12 ms·

Don't take the Canadian market for granted. There's a strong desire to forge closer links with the EU now and reduce dependence on products that could be weapo

by beloch 9mo ago

Don't take the Canadian market for granted. There's a strong desire to forge closer links with the EU now and reduce dependence on products that could be weaponized against us at any time. Geographic proximity doesn't count for much when it comes to software.

rchaud 9mo ago
It should also go without saying that Canada already had a vertically integrated telecoms giant in RIM/Blackberry that handled end to end smartphone comms globally in the 3G era, right down to compressing emails through their servers so they could be transmitted efficiently over 2G data networks. Unfortunately Blackberry was heavily dependent on US telecoms and corporations buying their servers and devices to pad their profits. And since then, local engineering talent from the Kitchener-Waterloo region has been siphoned off by Silicon Valley money, mostly to craft elegant solutions to deliver more ads to your devices.
- sbarre 9mo ago
  Canada's telcos are a "narrow waist" for a lot of software licensing. A lot of business customers bundle their business/productivity software with their phone and Internet services. Did you know you can buy Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Office through your telco? I was shocked to find out how many do this when I worked for one of the telcos. Just like how consumers bundle their streaming services with their home Internet plans. One bill for all the things is convenient. I would bet it's the same in EU (but can't say for sure, I only have first-hand info about Canada). If there was a real push to move companies away from these platforms, it would probably start there, mostly because the telcos are typically very government-aligned due to regulatory and spectrum concerns, and would get in line with government efforts to promote non-US alternatives, if they decided to. Getting the majority of consumers to ditch their US-based streaming and entertainment is another thing though, I can't see that happening ever, no matter how at-odds the US and Canada become.
  - afiori 9mo ago
    in the eu i think this is significantly less common
  - nico_h 9mo ago
    Maybe the high sea will become less policed by the Canadian IP police
- deeringc 9mo ago
  There was also Nortell
tick_tock_tick 9mo ago
But they EU doesn't make any software... So unless Canada is willing to go with Chinese software which would kinda invalidate any "moral" ground they have and well frankly the USA wouldn't allow it seems like the USA can take it for granted.
- beezlewax 9mo ago
  The EU doesn't make any software? Really now..
  - storystarling 9mo ago
    It feels like France is actually leading on the infrastructure side of things right now. With Mistral and Hugging Face both in Paris, the open source AI ecosystem is pretty heavily concentrated there.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - tensor 9mo ago
      And OVH and Scaleway. Also Gandi.
      - microtonal 9mo ago
        And Murena, one of the best shots at an alternative mobile OS ecosystem in Europe (preferably on Fairphone, which is Dutch). Though Germany has a lot of light and heavyweights as well, SAP, SUSE, NextCloud, Hetzner, etc.
      - account42 9mo ago
        Lol Gandi is a joke now that they have entered the desperately milking any remaining customers that haven't moved off yet phase.
      - Bayart 9mo ago
        Having worked extensively with OVH and Scaleway, I find it to be a far cry from what American hyperscalers offers. The cloud offering is just too thin and brittle as of now, though I think they will eventually get there because of the CLOUD Act which in the long term might prove to be a gigantic own-goal on the part of the US.
xp84 9mo ago
> weaponized against us I take a more optimistic stance here. Trump can only live so long, and everybody except basically Trump and John Bolton knows that the majority of his idiotic tariffs (and nonsensical belligerence like pretending NATO control of Greenland doesn't meet all our defense needs) are wealth-destroying on net, as well as wealth-destroying for at least 10x the number of people than they help (many of them I'd say 100-1000x as many). When Trump leaves the stage, those who replace him will either be Democrats sprinting at full speed from all his policies to demonstrate how not-Trump they are, or Republicans who want to grow the economy. Either way, the stupidity in a lot of his policies is a temporary condition. Note that I'm not saying everyone should give the US a pass or maintain as much economic and defense dependency on the US. But I think it's hyperbolic to make all your long-term plans assuming something as stupid and self-defeating as his worst anti-ally policies are a new normal, because they harm the US at least as much as they harm everyone else, and everyone but those two knows this.
- suddenlybananas 9mo ago
  Trump already left the stage once. This is something deeply wrong with the US that can't be explained away as a phase.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mg794613 9mo ago
    Exactly, Trump is the brainchild of American mindset. Not the cause, but the result. And now that even the Americans see it themselves, it's too late. They will _never_ gain the same trust again.
- tsimionescu 9mo ago
  I think that your outlook on US politics and future leadership is naively optimistic (though I very much hope to be wrong). First and most importantly, I don't think it should be considered a given at this point that there will be a democraticly elected successor to Trump. It's clear from past attempts and current declarations and actions that the Trump regime will try to maintain power instead of ceding it at future elections - whether they will succeed or not will depend a lot on American institutions and the power of the people. Secondly, your assertion that only Trump and Jon Bolton agree with the current policies seems deeply wrong. First of all, the VP (with a real chance to be President, given Trump's age and apparent health), seems very much on board. Secondly, much of Trump's policies are based on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document, including at least some of the foreign policy decisions. Thirdly, a desire to re-orient US foreign policy away from Europe (and thus NATO) and towards China exists in a large part of the traditional foreign policy establishment. Fourth, the leaders of the Democratic Party seem to have learned entirely the wrong lessons from the last election, looking more at which of Trump's policies they should adopt rather than what alternative solutions they can promise to the American people.
luke5441 9mo ago
Not only software. Think back to who supplied the vaccines during COVID.
- mgaunard 9mo ago
  The British and the Russians also had a COVID vaccine (and much cheaper), and the French cancelled theirs because they realized it would come too late to be competitive. So if they were restricted to some reason to use their own only, they would be fine.
  - andy_ppp 9mo ago
    The technology and vaccine design comes from BioNTech, a German company. Pfizer did the phase 2/3 clinical trials, worldwide regulatory expertise and manufacturing outside of Germany.
jillesvangurp 9mo ago
With 40M people, Canada is about half the size of Germany in terms of population and GDP. Also smaller than France. Canada is more similar in GDP to countries like Italy. The Spanish economy is a bit smaller but it has slightly more people (48M). The EU + UK is a bit over half a billion people. The thing with Zoom, Meets, Teams, etc. is that these aren't that hard to replicate. There is not much of a technical moat. It doesn't take a very large startup to create your own version of that. And given what a basket case teams is, it's also not that hard to do much better. There have been plenty of alternatives over the years. Network effect is what drives the growth there, not technical quality. So if the French want to use something else, all they have to do is pick something and they might get the network effect through mass adoption. That would work better if the whole of the EU does it of course. We'd still need a solution if we want to talk to people in the US. The reason why US drives the network effect traditionally is its trade relations. It's convenient for everyone to use the same tools and solutions.
- ninalanyon 9mo ago
  We need the EU to do for software what it did for device charging and require interoperability. There used to be several 'universal' chat clients, for example Pidgin.
  - mlrtime 9mo ago
    Bring back ICQ!
    - sam_lowry_ 9mo ago
      XMPP for all of it faults allowed interoperability.
  - bluebarbet 9mo ago
    Indeed, and the IM space is a good example of an unfinished job. IMO it's high time that Brussels stepped in and picked a winning protocol, i.e. Matrix, and mandated that public bodies use it.
  - 9mo ago
alexey-salmin 9mo ago
Canada is subject to the Monroe doctrine. Forge a link too close and there will be intervention of sorts.
- Ravus 9mo ago
  Threats only works if the threatened entity thinks they can avoid them via compliance. Tariffs come anyway, both Canada and Denmark are under threat of annexation, and ICC suspensions of Microsoft emails show that governments cannot rely on US tech.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 9mo ago
    Yes, or as Cory Doctorow put it: "So now we have tariffs, and if someone threatens to burn your house down unless you follow orders, and then they burn it down anyway, you really don’t have to keep following their orders." https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-12-16-k-shaped-recovery-disenshittification-nations-ad7498980566 https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-12-16...

by beloch 9mo ago

rchaud 9mo ago

It should also go without saying that Canada already had a vertically integrated telecoms giant in RIM/Blackberry that handled end to end smartphone comms globally in the 3G era, right down to compressing emails through their servers so they could be transmitted efficiently over 2G data networks. Unfortunately Blackberry was heavily dependent on US telecoms and corporations buying their servers and devices to pad their profits. And since then, local engineering talent from the Kitchener-Waterloo region has been siphoned off by Silicon Valley money, mostly to craft elegant solutions to deliver more ads to your devices.

sbarre 9mo ago
Canada's telcos are a "narrow waist" for a lot of software licensing. A lot of business customers bundle their business/productivity software with their phone and Internet services. Did you know you can buy Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Office through your telco? I was shocked to find out how many do this when I worked for one of the telcos. Just like how consumers bundle their streaming services with their home Internet plans. One bill for all the things is convenient. I would bet it's the same in EU (but can't say for sure, I only have first-hand info about Canada). If there was a real push to move companies away from these platforms, it would probably start there, mostly because the telcos are typically very government-aligned due to regulatory and spectrum concerns, and would get in line with government efforts to promote non-US alternatives, if they decided to. Getting the majority of consumers to ditch their US-based streaming and entertainment is another thing though, I can't see that happening ever, no matter how at-odds the US and Canada become.
- afiori 9mo ago
  in the eu i think this is significantly less common
- nico_h 9mo ago
  Maybe the high sea will become less policed by the Canadian IP police
deeringc 9mo ago
There was also Nortell

tick_tock_tick 9mo ago

But they EU doesn't make any software... So unless Canada is willing to go with Chinese software which would kinda invalidate any "moral" ground they have and well frankly the USA wouldn't allow it seems like the USA can take it for granted.

beezlewax 9mo ago
The EU doesn't make any software? Really now..
- storystarling 9mo ago
  It feels like France is actually leading on the infrastructure side of things right now. With Mistral and Hugging Face both in Paris, the open source AI ecosystem is pretty heavily concentrated there.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tensor 9mo ago
    And OVH and Scaleway. Also Gandi.
    - microtonal 9mo ago
      And Murena, one of the best shots at an alternative mobile OS ecosystem in Europe (preferably on Fairphone, which is Dutch). Though Germany has a lot of light and heavyweights as well, SAP, SUSE, NextCloud, Hetzner, etc.
    - account42 9mo ago
      Lol Gandi is a joke now that they have entered the desperately milking any remaining customers that haven't moved off yet phase.
    - Bayart 9mo ago
      Having worked extensively with OVH and Scaleway, I find it to be a far cry from what American hyperscalers offers. The cloud offering is just too thin and brittle as of now, though I think they will eventually get there because of the CLOUD Act which in the long term might prove to be a gigantic own-goal on the part of the US.

xp84 9mo ago

> weaponized against us I take a more optimistic stance here. Trump can only live so long, and everybody except basically Trump and John Bolton knows that the majority of his idiotic tariffs (and nonsensical belligerence like pretending NATO control of Greenland doesn't meet all our defense needs) are wealth-destroying on net, as well as wealth-destroying for at least 10x the number of people than they help (many of them I'd say 100-1000x as many). When Trump leaves the stage, those who replace him will either be Democrats sprinting at full speed from all his policies to demonstrate how not-Trump they are, or Republicans who want to grow the economy. Either way, the stupidity in a lot of his policies is a temporary condition. Note that I'm not saying everyone should give the US a pass or maintain as much economic and defense dependency on the US. But I think it's hyperbolic to make all your long-term plans assuming something as stupid and self-defeating as his worst anti-ally policies are a new normal, because they harm the US at least as much as they harm everyone else, and everyone but those two knows this.

suddenlybananas 9mo ago
Trump already left the stage once. This is something deeply wrong with the US that can't be explained away as a phase.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- mg794613 9mo ago
  Exactly, Trump is the brainchild of American mindset. Not the cause, but the result. And now that even the Americans see it themselves, it's too late. They will _never_ gain the same trust again.
tsimionescu 9mo ago
I think that your outlook on US politics and future leadership is naively optimistic (though I very much hope to be wrong). First and most importantly, I don't think it should be considered a given at this point that there will be a democraticly elected successor to Trump. It's clear from past attempts and current declarations and actions that the Trump regime will try to maintain power instead of ceding it at future elections - whether they will succeed or not will depend a lot on American institutions and the power of the people. Secondly, your assertion that only Trump and Jon Bolton agree with the current policies seems deeply wrong. First of all, the VP (with a real chance to be President, given Trump's age and apparent health), seems very much on board. Secondly, much of Trump's policies are based on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document, including at least some of the foreign policy decisions. Thirdly, a desire to re-orient US foreign policy away from Europe (and thus NATO) and towards China exists in a large part of the traditional foreign policy establishment. Fourth, the leaders of the Democratic Party seem to have learned entirely the wrong lessons from the last election, looking more at which of Trump's policies they should adopt rather than what alternative solutions they can promise to the American people.

luke5441 9mo ago

Not only software. Think back to who supplied the vaccines during COVID.

mgaunard 9mo ago
The British and the Russians also had a COVID vaccine (and much cheaper), and the French cancelled theirs because they realized it would come too late to be competitive. So if they were restricted to some reason to use their own only, they would be fine.
- andy_ppp 9mo ago
  The technology and vaccine design comes from BioNTech, a German company. Pfizer did the phase 2/3 clinical trials, worldwide regulatory expertise and manufacturing outside of Germany.

jillesvangurp 9mo ago

With 40M people, Canada is about half the size of Germany in terms of population and GDP. Also smaller than France. Canada is more similar in GDP to countries like Italy. The Spanish economy is a bit smaller but it has slightly more people (48M). The EU + UK is a bit over half a billion people. The thing with Zoom, Meets, Teams, etc. is that these aren't that hard to replicate. There is not much of a technical moat. It doesn't take a very large startup to create your own version of that. And given what a basket case teams is, it's also not that hard to do much better. There have been plenty of alternatives over the years. Network effect is what drives the growth there, not technical quality. So if the French want to use something else, all they have to do is pick something and they might get the network effect through mass adoption. That would work better if the whole of the EU does it of course. We'd still need a solution if we want to talk to people in the US. The reason why US drives the network effect traditionally is its trade relations. It's convenient for everyone to use the same tools and solutions.

ninalanyon 9mo ago
We need the EU to do for software what it did for device charging and require interoperability. There used to be several 'universal' chat clients, for example Pidgin.
- mlrtime 9mo ago
  Bring back ICQ!
  - sam_lowry_ 9mo ago
    XMPP for all of it faults allowed interoperability.
- bluebarbet 9mo ago
  Indeed, and the IM space is a good example of an unfinished job. IMO it's high time that Brussels stepped in and picked a winning protocol, i.e. Matrix, and mandated that public bodies use it.
- 9mo ago

alexey-salmin 9mo ago

Canada is subject to the Monroe doctrine. Forge a link too close and there will be intervention of sorts.

Ravus 9mo ago
Threats only works if the threatened entity thinks they can avoid them via compliance. Tariffs come anyway, both Canada and Denmark are under threat of annexation, and ICC suspensions of Microsoft emails show that governments cannot rely on US tech.
- SideburnsOfDoom 9mo ago
  Yes, or as Cory Doctorow put it: "So now we have tariffs, and if someone threatens to burn your house down unless you follow orders, and then they burn it down anyway, you really don’t have to keep following their orders." https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-12-16-k-shaped-recovery-disenshittification-nations-ad7498980566 https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-12-16...