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Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

politico.eu

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Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#231

Post by cosmodisk »

Nextgrid wrote: post #139
namdnay wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a bit of a brain drain, but it's also compensated by great engineers from poorer countries (Italy, Romania, Poland etc) migrating in If remote works, it won't really be a brain drain anymore, because they'll be paying taxes and spending their money in France :)

Is there any reason why the engineers from poorer countries will emigrate to France instead of the better-paying countries?

1) Closer to home country. 2) No visa needed. 3) Less anti-immigrant rhetoric. 4) Better work/life balance. 5) Free healthcare.

If 10 years ago there were predominantly outfits servicing larger US/UK/Scandinavia companies, now it's shifting towards building their own products/services. Basically the guys learned how to do it and not they start spreading the wings. The only thing missing in Europe is active and mature VC sector that could match that in the US.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#232

Post by ReticentVole »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #82
icelancer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they think Google became what it is, or most American companies like Amazon? That the US government funded it and kickstarted them with VC funds? A company like Airbus makes some sort of sense since the government heavily funds Boeing/Lockheed Martin via defense contracts. But Amazon/Google and VC-backed tech startups and companies? Not to mention that the pay for software developers and engineers in general i…

I.e. Germany has: * A good, free education system * Social security * Good healthcare system * Proper democracy * Politicians who aren't clowns * A total of 500 police killings ... in total since 1950 The US is close to becoming a failed state due to the increasing wealth and income gap. Also, please do me a favour and read up a bit on the history of silicon valley and us innovation. It's hard to claim the government…

Germany is (until recently) also ethnically homogeneous, unlike the USA.

Its a lot easier to offer those services when everyone has roughly the same income, the same education, the same IQ, the same genetics, the same family experience.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#233

Post by detaro »

heipei wrote: post #223
zetalemur wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but there is also cloud.hetzner.com. It is rather newish and lacking most features the big 3 offer, but it might be getting there.

Hetzner Cloud is great for what it is, I personally love it. But the pace of product development at Hetzner is such that I would anticipate something like a managed load-balancer maybe being available in 1-3 years from now, and after that another year for the next product etc. They don't seem to be in a rush to compete with AWS (or even Scaleway) by broadening their product offerings, they'd rather stick to their str…

I wonder how much that is based on the company background. Hetzner is a traditional hosting company. Cloud companies either had large existing software development base and datacenter expertise, being way larger than a company like Hetzner, (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) or don't run the hardware themselves (Heroku, various DBaaS offerings, ...) and focus on the software offering, typically backed by VC to cover the initial investment. I assume Hetzner would like to expand there, but it's expensive, a culture shift and somewhat risky given their well-founded and established competition.

EDIT: I guess DO, Linode, ... are closer equivalents to Hetzner?

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#234

Post by speedgoose »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #187
narag wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not retaining talent. People doesn't just migrate in mass to the USA. The problem is how easy is to create a company, raise funds and get the needed licenses.

>People doesn't just migrate in mass to the USA. Pretty sure the strict and difficult process of getting a working visa has something to do with that as well, not just that not everyone on the planet is interested in migrating.

Usually you migrate to a better country to improve your life. USA is attractive in some ways, but also unattractive in some other ways that are personal to everyone.

For me the salaries in the silicon Valley are very attractive, but the social issues in the country makes me prefer Europe. Even though my salary is ridiculously low compared to USA.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#235

Post by Pedrit0 »

adev_ wrote: post #36
thamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

Pretty good summary yes. The idea itself of supporting Europeans alternative to face American and Chinese tech giants is by itself noble (and I think necessary). However, the usual way it is done is a disaster: top-bottom, funding some existing behemoth company that will have no capacity whatsoever to innovate, nor will to do so. But they will get the money because they have good connections. If you think about it, i…

Well, I think we have no choice in Europe even if it looks weird and too late. Keeping on depending on the US or China for vital infrastructures such as cloud would be a suicide for Europe. US and China cannot be trusted as they only think business and tech in terms of predation and domination. And their tech companies have too many bonds with their intel agencies. This move should be seen as another evidence of the growing atlantic rift.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#236

Post by klohto »

thiht wrote: post #123
CalRobert wrote: post #48

"repository of existing services and resources that are available in the ecosystem, including the capability to search this repository" Yeah I totally want to spend my time digging around in there for "which random company can I get a crappy version of AWS Lambda from?" I'm no fan of monocultures and US/Chinese influence but if they want it to actually work they could say "here's a terraform provider that figures it…

> Yeah I totally want to spend my time digging around in there for "which random company can I get a crappy version of AWS Lambda from?" Or seen another way: "where can I get a better alternative to the suckish and overpriced AWS lambda, which also respects my data?". Perspective. AWS is not the best everywhere.

How does AWS not respect your data? And in which way is Lambda suckish? It’s the leader in serverless workloads and grounds for Firecracker...

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#237

Post by joelbluminator »

heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

The talent is there, the money could be there if Europeans governments take it seriously, so why not? What's stopping EU from building an AWS equivalent? It's not rocket science. If Europe could come up with companies like ASML which are at the top of chip engineering, they can definitely build software infrastructure. Some of your points ring true but A) What used to be doesn't mean it will always be B) U.S has it's own problems as you can see

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#238

Post by fauigerzigerk »

gspr wrote: post #181
heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south. While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate th…

It's not just Germany though. The UK is absolutely obsessed with making phone calls. Lots and lots of completely useless phone calls. Most of them could easily be replaced by an online booking system. Others serve no purpose at all, because all that's required is for them to take some action.

Same with US corporations. I recently tried to sign up for Microsoft's partner network because that's required for an Office 365 integration I was interested in. But I wasn't able to complete their byzantine signup process because there's a bug in the user interface that prevents me from confirming the tax status of my company. It's a simple bug, completely unrelated to the specifics of our company.

I wrote to them asking them to fix the bug so I can proceed. Predictably, they want to talk on the phone. They left some unintelligible message on my voicemail. Then they sent me an email saying they needed additional information from me without saying what that information was. They just want me to reply to arrange a time for a phone call.

I lost interest.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#239

Post by joelbluminator »

heipei wrote: post #186
gspr wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south. While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate th…

You're right, and I'm glad I started by saying that I'm German because lots of smaller European countries run circles around us in terms of tech adoption. I don't underestimate the value of quality of life, and I don't blame anyone who knowingly works for a stable, "boring", old-school German company which has been the world-leader in its niche for the past 100 years. But I think many people here are not aware that t…

There's a lot of criticism of the US/VC model, sure it brought tremendous success stories but it's not clear if the model actually works.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#240

Post by jogundas »

9q9 wrote: post #175
cageface wrote: post #120

American internet companies can address a large, relatively homogeneous market of 300 million people that all speak the same language. This alone is a big competitive advantage over any European company.

That is true for customer-facing softwre, but would not be relevant in e.g. semiconductors, compilers, formal verification.

For these B2B applications, it is important to have your potential customers in your network. One can argue that achieving such a network is easier in the US, where most of the potential customers presumably are.
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