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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.

#161

Seriously, why are people still using twitter? It's owned by a Nazi supporter, is full of white nationalist racist posters, and seems a strange place to announce you are moving off of American tech.

Because for better or worse it still has significance and popularity. Nothing else really comes close.

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

#162
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.

Technology connections did a video on Betamax vs VHS that debunked this in a practical sense as Betamax had a version II that allowed 2 hour recordings, the quality was slightly better to early VHS instead the significant improvement of beta I (original standard)

Retail movie releases used II since most movies could fit on one tape. Beta I was rare and later betamax decks just ignored it or something for compatibility.

VHS HQ and HiFi, which came much later when beta was basically dead, was probably better than beta II and close to beta I in quality

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

#163

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…

I think they are a decade or two late to migrate away. They will end up developing their own in a time where these are loss leaders. It’s likely they will pay for it in a bundle while just not using it.

Not to mention in my experience EU companies don’t know how to migrate away from anything as their tech companies operate at the efficiency of a US government agency.

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

#164
post #117
post #70

I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking.

The way out of this hole is by the EU mandating a 5, 10 and 20 year plan for getting off US tech and pivoting to open source. Start with a target small municipality in each country. Switch to SUSE (with a desktop that supports Active Directory), Collabora and what not. Then switch the mail stack. Then the files stack. Etc. Next step is scaling it up to a small city, then a big city, then a province, and finally the w…

> The way out of this hole is by the EU mandating a 5, 10 and 20 year plan for getting off US tech and pivoting to open source.

I agree. All this hem and hawing will not get them anywhere, and will just have Microsoft again dropping bundles of money at the foot of officials to "pretty please don't switch awawy."

Mandate it, top down, make it law, then officials have the legal mandate to fall back on to tell Microsoft and the others to pound sand when they come knocking with the briefcase full of money.

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

#165

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).

Sure the issue was always there for you or people like you. But for a majority of the EU population there was no problem until very recently. And now people like you are starting to have more leverage to influence people who can make the right calls.

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

#166
post #70

I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking.

Sry but the world where ”markets decided” pretty much anything ended when Trump started his second term. EU is finishing a trade deal with India that creates a market of 2 billion people. Europe and China are closer than ever. I’m sure we can get along with Teans and police state just fine.

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

#167
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with OVH. Most EU companies, including this one, offer subpar services compared to their American counterparts.

They are fine. Cloud is a commodity. Hetzner and Bunny are pretty great and i am sure there are many more. The problem is when US decides to ban sales of compute hardware to EU (like they do to China). Then it will be clear who's really in power.

That could end in an ugly stalemate pretty fast, considering ASML is Dutch.

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

#168
post #70

I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. The only way to accomplish this at scale is to build something that is legit better and let the market decide. Anything else is just principled wishful thinking.

> I wish them luck, but while saying folks will drop the dominant apps seems all the rage at the moment people have been saying this for decades with almost no real progress at scale. This feels different. Up to now there hasn't a really good technical reason to want to switch from, say, Zoom to Teams (or vice versa). You might switch because of network effects: all your friends / coworkers are on the other one. But,…

And also, the speed at which you can build solutions has significantly been reduced because of AI. I wonder if this plays a role in their decision.

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

#169

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…

Canada is in the same boat as the EU -- desperately looking for alternative vendors at the moment.

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

#170

We need more like this. Europe is totally dependent on US companies for cloud computing.

Until now nobody thought it was a problem. At least not a big one. The EU made some moves to define a "cloud computing" platform for Europe, and very little people paid attention because business-wise it was very difficult to compete with US corporations that have vast amounts of money in cash and find easy to get funding.

But now there are some (small) alternatives.

LIDL has its own cloud for retail.

And I believe T-Systems sells some cloud computing for goverments based on OpenStack...

Small steps, but steps.

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