5 ms·

I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no re

by cmiles8 9mo ago

I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking.

alecco 9mo ago
Better is not enough make people change, sadly. This is why VCs burn so much money to establish products.
watwut 9mo ago
The big difference is that USA was nor perceived as a threat before. It is acutely dangerours now and there is no perspective of it changing.
blibble 9mo ago
> while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. fortunately, legislation can help here start with critical national infrastructure to build the market, and work your way out from there the US regime cannot be permitted to have an off button for our infrastructure
graemep 9mo ago
This is the biggest step any country (other than China and those subject to US sanctions) has made to reducing their dependence on American big tech. Its still a small step, but its a start. > The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide You can push people to do this. The government can switch as a matter of policy. It can require companies bigging for government contracts to only use systems based in approved countries. It can make it a requirement for regulated industries (e.g. infrastructure, critical financial services, etc.)
i_love_retros 9mo ago
It's only recently that the united states has become an enemy of the EU though. I'd say there's much more motivation to move to other software and platforms now.
- cmiles8 9mo ago
  I don’t think that’s accurate. These issues were always there, but “the sky is falling” rhetoric is all the rage at the moment (in both directions).
  - bahmboo 9mo ago
    It doesn't have to be the sky is falling, it's reality. In one year Europe went from "can we fight Russia with American help" to "can we fight Russia without American help" to "can we fight America". If Europe doesn't get itself unencumbered with the US they are in a very vulnerable position.
  - spockz 9mo ago
    The dependencies were always there. But never before (since the forming of NATO) has the US leadership so clearly and concretely distanced themselves from Europe. Before that there was a strong sense of North America and Europe belonging to the same “liberal” world where many things did be relatively cheaply exchanged. The dependencies were therefore seen as a non issue for many. Banks have always been skeptics of the cloud because of the ability of the American government to just pull the plug if they want. Before it was a theoretical possibility that still came up in risk analysis. Today it is something that could even concretely happen. Prosecutors and others have been denied access to their official work email etc because they displeased the president. Trust has been eroded.
    - cmiles8 9mo ago
      This is all a roundabout way to get Europe to step up and do more for its own defense… the current negotiation style leaves much to be desired, but it’s shaking things up as intended.
harikb 9mo ago
Products don't necessarily win on merit. Microsoft Teams "won" entirely because it was given away free with Office. Even though it is acceptable these days, it was horrible when it started. There is no way it could have won without unlimited backing from a bigger force. You have to see EU trying these things in the same light.
- cmiles8 9mo ago
  Sure, Betamax was technically superior to VHS. But in the end the market still decides… nobody said “better” means technically superior… just something people want to use an other options available to them. “Good enough” with attractive value to the individual/business typically wins.
  - jetbalsa 9mo ago
    Not to get too much into a debate about Beta vs VHS, but VHS did have longer run times and its cheapness was the main reason it won, It just fit better for the consumer overall desires at the time
    - SoftTalker 9mo ago
      Exactly. It's about whose definition of "better" you use. Sony thought that a better picture would win out, and it did where that mattered: TV studios and video-journalists used Betamax until digital formats took over. For consumers, "better" meant cheaper tapes and longer run time. JVC also licensed the VHS format to many manufacturers, so there was a lot of competition on recorders, further driving the price of ownership down. I don't recall anyone ever selling Betamax other than Sony. Edit: JVC actually released VHS as an open standard, not a license, per Wikipedia.
      - appointment 9mo ago
        Pro TV used Betacam, not Betamax. Same physical tape, but four instead of two tape heads and a much faster tape speed.
  - 9mo ago
nobodyandproud 9mo ago
This blind faith in “the market” is charming, but the market is just the outcome of enforceable ground rules (national, international) followed then by price/value.
mamcx 9mo ago
What I wonder is if there will be the pay for enticing developers to build it. I think many of use will love to do this kind of stuff, but is mostly US companies that pay for it. For example, I like to make RDBMs and ERPs kind of software, but here in LATAM is near impossible to get funding for it, how is in Europe?
- nradov 9mo ago
  If they want to build viable competitive products then they'll need to pay for a lot more roles than just developers.
  - mamcx 9mo ago
    Certainly, there is a whole industry if you count support, sales, infra, testing, etc. But I suspect that is developers the main problem for the bootstrap phase (ie: that is already the case here in LATAM)
electronsoup 9mo ago
> The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking. No they need to tariff/ban things that are non-EU
- drstewart 9mo ago
  Tariffs are good now
jorvi 9mo ago
The way out of this hole is by the EU mandating a 5, 10 and 20 year plan for getting off US tech and pivoting to open source. Start with a target small municipality in each country. Switch to SUSE (with a desktop that supports Active Directory), Collabora and what not. Then switch the mail stack. Then the files stack. Etc. Next step is scaling it up to a small city, then a big city, then a province, and finally the whole country. Parallel to this you do the universities and militaries. The beauty of this is that the untold tens (hundreds?) of billions € in Microsoft / Google / Amazon support contracts will now instead flow into open source support contracts. Can you imagine the insane pace LibreOffice would improve at if a few billion € in support contracts was paid to Collabora each year? One thing the government would have to resist is thinking that open source is 'free' and that they can cut their yearly spend on digital office stuff to the bone.
- McDyver 9mo ago
  I see a "top-down" approach, actually. Government and public services change to (ideally) open source, and "impose"/"require" downstream compatibility. This would create the incentive and make change easier
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - arlcode 9mo ago
    Yeah "all bids for government contracts must" is a really powerful sword. It pushes money into the market, creates skills and business and, crucially can look beyond quarterly profits (for better or worse).
    - carlosjobim 9mo ago
      Yes! We must mandate that all loyal citizens have to use Arch Linux and Vim. Severe punishment and long prison terms for any other distro or text editor.
- thewebguyd 9mo ago
eigenspace 9mo ago
While, there's a real risk of overselling the enthusiasm right now, there's a much bigger risk of complacency making dinosaurs stick their head in the sand and think nothing ever changes. IMO, if ones thinks the lessons about competition between tech platforms from the previous few decades are 1-to-1 applicable in the current geopolitical, economical, and strategic state of the world, then that person is either not paying attention, or they're in denial. Companies, governments, and militaries are looking around their office right now and realizing their organization could grind to a complete halt if Trump made a phone call to a very small handful of executives. That's an existential risk, and organizations absolutely can and do choose products that are on their face inferior if it helps shield them from existential risk. (Western) Tech is one of few industries that has no institutional experience with dealing with geopolitical risk, but it's happening now.
Braxton1980 9mo ago
The market makes decisions on quality and pride but it can also use politics, patriotism, religion, and other factors which may not have the greatest impact compared to the first two. It's possible that both the appeal of home* grown product (patriotism) combined with distaste of the current US government and the tech companies that support it (politics) is enough to push people to switch even if the quality is lower
labcomputer 9mo ago
> I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. This feels different. Up to now there hasn't a really good technical reason to want to switch from, say, Zoom to Teams (or vice versa). You might switch because of network effects: all your friends / coworkers are on the other one. But, video chat is basically a commodity (all work "good enough" and the features are broadly similar) and has been for quite some time. What's different is that now all (or nearly all) the people contributing to the network effect simultaneously have a reason to want to switch. So the network effect, which was the only thing that was really "sticky" about any of these apps, is gone.
- jp_nc 9mo ago
  And also, the speed at which you can build solutions has significantly been reduced because of AI. I wonder if this plays a role in their decision.
swiftcoder 9mo ago
> The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking Governments have many levers to pull that are only loosely part of "the market". Want in on those juicy government contracts? Work in a regulated industry (defence contractor, healthcare, banking)? Sell products into the state-funded education system? Congratulations, you now use the government-mandated messaging infrastructure.
delis-thumbs-7e 9mo ago
Sry but the world where ”markets decided” pretty much anything ended when Trump started his second term. EU is finishing a trade deal with India that creates a market of 2 billion people. Europe and China are closer than ever. I’m sure we can get along with Teans and police state just fine.
- mrits 9mo ago
  Half the EU are a few percentage points away from electing their version of trump.
- drstewart 9mo ago
  EU stands against police states! Now here is our new best friend, China.
- delis-thumbs-7e 9mo ago
  For what it's worth, I was trying to write "..get alont withOUT TeaMs and police state just fine".
SoftTalker 9mo ago
Yes, decade(s?) ago some city or state in Germany decided to ditch Microsoft for Linux and OpenOffice. It didn't go well and they eventually backtracked.
- qznc 9mo ago
  You probably think about Munich and LiMux. Well, Microsoft had to move their German HQ there to get them back.
lm28469 9mo ago
You're delusional if you think people willingly use half of these products, remove the billions spent on lobbyism and these things will evaporate in 5 years tops
internet_points 9mo ago
> legit better Than ... Microsoft Teams? You're saying Microsoft Teams won because it is better than the competition?
tdrz 9mo ago
Teams is not better than Slack, but here we are ...
TheRoque 9mo ago
> The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking. Classic neo-liberalism BS (pardon my french). Markets are not some natural law written in the atoms, it's a human construction, and we shape it the way we want. Countries can create or destroy markets just with laws, you put a tax here, you put a legal requirement there. That's for example the reason that big american tech companies have been kicked out of South Korea: - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/08/south-korea-google-maps-geographic-data-restrictions https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/08/south-korea-go... - https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/12/05/an-update-on-twitch-in-korea/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/12/05/an-update-on-twitch-in-... Sure, if there are 2 competing companies that play with the exact set of rules, the mArKeT wIlL deCiDe, but that would be a really stupid decision from any government to not shape the rules in its favor. Europe is slowly waking up to this reality, better late than never I guess. Did the "market decide" that Nvidia chips won't be shipped to China ? Did "the market decide" to put tariffs to get benefits from other countries ? Did "the market decide" to put embargo to Cuba, Iran, Venezuela.. ? Hearing that regulations and laws is "wishful thinking" makes no sense at all. It's more the opposite, it's the only way to shape the markets the way you want to.
- card_zero 9mo ago
  > it's a human construction, and we shape it the way we want That's a category error. It's a social construction, a thing that emerges from the interactions of many humans. "We", an authority nominally working for the citizens, can shape it by using the law, a blunt instrument. It's like how you can shape the development of a musician by using threats and a baseball bat.

by cmiles8 9mo ago

alecco 9mo ago

Better is not enough make people change, sadly. This is why VCs burn so much money to establish products.

watwut 9mo ago

The big difference is that USA was nor perceived as a threat before. It is acutely dangerours now and there is no perspective of it changing.

blibble 9mo ago

> while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. fortunately, legislation can help here start with critical national infrastructure to build the market, and work your way out from there the US regime cannot be permitted to have an off button for our infrastructure

graemep 9mo ago

This is the biggest step any country (other than China and those subject to US sanctions) has made to reducing their dependence on American big tech. Its still a small step, but its a start. > The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide You can push people to do this. The government can switch as a matter of policy. It can require companies bigging for government contracts to only use systems based in approved countries. It can make it a requirement for regulated industries (e.g. infrastructure, critical financial services, etc.)

i_love_retros 9mo ago

It's only recently that the united states has become an enemy of the EU though. I'd say there's much more motivation to move to other software and platforms now.

cmiles8 9mo ago
I don’t think that’s accurate. These issues were always there, but “the sky is falling” rhetoric is all the rage at the moment (in both directions).
- bahmboo 9mo ago
  It doesn't have to be the sky is falling, it's reality. In one year Europe went from "can we fight Russia with American help" to "can we fight Russia without American help" to "can we fight America". If Europe doesn't get itself unencumbered with the US they are in a very vulnerable position.
- spockz 9mo ago
  The dependencies were always there. But never before (since the forming of NATO) has the US leadership so clearly and concretely distanced themselves from Europe. Before that there was a strong sense of North America and Europe belonging to the same “liberal” world where many things did be relatively cheaply exchanged. The dependencies were therefore seen as a non issue for many. Banks have always been skeptics of the cloud because of the ability of the American government to just pull the plug if they want. Before it was a theoretical possibility that still came up in risk analysis. Today it is something that could even concretely happen. Prosecutors and others have been denied access to their official work email etc because they displeased the president. Trust has been eroded.
  - cmiles8 9mo ago
    This is all a roundabout way to get Europe to step up and do more for its own defense… the current negotiation style leaves much to be desired, but it’s shaking things up as intended.

harikb 9mo ago

Products don't necessarily win on merit. Microsoft Teams "won" entirely because it was given away free with Office. Even though it is acceptable these days, it was horrible when it started. There is no way it could have won without unlimited backing from a bigger force. You have to see EU trying these things in the same light.

cmiles8 9mo ago
Sure, Betamax was technically superior to VHS. But in the end the market still decides… nobody said “better” means technically superior… just something people want to use an other options available to them. “Good enough” with attractive value to the individual/business typically wins.
- jetbalsa 9mo ago
  Not to get too much into a debate about Beta vs VHS, but VHS did have longer run times and its cheapness was the main reason it won, It just fit better for the consumer overall desires at the time
  - SoftTalker 9mo ago
    Exactly. It's about whose definition of "better" you use. Sony thought that a better picture would win out, and it did where that mattered: TV studios and video-journalists used Betamax until digital formats took over. For consumers, "better" meant cheaper tapes and longer run time. JVC also licensed the VHS format to many manufacturers, so there was a lot of competition on recorders, further driving the price of ownership down. I don't recall anyone ever selling Betamax other than Sony. Edit: JVC actually released VHS as an open standard, not a license, per Wikipedia.
    - appointment 9mo ago
      Pro TV used Betacam, not Betamax. Same physical tape, but four instead of two tape heads and a much faster tape speed.
- 9mo ago

nobodyandproud 9mo ago

This blind faith in “the market” is charming, but the market is just the outcome of enforceable ground rules (national, international) followed then by price/value.

mamcx 9mo ago

What I wonder is if there will be the pay for enticing developers to build it. I think many of use will love to do this kind of stuff, but is mostly US companies that pay for it. For example, I like to make RDBMs and ERPs kind of software, but here in LATAM is near impossible to get funding for it, how is in Europe?

nradov 9mo ago
If they want to build viable competitive products then they'll need to pay for a lot more roles than just developers.
- mamcx 9mo ago
  Certainly, there is a whole industry if you count support, sales, infra, testing, etc. But I suspect that is developers the main problem for the bootstrap phase (ie: that is already the case here in LATAM)

electronsoup 9mo ago

> The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking. No they need to tariff/ban things that are non-EU

drstewart 9mo ago
Tariffs are good now

jorvi 9mo ago

The way out of this hole is by the EU mandating a 5, 10 and 20 year plan for getting off US tech and pivoting to open source. Start with a target small municipality in each country. Switch to SUSE (with a desktop that supports Active Directory), Collabora and what not. Then switch the mail stack. Then the files stack. Etc. Next step is scaling it up to a small city, then a big city, then a province, and finally the whole country. Parallel to this you do the universities and militaries. The beauty of this is that the untold tens (hundreds?) of billions € in Microsoft / Google / Amazon support contracts will now instead flow into open source support contracts. Can you imagine the insane pace LibreOffice would improve at if a few billion € in support contracts was paid to Collabora each year? One thing the government would have to resist is thinking that open source is 'free' and that they can cut their yearly spend on digital office stuff to the bone.

McDyver 9mo ago
I see a "top-down" approach, actually. Government and public services change to (ideally) open source, and "impose"/"require" downstream compatibility. This would create the incentive and make change easier
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- arlcode 9mo ago
  Yeah "all bids for government contracts must" is a really powerful sword. It pushes money into the market, creates skills and business and, crucially can look beyond quarterly profits (for better or worse).
  - carlosjobim 9mo ago
    Yes! We must mandate that all loyal citizens have to use Arch Linux and Vim. Severe punishment and long prison terms for any other distro or text editor.
thewebguyd 9mo ago

eigenspace 9mo ago

While, there's a real risk of overselling the enthusiasm right now, there's a much bigger risk of complacency making dinosaurs stick their head in the sand and think nothing ever changes. IMO, if ones thinks the lessons about competition between tech platforms from the previous few decades are 1-to-1 applicable in the current geopolitical, economical, and strategic state of the world, then that person is either not paying attention, or they're in denial. Companies, governments, and militaries are looking around their office right now and realizing their organization could grind to a complete halt if Trump made a phone call to a very small handful of executives. That's an existential risk, and organizations absolutely can and do choose products that are on their face inferior if it helps shield them from existential risk. (Western) Tech is one of few industries that has no institutional experience with dealing with geopolitical risk, but it's happening now.

Braxton1980 9mo ago

The market makes decisions on quality and pride but it can also use politics, patriotism, religion, and other factors which may not have the greatest impact compared to the first two. It's possible that both the appeal of home* grown product (patriotism) combined with distaste of the current US government and the tech companies that support it (politics) is enough to push people to switch even if the quality is lower

labcomputer 9mo ago

> I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. This feels different. Up to now there hasn't a really good technical reason to want to switch from, say, Zoom to Teams (or vice versa). You might switch because of network effects: all your friends / coworkers are on the other one. But, video chat is basically a commodity (all work "good enough" and the features are broadly similar) and has been for quite some time. What's different is that now all (or nearly all) the people contributing to the network effect simultaneously have a reason to want to switch. So the network effect, which was the only thing that was really "sticky" about any of these apps, is gone.

jp_nc 9mo ago
And also, the speed at which you can build solutions has significantly been reduced because of AI. I wonder if this plays a role in their decision.

swiftcoder 9mo ago

> The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking Governments have many levers to pull that are only loosely part of "the market". Want in on those juicy government contracts? Work in a regulated industry (defence contractor, healthcare, banking)? Sell products into the state-funded education system? Congratulations, you now use the government-mandated messaging infrastructure.

delis-thumbs-7e 9mo ago

Sry but the world where ”markets decided” pretty much anything ended when Trump started his second term. EU is finishing a trade deal with India that creates a market of 2 billion people. Europe and China are closer than ever. I’m sure we can get along with Teans and police state just fine.

mrits 9mo ago
Half the EU are a few percentage points away from electing their version of trump.
drstewart 9mo ago
EU stands against police states! Now here is our new best friend, China.
delis-thumbs-7e 9mo ago
For what it's worth, I was trying to write "..get alont withOUT TeaMs and police state just fine".

SoftTalker 9mo ago

Yes, decade(s?) ago some city or state in Germany decided to ditch Microsoft for Linux and OpenOffice. It didn't go well and they eventually backtracked.

qznc 9mo ago
You probably think about Munich and LiMux. Well, Microsoft had to move their German HQ there to get them back.

lm28469 9mo ago

You're delusional if you think people willingly use half of these products, remove the billions spent on lobbyism and these things will evaporate in 5 years tops

internet_points 9mo ago

> legit better Than ... Microsoft Teams? You're saying Microsoft Teams won because it is better than the competition?

tdrz 9mo ago

Teams is not better than Slack, but here we are ...

TheRoque 9mo ago

> The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking. Classic neo-liberalism BS (pardon my french). Markets are not some natural law written in the atoms, it's a human construction, and we shape it the way we want. Countries can create or destroy markets just with laws, you put a tax here, you put a legal requirement there. That's for example the reason that big american tech companies have been kicked out of South Korea: - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/08/south-korea-google-maps-geographic-data-restrictions https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/08/south-korea-go... - https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/12/05/an-update-on-twitch-in-korea/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/12/05/an-update-on-twitch-in-... Sure, if there are 2 competing companies that play with the exact set of rules, the mArKeT wIlL deCiDe, but that would be a really stupid decision from any government to not shape the rules in its favor. Europe is slowly waking up to this reality, better late than never I guess. Did the "market decide" that Nvidia chips won't be shipped to China ? Did "the market decide" to put tariffs to get benefits from other countries ? Did "the market decide" to put embargo to Cuba, Iran, Venezuela.. ? Hearing that regulations and laws is "wishful thinking" makes no sense at all. It's more the opposite, it's the only way to shape the markets the way you want to.

card_zero 9mo ago
> it's a human construction, and we shape it the way we want That's a category error. It's a social construction, a thing that emerges from the interactions of many humans. "We", an authority nominally working for the citizens, can shape it by using the law, a blunt instrument. It's like how you can shape the development of a musician by using threats and a baseball bat.