moved to Zoho for mail and use Ubuntu with a rsync/zfs based backup solution. I'm not logged in to Google but I do use Google Search. On my phone I use a separate Google account specially for the phone, and I use F Droid, except for my bank, which only distributes their app through Google Play. Why do you think the EU is trying to bully (ineffectively) US tech companies? I don't think bullying US companies is the solution. More embracing of Linux would help a lot. Banks need to behave; making Google Play store a requirement for banking should not be allowed by the authorities, since banks play a special role. Then there is search and maps. Something should be done about that as well. Maybe something like an EU-based perplexity/anthropic competitor would be great.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  > Maybe something like an EU-based perplexity/anthropic competitor would be great. Mistral?
- hulitu 1y ago
  > Why do you think the EU is trying to bully (ineffectively) US tech companies? Because this increases lobby spending. Win-win.
- black_13 1y ago
  [dead]
- mcv 1y ago
  > And my bank, my countries' largest, one year ago dropped NFC in favour of Google Pay. Dutch banks used to have a great system for contactless payment through your banking app. Worked perfectly. Last year, it seems they all abandoned it in favour of Google Wallet. I don't understand this move. Why outsource this to US tech giants when we had a perfect system already in place? I think regulation that requires banks to keep their payment infrastructure in the EU and out of the hands of advertising companies would be a really good idea.
dingi 1y ago
[flagged]
- hvb2 1y ago
  But they still legislate, and pass budgets ;)
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
I think plenty here are asking the wrong questions. The question is not so much are EU enterprises currently depending on offering by Google and Microsoft. The real question is what are the alternatives these companies could turn to if they needed to. And the truth is that there exists solid alternatives from Asia to nearly everything they offer. EU companies don’t need to reinvent anything. They have a great opportunity to diversify their supply chain.
- aydyn 1y ago
  So you'd drop U.S. providers for China? Hilarious.
- KoftaBob 1y ago
  > solid alternatives from Asia That just moves the problem somewhere else, rather than giving the EU homegrown solutions to rely on.
- SilentTiger 1y ago
  You see, this is the problem. Europeans always think about who they rely on, and never think about relying on themselves. And they give this behavior a high-sounding name: supply chain diversification
  - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
    That's not a problem. The world is large. Europeans are leader on key sectors too like photolitography. Buying is ok as long as there are multiple options. Mercantilism is an idea of the past. The main issue is that American are deluded enough to vote for someone who thinks it's relevant. When one of your trade partner decides to commit suicide by imposing tariffs on everyone and threaten to not supply you anymore, the correct solution is not to turn inward for everything, it's to turn to other partners which are not acting like buffoons.
    - SilentTiger 1y ago
      Supply chain diversification is certainly not a problem; it can even be considered excellent. However, supply chain diversification isn't the opposite of independence; it should be a complement to it. You need independent capabilities to survive external changes. Supply chain diversification, on the other hand, allows you to thrive even when external conditions are favorable. The problem in Europe is that they've placed too much faith in supply chain diversification and almost completely abandoned independent capabilities.
t43562 1y ago
I am not sure this is avoidable. Whatsapp (and perhaps Telegram) are the dominant messaging/chat apps for example and that is European tech but it was inevitably going to be bought by some bigger company that wanted to be dominant and that was obviously going to be American since they managed to make big money first. Skype was at one point extremely popular and this is European but it was bought and squashed under the mountain of American poo that is MS Teams. Forgive me the rudeness but I wish to dispell the thought that American tech is automatically superior or that it wins by being good. Then there's Linux - another European development that has rocked the world but has been bought and ruled by mostly American companies with the noticeable exception of Ubuntu (and a few others). The World Wide Web - a blow for freedom and the spread of information coming from CERN that has again been captured and perverted into an advertisement delivery and spying system more powerful than the East German Stasi could possibly imagine. We have Big Tech to thank for Nazi saluters, quite potentially for the attempt to break the world economy and the idea of turning all of humanity into basic income serfs which will not, of course, include the owners of big tech itself. The EU is the only powerful entity that hasn't been completely perverted by the power of big tech and we have to hope like hell that it won't be. To all those with shares in big tech or jobs in it who want to expand and rule - go ahead and vote me down - who would expect anything else!
- KoftaBob 1y ago
  > Whatsapp (and perhaps Telegram) are the dominant messaging/chat apps for example and that is European tech but it was inevitably going to be bought Nitpick: Whatsapp was American from the start. It was founded in Mountain View, CA by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo.
  - t43562 1y ago
    I should have checked :-) Sorry.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  > bought and ruled by mostly American companies with the noticeable exception of Ubuntu (and a few others). 2/3 of the big Linux vendors are European (Suse and Ubuntu)...
can16358p 1y ago
Good luck expecting this trend to change anytime soon, as long as EU doesn't relax their regulations which cripple a huge part of innovation. Apparently you can't regulate big tech heavily and expect to compete with US big tech.
- trinix912 1y ago
  You can by regulating foreign big tech with stricter rules than domestic. But try to pass that and Trump will throw a tantrum how it’s unfair, while doing the same in the US.
SilentTiger 1y ago
[flagged]
notepad0x90 1y ago
I don't know why proton's leadership just doesn't shut up and make money while providing awesome pro-privacy services. Is coca-cola american? most people would say so but their hq is in china! These multi-nationals don't have 'branches' in Europe, they are incorporated there as well, that's why they're called multi-national. they pay European taxes and are subject to European laws such as GDPR and other data-residency laws, which means their data-center, and a large chunk of their support staff (Europeans are cheaper than Americans to hire/pay) are in Europe. Should Americans avoid Proton and its products so they don't rely on Europe? Hypocrite much there friend? Should we avoid European cars? Maybe Ozempic/glp-1 medication should be manufactured by US companies in America (Denmark's GDP is seeing most of it's multi-digit growth thanks to American Ozempic usage). Proton's leadership supported Trump and the GOP and now they want to promote nationalistic brand loyalty? These people make it hard to be against trump's b.s. tariffs and hostility against our allies. Proton has a good product, why isn't that enough? They also have to meddle in politics and make it about "America vs Europe" or "Republicans vs Democrats"? You know what would be great? if employee and customer owned companies replaced even the likes of proton so we can democratically vote incompetent leadership like this out. Make good products, let the products sell themselves. Why should Europeans have to put up with inferior products for the sake of nationalism? If you want to support Europe so much, tell us about how great your company's product is and how superior it is compared to American alternatives, I'd be down for that. Europeans can and do buy European goods and services of better quality, try finding a Swizz that enjoys American cheese and chocolate, or a European that drives oversized American pickup trucks. Unless you're speaking as an individual or you are an elected politician, don't misuse whatever platform you have to meddle in politics.
- neobrain 1y ago
  > Proton's leadership supported Trump and the GOP ... this again? Come on. The CEO once expressed support for Gail Slater as head of antitrust and subsequently criticized lack of effective work towards tech regulation on the Democratic side in the same social media thread. Calling that support for either Trump or the entire GOP is a massive stretch, and throwing the claim out without context borders on disinformation.
pjmlp 1y ago
Until we get something like SuSE and Jolla being sold on the shopping malls, dependency will continue. And even then, people need to really want to buy that stuff instead of Microsoft, Apple and Apple OSes. Note how even with all the geo-politics, pirate copies of Windows abound in China, they aren't all running away into Linux install parties with deepin or similar.
wolvesechoes 1y ago
Every discussion that treats EU or Europe as a political entity equivalent to national state is a waste of time.
- demarq 1y ago
  Should be the highest comment.
rurban 1y ago
My previous company in Germany was all macOS, the current all Ubuntu. Sorry, no crap.

94 points by devonnull 1y ago

Wait until they find out whose market Taiwan rules.

Somewhere in 2005-2010 mail was declared for some reason a hard problem and outsourced to Microsoft and Google. The rest if the history.

esafak 1y ago
All apps simply moved to the cloud. It was not just email. Let somebody else worry about it.
hulitu 1y ago
> mail was declared for some reason a hard problem and outsourced to Microsoft and Google lobby and corruption. But i repeat myself.
smnrchrds 1y ago
My alma mater moved from self-hosting email to Microsoft after a major data breach. Keeping high-value internet-connected things secure is indeed hard.
- ruszki 1y ago
  You can misconfigure your SaaS too. And it’s not that difficult to learn how to secure your system… you just need to want to learn it, which is rarely the case. The topic itself is not that difficult, you don’t need to know cryptography in details in reality to make something secure. You just need to care. But most of the people are fine with copy-pasting from StackOverflow level of caring, which is absolutely not enough with security. But once again, you have the same problem with SaaS. The main reason to switch to SaaS is that it’s less of your responsibility anymore. The decision is made mainly not because of technical but legal or budget reasons.
  - tallanvor 1y ago
    Saying "you just need to want to learn it" is oversimplifying. It's not just learning how to secure it once, it's constantly watching for announcements regarding new vulnerabilities and being able to patch at short notice or being able to pull the infrastructure offline if you can't patch right away. The world is a different place now with what virtually amounts to criminal companies trying to find every vulnerability that allows them to get into your system and either holding your data for ransom, extracting it for their own uses, or both. Even if you really do want to employ someone solely to stay on top of patching and watching for vulnerabilities, it's safer and often cheaper to let one of the big companies host your data.
    - ruszki 1y ago
      You are completely right. I just wanted to say that people fail even doing the right thing at a given moment, and they absolutely fail when the right thing is even changing.
astrange 1y ago
Receiving mail is a hard problem because of spam filtering. Spam filtering works better the more different email accounts you can see at once.
daft_pink 1y ago
i think most technology professionals just prefer to outsource mail in general. people really freak out when it goes down or you screw it up. i’m willing to roll my own of most things, but I don’t want to roll my own mail server or phone server. these things are just so specialized and publically exposed and the penalties are too severe if you fuck it up or lose data.

dijit 1y ago

> 74% of Europe’s publicly listed companies rely on US-based tech like Google and Microsoft. Only 74%? That feels wrong. I don’t know a single company off the top of my head that wouldn’t suffer serious damage if you null-routed Google and Microsoft’s servers. Excel rules the world, and even if it didn’t: nobody is running libreoffice on linux professionally, at least not that I am aware of- and hosting mail? Conventional wisdom is that you should outsource that: I don’t seriously believe that people would outsource mail and not go with Google/Microsoft and get a productivity suite “for free”.

rich_sasha 1y ago
I worked for two companies who ran two separate stacks. One was all Windows and was a glorified email / Excel thing for talking to clients. All the business logic was on a separate network and was all Linux. If Windows pulled the plug, it would be a major PITA but no more.
- kazinator 1y ago
  FOSS may not be exactly "US tech" but from the perspective of the EU, it's perhaps even worse. The EU doesn't control FOSS any more than it does US tech, and it can't threaten it.
  - pbmonster 1y ago
    I think the EU would be very happy with every major company running their own FOSS stack instead of handing their money/control to US tech firms. Sure, this doesn't mean the EU would have control over the FOSS stack, but it would keep the data/money/soft power away from the US. And the EU would have a much easier time enforcing its security/privacy laws on those EU companies running FOSS on hardware inside the EU.
  - Kim_Bruning 1y ago
    Because the EU is relatively low-corruption so far EU goals trend towards transparency, privacy and interoperability (despite some efforts to the contrary). FLOSS naturally aligns with these goals, without needing extensive threats or control .

iknowstuff 1y ago

> Big Tech companies dominate, not because they’re better, but because they have the first mover’s advantage Uuuh says who? I think they dominate because they are in fact better for business for one reason or another.

esseph 1y ago
Being good at other things can have them generate enough money to blow trying to be good at a $NewThing that smol players only doing $OneThing can't hope to match.
unethical_ban 1y ago
Google drive is awful, completely atrocious to navigate and reason about.
- iknowstuff 1y ago
  Cool but GCP or AWS is overall running circles around OVHCloud. GSuite and O365 are better for businesses than uhhh… what is the european equivalent even? Tutanota and protonmail + libreoffice?
- SllX 1y ago
  People aren't using Google Drive for the Drive per se or the crappy online file system UI, they're there for the apps: Docs & Sheets are the killer apps: good enough as a word processor & spreadsheet combo for any basic tasks, real-time collaboration that is still first-class and maybe unmatched (or at least the closest matches I can think of are still American vendors), and plenty of people are educated in their use, especially anybody who went to school any time after 2008. Also you know, Gmail: still a great webmail service, and part of Google Workspace too.
- satvikpendem 1y ago
  I store a lot of things in Google Drive, works just fine for that purpose.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

vachina 1y ago

You need talent to make tech that people want to use. Europe does not have that talent pool nor do they actively retain or attract such talents. Also them being fully subscribed to capitalism: let other people solve my problems.

wkat4242 1y ago
We have plenty of talent. And we don't care as much about money. I chose to move to a lower income country within the EU just because I like life there better. I would never move to the US. In fact I wouldn't even consider visiting, even if my work asks me to. The reason tech isn't so big here is that there's more regulation and less loose capital. Both aren't bad things IMO. Venture capital is pure gambling in the US. We don't subscribe to the American unrestricted capitalism here (well except for the UK and Netherlands which are heavily influenced by America)
- edg5000 1y ago
  Never heard about NL and UK having US-like venture capital situations. I always hear complaints that it's harder to raise in the EU. I've never heard NL and UK meantioned as an exception before. I understand the close US ties, but can you elaborate more on the venture capital thing?
  - burnerthrow008 1y ago
    The Dutch invented modern capital markets, so it tracks that they might be more US-like in that regard.
    - LAC-Tech 1y ago
      I mean the British invented railways, doesn't mean they have a good train system in 2025.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Yeah but our country was one of the more socialist ones in the period 1965-1990. After that it all went downhill, the neoliberals took over and ruined everything. It's now a total shithole, I really hate it. There's a lot of hate against foreigners (they're being blamed for all the issues when it's actually the neolibs that caused it), the housing market is broken, all construction is locked because of nitrogen deposits, and nobody dares to reduce farming (which is the main cause of this problem) because the farmers set the country on fire when such plans are raised. Social housing is down to nothing with many years waiting lists. Social welfare and mental health has really declined and people are even driven to suicide when there are any suspected irregularities. A fascist party got 30% of votes last election because they pretend to have solutions. Basically none of these problems were even remotely tackled in the last 20 years and now everything is beyond repair. All they cared about was money and externalising any environmental or social cost.

edg5000 1y ago

I agree with the premise of the article. It really bothered me when I realised I couldn't delete my business listing Google Maps, only set it to "permanently closed". And my bank, my countries' largest, one year ago dropped NFC in favour of Google Pay. Not to mention the Google popups that seem to appear on what seems every website (how did the manage this?!). Personally I've moved to Zoho for mail and use Ubuntu with a rsync/zfs based backup solution. I'm not logged in to Google but I do use Google Search. On my phone I use a separate Google account specially for the phone, and I use F Droid, except for my bank, which only distributes their app through Google Play. Why do you think the EU is trying to bully (ineffectively) US tech companies? I don't think bullying US companies is the solution. More embracing of Linux would help a lot. Banks need to behave; making Google Play store a requirement for banking should not be allowed by the authorities, since banks play a special role. Then there is search and maps. Something should be done about that as well. Maybe something like an EU-based perplexity/anthropic competitor would be great.

dismalaf 1y ago
> Maybe something like an EU-based perplexity/anthropic competitor would be great. Mistral?
hulitu 1y ago
> Why do you think the EU is trying to bully (ineffectively) US tech companies? Because this increases lobby spending. Win-win.
black_13 1y ago
[dead]
mcv 1y ago
> And my bank, my countries' largest, one year ago dropped NFC in favour of Google Pay. Dutch banks used to have a great system for contactless payment through your banking app. Worked perfectly. Last year, it seems they all abandoned it in favour of Google Wallet. I don't understand this move. Why outsource this to US tech giants when we had a perfect system already in place? I think regulation that requires banks to keep their payment infrastructure in the EU and out of the hands of advertising companies would be a really good idea.

dingi 1y ago

[flagged]

hvb2 1y ago
But they still legislate, and pass budgets ;)

StopDisinfo910 1y ago

I think plenty here are asking the wrong questions. The question is not so much are EU enterprises currently depending on offering by Google and Microsoft. The real question is what are the alternatives these companies could turn to if they needed to. And the truth is that there exists solid alternatives from Asia to nearly everything they offer. EU companies don’t need to reinvent anything. They have a great opportunity to diversify their supply chain.

aydyn 1y ago
So you'd drop U.S. providers for China? Hilarious.
KoftaBob 1y ago
> solid alternatives from Asia That just moves the problem somewhere else, rather than giving the EU homegrown solutions to rely on.
SilentTiger 1y ago
You see, this is the problem. Europeans always think about who they rely on, and never think about relying on themselves. And they give this behavior a high-sounding name: supply chain diversification
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  That's not a problem. The world is large. Europeans are leader on key sectors too like photolitography. Buying is ok as long as there are multiple options. Mercantilism is an idea of the past. The main issue is that American are deluded enough to vote for someone who thinks it's relevant. When one of your trade partner decides to commit suicide by imposing tariffs on everyone and threaten to not supply you anymore, the correct solution is not to turn inward for everything, it's to turn to other partners which are not acting like buffoons.
  - SilentTiger 1y ago
    Supply chain diversification is certainly not a problem; it can even be considered excellent. However, supply chain diversification isn't the opposite of independence; it should be a complement to it. You need independent capabilities to survive external changes. Supply chain diversification, on the other hand, allows you to thrive even when external conditions are favorable. The problem in Europe is that they've placed too much faith in supply chain diversification and almost completely abandoned independent capabilities.

t43562 1y ago

I am not sure this is avoidable. Whatsapp (and perhaps Telegram) are the dominant messaging/chat apps for example and that is European tech but it was inevitably going to be bought by some bigger company that wanted to be dominant and that was obviously going to be American since they managed to make big money first. Skype was at one point extremely popular and this is European but it was bought and squashed under the mountain of American poo that is MS Teams. Forgive me the rudeness but I wish to dispell the thought that American tech is automatically superior or that it wins by being good. Then there's Linux - another European development that has rocked the world but has been bought and ruled by mostly American companies with the noticeable exception of Ubuntu (and a few others). The World Wide Web - a blow for freedom and the spread of information coming from CERN that has again been captured and perverted into an advertisement delivery and spying system more powerful than the East German Stasi could possibly imagine. We have Big Tech to thank for Nazi saluters, quite potentially for the attempt to break the world economy and the idea of turning all of humanity into basic income serfs which will not, of course, include the owners of big tech itself. The EU is the only powerful entity that hasn't been completely perverted by the power of big tech and we have to hope like hell that it won't be. To all those with shares in big tech or jobs in it who want to expand and rule - go ahead and vote me down - who would expect anything else!

KoftaBob 1y ago
> Whatsapp (and perhaps Telegram) are the dominant messaging/chat apps for example and that is European tech but it was inevitably going to be bought Nitpick: Whatsapp was American from the start. It was founded in Mountain View, CA by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo.
- t43562 1y ago
  I should have checked :-) Sorry.
dismalaf 1y ago
> bought and ruled by mostly American companies with the noticeable exception of Ubuntu (and a few others). 2/3 of the big Linux vendors are European (Suse and Ubuntu)...

can16358p 1y ago

Good luck expecting this trend to change anytime soon, as long as EU doesn't relax their regulations which cripple a huge part of innovation. Apparently you can't regulate big tech heavily and expect to compete with US big tech.

trinix912 1y ago
You can by regulating foreign big tech with stricter rules than domestic. But try to pass that and Trump will throw a tantrum how it’s unfair, while doing the same in the US.

SilentTiger 1y ago

[flagged]

notepad0x90 1y ago

I don't know why proton's leadership just doesn't shut up and make money while providing awesome pro-privacy services. Is coca-cola american? most people would say so but their hq is in china! These multi-nationals don't have 'branches' in Europe, they are incorporated there as well, that's why they're called multi-national. they pay European taxes and are subject to European laws such as GDPR and other data-residency laws, which means their data-center, and a large chunk of their support staff (Europeans are cheaper than Americans to hire/pay) are in Europe. Should Americans avoid Proton and its products so they don't rely on Europe? Hypocrite much there friend? Should we avoid European cars? Maybe Ozempic/glp-1 medication should be manufactured by US companies in America (Denmark's GDP is seeing most of it's multi-digit growth thanks to American Ozempic usage). Proton's leadership supported Trump and the GOP and now they want to promote nationalistic brand loyalty? These people make it hard to be against trump's b.s. tariffs and hostility against our allies. Proton has a good product, why isn't that enough? They also have to meddle in politics and make it about "America vs Europe" or "Republicans vs Democrats"? You know what would be great? if employee and customer owned companies replaced even the likes of proton so we can democratically vote incompetent leadership like this out. Make good products, let the products sell themselves. Why should Europeans have to put up with inferior products for the sake of nationalism? If you want to support Europe so much, tell us about how great your company's product is and how superior it is compared to American alternatives, I'd be down for that. Europeans can and do buy European goods and services of better quality, try finding a Swizz that enjoys American cheese and chocolate, or a European that drives oversized American pickup trucks. Unless you're speaking as an individual or you are an elected politician, don't misuse whatever platform you have to meddle in politics.

neobrain 1y ago
> Proton's leadership supported Trump and the GOP ... this again? Come on. The CEO once expressed support for Gail Slater as head of antitrust and subsequently criticized lack of effective work towards tech regulation on the Democratic side in the same social media thread. Calling that support for either Trump or the entire GOP is a massive stretch, and throwing the claim out without context borders on disinformation.

pjmlp 1y ago

Until we get something like SuSE and Jolla being sold on the shopping malls, dependency will continue. And even then, people need to really want to buy that stuff instead of Microsoft, Apple and Apple OSes. Note how even with all the geo-politics, pirate copies of Windows abound in China, they aren't all running away into Linux install parties with deepin or similar.

wolvesechoes 1y ago

Every discussion that treats EU or Europe as a political entity equivalent to national state is a waste of time.

demarq 1y ago
Should be the highest comment.

rurban 1y ago

My previous company in Germany was all macOS, the current all Ubuntu. Sorry, no crap.