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US threatens EU digital services market access

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Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#71

Please destroy US tech, Ursula.

You are asking to severely damage the economy of the country providing your defense umbrella, when your continent is mired in a 3+ year land war.

Keep up. US is not an an ally to any European nation any more.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternatives to Microsoft, Google, IBM or AWS exist in Europe?

None of those are products, those are companies that offers 100s of products. The question is not is there as an alternative to Google-as-a-whole, but is there an alternative to Google Search (yes), to Google Analytics (yes), to Gmail (yes), to Google Ads (yes, but not really), to YouTube (no), and to Android (yes, but not really). Having a European mega-company that offers 100s of tightly-integrated products shouldn…

Let's hope that jolla and Sailfish OS make a comeback with their current crowdfunded and crowd-vote-engineered phone

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#74

Throwing stone from a glass box eh? If I understand correctly, US is by far the largest services exporter to EU… should EU merely apply the same “tariffs” that US might impose on these goods, some healthy European alternatives would finally gain some ground..

What alternatives to Microsoft, Google, IBM or AWS exist in Europe?

Just running Infrastructure is easy enough. Everyone did it before, we still can do it.

Its practical to use GCP, Azure and AWS for sure but yeah they were always market dominant.

Its probably time to say good buy to an old ally who became demented and hostile to europe :(

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#75

Please destroy US tech, Ursula.

You are asking to severely damage the economy of the country providing your defense umbrella, when your continent is mired in a 3+ year land war.

Is that defense umbrella actually real? Over the last year the US acted less and less as an ally to the point I wouldn't trust to actually help out in case of an attack

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many EU Governments run entirely on MS/Meta/Amazon and to a lessor extent Google services. Many (most?) government services run on Azure or AWS, and huge parts of the continent run on WhatsApp.

Which is a huge mistake. We should have learned that the USA can't be trusted when Nixon ended bretton woods so it didn't have to give France it's gold back.

The EU countries had decades to build and foster alternative companies yet they did not manage to do so. China did though.

Was it a lack of political will or short-termed-ness? Maybe both but the end result is the same.

You can't undo 20 years of inaction in a few years. It will take decades before viable EU competitors emerge and begin to rival US giants and that's if they even are allowed to do so in the first place.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#77
post #70
post #65

EU has the capital but does it have the knowledge workers to build out alternatives?

The problem isn't knowledge workers, we have plenty. The problem is that given the choice between being paid $55k for a EU based company and spend half your salary in rent vs making $200k+ working for a US based company most people chose money. Even without relocating, working for a US based company in Europe makes more sense... Working for Dassault or Rheinmetall on high tech military equipment will net you less tha…

A lot of people work comfortably for EU companies. Yes, there’s more money somewhere else in this world, but when your income is good enough other things matter more. I think you are exaggerating the problem. Europe can certainly handle building the core tech stack to achieve sovereignty.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is currently no real European equivalent to the [..] Wikipedia monopoly 8 out of the 10 largest Wikipedias are European languages...

Wikipedia is an American outfit, owned by the American businessman Jimmy Wales. It doesn't matter which language it is in.

Calling a system that is 90% foss and public domain "owned" by anyone is a bit of a stretch. I can, fully legally, download all the text of Wikipedia for about 130gb and host it myself. Besides, Jimmy Wales is awesome.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is American owned. It also pushes certain ideas very subtly. Or not subtly in the hagiographies of certain "philanthropists".

It does not matter anything in this case. It’s open source, it’s community-driven, and governance structure isn’t a moat. It can be forked in a matter of days, especially given that there exist independent European structures to support it.

Wikipedia is not community driven. About as public as so called public ownership in reality. It is clearly directed by a small group of people, mostly those with enough time on their hands.

Most folk can no longer edit it. They're blocked.

There are clear biases in its content provision, such as its coverage of certain rich people and establishment bodies.

Re: US threatens EU digital services market access

#80

Please destroy US tech, Ursula.

You are asking to severely damage the economy of the country providing your defense umbrella, when your continent is mired in a 3+ year land war.

Remind me again how committed the current administration is to providing a defense umbrella? Have they said anything interesting about it lately?
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