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Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

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Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#71

Post by dopidopHN »

toss1 wrote: post #30

Good information, and I see no sign it has been noticed in the US (which is why your report is good info). The first question is how broad is this shift; is it really everywhere on the street or just in the "early adopters"? The next question is how durable is the trend? The things I've noticed here are reports of AfD rapidly losing 5% in the polls after Vance spoke in Munich, and a French right-wing leader cancellin…

Trust build slowly and erode quickly.

I don’t know about people usage of tech.

But it’s now really clear that the US is not a reliable ally. ( not even getting into politics, just stability wise : it’s clear that a change of regime can have the country do a 180 in term of foreign policies. And it’s not a good look )

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#72

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

They probably know it very well but there's not much they can do about it since the Democratic party lost so thoroughly in the last election, leaving them little ability to influence the course of events. Even something as utterly disastrous for US tech companies as the proposed tariff on semiconductors is, as far as I can tell, largely being met by silence. That's how bad the situation is.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#73

Post by silverquiet »

I'm a US Millennial and my impression is that the US has spent my adult lifetime destroying its soft power, and this week is really just a culmination of that. US tech firms do not and have never (at least in my time working for them) cared about anything other than a pathological pursuit of profit that borders on nihilistic paperclip-optimization.

I believe that US firms see European tech companies as slow/lazy and think that good engineers only seek high compensation which is available to them in the US. Certainly there are some who are motivated by that, but I have known some great engineers in Europe which was one of my reasons for cautioning my American peers about pushing too hard for WFH; if they can do the job from home, then so can others in countries with lower costs of living.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#74

Post by seanmcdirmid »

It really depends on if Europe hates America more than they hate China (or even Russia). Once Europe embraces Chinese tech over American tech (eg alibaba over Amazon, WeChat over Facebook, baidu over Google, BYD over Tesla) it’s all over for the USA as a world power. If they still hate China more than the USA, then it’s somehow salvageable.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#75

Post by tway223 »

abraxas wrote: post #14

Never thought I'd live to see the end of Pax Americana and yet here we are. To give up this amount of control and soft power just to cozy up to the corpse of the Soviet union is not the universe branch I expected to find myself in. You yanks might think this is some display of your upper hand. Just wait until the civilized world turns its back on the greenback as the reserve currency. You will be so fucked.

Something definitely doesn’t smell right for Trump/Musk.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#77

Post by notyourwork »

toss1 wrote: post #30

Good information, and I see no sign it has been noticed in the US (which is why your report is good info). The first question is how broad is this shift; is it really everywhere on the street or just in the "early adopters"? The next question is how durable is the trend? The things I've noticed here are reports of AfD rapidly losing 5% in the polls after Vance spoke in Munich, and a French right-wing leader cancellin…

I suspect it is far too early to tell. In 6 months the data may be an indication of something. Right now, it’s just not sufficient amount of time to conclude.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#78

Post by dybber »

globalnode wrote: post #9

I was just thinking today how long will it be until Windows is turned into a weapon. I know I know, but its not really paranoid to think that anymore is it? Imagine the chaos around the world caused by Windows machines simultaneously reformatting hard disks except in America.

I guess Microsoft would like to maintain trust by their customers. The attack vector is the other direction, if Trump missteps and tries to use force on EU member states, EU will use its economic “bazooka” which for instance would especially target firms like Microsoft.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#79

Post by Daril »

croemer wrote: post #34
Daril wrote: post #8

For what it counts, I deleted my Amazon account today (and lost all my Kindle books in the process), I'll never buy anything from them again. I'll close my S3 storage account with a US company in the coming months : I'll switch to a German service. In the coming weeks, I'll also delete my GMail account (my devices are already deGoogled since many years). There a lot of European alternatives that respect our privacy,…

Beware if you want to use Hetzner's s3, they had a massive repeated outage over the past few days and don't offer any reliability guarantee, not even something like 99.9%. Maybe you're thinking of something else, or don't care if you can't upload/download for a few hours here and there - just wanted to warn as I was surprised by this as a user.

Yes, I was considering Hetzner or Scaleway, I have a few months to decide before my current prepaid plan expires.

Thank you for the heads-up !

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#80

Post by phl »

I’m not making this up. I was thinking about posting the exact same question an hour ago. I am questioning my entire tech and communication stack. The first thing I did was download all my emails locally with offineimap. I can’t deny that I’m worried to get rug pulled by US companies any moment now.
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