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France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

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Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#131

Post by bahmboo »

cmiles8 wrote: post #124
i_love_retros wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

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.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#133

Post by zulban »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #128
softwaredoug wrote: post #113

Americans fail to appreciate a few things about our economy 1. We have a large homgoneous market where you can build a product and it’s expected it can succeed for hundreds of millions of Americans 2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market 3. there’s not an easy 3rd economy that replaces EUs wealth, population, and comfort with Englis…

India, but many companies aren't willing to price for the market nor respect corporate norms there.

What corporate norms are notably different in this context?

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#134

Post by _pdp_ »

Many EU members impose regulatory requirements for software in some sectors. If you want to get certified you need to go through some of them and while they are arcane they are also required.

EU could easily force the hand - not in the next month or so but over a period of time. No need to discriminate against US companies but EU companies might be preferred and might have better access to EU services.

We already have customers asking for this. They are not the majority but given the recent events this could quickly become a valuable chunk of the business - perhaps even overnight. We as a business are already thinking about it. And it is not just about moving the data to an EU data center. This is of course acceptable in many cases but still subject to the CLOUD Act. We are talking about a clean cut situation.

It is true that good alternatives are not available, yet. But I would not underestimate EU tech companies either. There are plenty of great engineers and great companies in EU so strong competitors can spun up in short order. Now with AI coding assistants, it is even more doable then before.

It is also potentially a great opportunity especially now.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#135

Post by spockz »

cmiles8 wrote: post #124
i_love_retros wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

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.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#136

Post by jeppester »

idontwantthis wrote: post #69
captain_coffee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Americans will even pick up the phone or respond to LinkedIn messages / emails when they will se the budgets for the software Engineering roles in the EU. I am saying that as an European, just to be clear.

With a baby on the way, I'd seriously consider it for their lifetime benefits. Where does one begin looking?

I don't know about France, but here in Denmark you'd generally find tech jobs on LinkedIn.

If you have a decent amount of experience I don't think you'd be looking for very long.

But as stated by other commenters, the salaries and lower and the taxes higher.

What you get back is great worker protection, child care, free education and generally a feeling of safety for yourself and family. We also have a democracy that offers more than two choices!

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#137

Post by _ache_ »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #66
_ache_ wrote: post #26

Can access X because it's X and locally blocked, "ironic" to use Twitter to post about sovereignty. It's ongoing for a will with La suite numérique ( https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ ). - Tchap is a message app for officials, - Visio, based on LiveKit - FranceTransfert, I don't know what is it. - Fichiers => Drive - Messagerie => Email - Docs => A better Google Docs - Grist => Excel version of Google docs. It aimed…

Ironic to use Github to post about sovereignty )

I'm trying to not use it myself but yes, la suite numérique should get out of GitHub.

They already did it for the Ministry of Education with [La Forge](https://docs.forge.apps.education.fr/). Used to be forgejo, now a GitLab instance.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#138

Post by bootsmann »

fcarraldo wrote: post #19
kylecazar wrote: post #14

I don't see the dependency on these productivity and communication tools as that difficult of a problem to solve. They are going to have a much harder time weaning off American cloud infrastructure and on to something purely domestic.

ScaleWay and OVH are already filling this gap.

StackIT is the AWS competitor actually, OVH is not really laid out to be a hyperscaler.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#139

Post by eigenspace »

cmiles8 wrote: post #100
harikb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Sure, and right now, a product being owned by a corporation susceptible to direct influence from the US government is a massive negative when people are evaluating products.

The evalutation metric for various vital projects has massively changed over the last couple years. These European products still need to be technically good, but they no longer need to be better than American products in order to find customers.

With the current level of geopolitical tensions, this is nowhere near enough to cause a massive exodous where all systems that were previously working fine are ripped apart and replaced with new systems, *but* one can be sure that whenever people are looking at new projects, or updates to old systems, the evalutation metrics have changed quite a bit, and this is creating strong momentum for European tech.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#140

Post by captain_coffee »

ivolimmen wrote: post #114
idontwantthis wrote: post #13

I wonder if the EU will begin trying to recruit American software engineers. I’d love to move to France.

In the Netherlands we return 30% of your taxes in the first 10. So we welcome you as well. We may pay less compared to the USA but we have health care, better work life balance and we all talk English.

the first 10 what? Years? It's actually not like that: https://www.government.nl/topics/income-tax/shortening-30-pe...

From 1 January 2024, expats who meet the conditions receive the following tax benefits:

- 30% tax free for the first 20 months;

- 20% tax free for the next 20 months;

- 10% tax free for the last 20 months.

So that's a tapered reduction over the first 5 years and the amount of money that you gain after tax is between negligeable and insultingly small.

Basically in its current form "The Dutch 30% ruling" is not really worth it, if you want to move to The Netherlands do it for other reasons, and the advertisment of this mechanism feels borderline disingenious in its current form.

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