Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native • Hacker News Board

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#421

Post by ExoticPearTree » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

Throaway3126 wrote: post #406

ben_w wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want those actions to have been the red line, and wish my representatives to treat it so if they are not yet. It is important to keep separate what I want to be and what is.

They are the red lines. There is no going back. The USA is too dangerous to rely on, that's quite clear. People don't quite realize how big a deal "invading" Greenland would have been. That's literally an act of war! What's next, occupying France? Saying that it's at all a possibility is far beyond any red line that the EU thought it would have to deal with. Not only would the rest of the world ditch the USA, but the…

I'll bite.

Nothing would have come of it. Ehe EU would have been upset for 3-6 months, then it would have got onboard with the idea that Greenland is now a US territory and that's that.

France has a too good of a cuisine to be invaded. I think Germany would be next, they are running their mouth more than they should and they suck at food.

Unless the mid-terms change the political majority in the US, the Democrats can wine all they want and recognize or not recognize whoever they want as president. It will not change the actual situation.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#422

Post by Zigurd » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #351

thatwasunusual wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Give me virtual machines, reliable block storage, file storage and object storage, networking, dns, managed kubernetes, [...] But managers wants to _buy_ these services, not be directly responsible for them. That's where the problem lies, as I see it.

If those managers currently sold on The Cloud, can instead be sold on how much money they'd save not being on The Cloud, then corporate can do what it does best and change policy hard enough to give the staff whiplash. I don't know what managers have been reading/hearing, but for the last decade or so as a developer what I've mostly been hearing is that the only people who actually benefit from Big Data architectures…

> If those managers currently sold on The Cloud, can instead be sold on how much money they'd save not being on The Cloud...

This is more than a theory, it's a trend that is already underway. The cloud remains supremely capital efficient for startups, but pricing has crept up and some customers are falling off the other side of the table.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#423

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #286

Nextgrid wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer I guess we must be living on different planets. I have recently deployed a Django application for a client of mine on Scaleway (due to an existing partnership we preferred using them over other infrastructure). Scaleway right now (you can signup and check it out) offers: * container registry - build an push your containers there * ECS/Fargate equival…

> What more do you need exactly? That's essentially all I would use from the incumbent cloud providers anyway. Pub/Sub, Dataflow, CDN, GLB to name a few. I could go on with the list of services currently used by the people that pay to push buttons. Not to sound offensive, but others have more than a Django app that they need to run.

Having to roll each of those by your lonesome is still preferable over having some asshole cut you off from the services that you pay for on a whim. And that sort of thing is definitely on the table. Trump came within a hair of starting a shooting war with Europe, that sort of thing tends to cause people to re-evaluate their relationships.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#424

Post by bornfreddy » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #350

littlestymaar wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics That's true, but at the same time it was probably already the case before invasion of Ukraine, and it is definitely the case now. The main issue is political fragmentation: would Paris and Berlin risk lives of French and German people (soldiers and civilians due to retaliation) to save Vilnius? But if the answer is true (as obl…

The answer is always going to be "maybe", but hopefully enough of a maybe to deter hostile actions. That puts everything in an uncomfortable state of uncertainty.

Better uncomfortable state of uncertainty than comfortable state of war. Nuclear or conventional.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#425

Post by throw_a_grenade » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

> [...] but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer.

This is FUD, 1990s Micro$oft style. I guess nothing particular changed on this front.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#426

Post by Throaway3126 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #421

Throaway3126 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are the red lines. There is no going back. The USA is too dangerous to rely on, that's quite clear. People don't quite realize how big a deal "invading" Greenland would have been. That's literally an act of war! What's next, occupying France? Saying that it's at all a possibility is far beyond any red line that the EU thought it would have to deal with. Not only would the rest of the world ditch the USA, but the…

I'll bite. Nothing would have come of it. Ehe EU would have been upset for 3-6 months, then it would have got onboard with the idea that Greenland is now a US territory and that's that. France has a too good of a cuisine to be invaded. I think Germany would be next, they are running their mouth more than they should and they suck at food. Unless the mid-terms change the political majority in the US, the Democrats can…

Sorry but you're just wrong. This isn't a situation to be upset about. Its war. There's no universe where the USA invasion of Greenland doesn't end in disaster for Trump.

There's already been articles in Politico where USA lawmakers admit that there would have been a War Measures Act passed if Trump invaded Greenland. Unlike Venezuela.

It would definitely change the political situation if the state governments of California, New York et al stopped recognizing the federal government.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#427

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #333

dmix wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have noticed power dynamics which weren't well guarded against in the old way The clearest example is a dependency on a single wealthy nation for military and world policing. It's a good thing for individual countries to be able to project their own foreign policy goals like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics. Even here in Canada we should be able to defend their…

> like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics That's true, but at the same time it was probably already the case before invasion of Ukraine, and it is definitely the case now. The main issue is political fragmentation: would Paris and Berlin risk lives of French and German people (soldiers and civilians due to retaliation) to save Vilnius? But if the answer is true (as obl…

> The main issue is political fragmentation: would Paris and Berlin risk lives of French and German people (soldiers and civilians due to retaliation) to save Vilnius?

This is a wrong question. If one day Russia feels brave enough to attack any NATO country, the right question to ask is, "Do we want to fight this war on someone else's soil or on ours?". This is the reason why Europe is so focused on helping Ukraine BTW.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#428

Post by simianparrot » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

deaux wrote: post #167

simianparrot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Complete, utter bullshit. There are maybe 4 countries in the world with significantly less dependence on US tech. Out of those 4, one has magnitudes more government interference, another one has even more rules and regulations - including even stricter data privacy laws than GDPR - than the EU, the third has slightly less than the EU but also the lowest local tech % our of the 4, and the last one is Russia. But sure,…

Ok so where's the European alternatives? Where are they? Because in my experience as a Norwegian citizen who has started and run tech companies, we simply can't compete on this kind of tech because energy is more expensive, all the added costs of employment are so incredibly expensive (despite massive amounts of immigration, which only drains our welfare state anyway) and all the EU-based rules and regulations we must follow even when we're not direct members; all of these things and more related to them are absolutely stifling.

In this environment there is zero chance of an "AWS-like" competitor or anything remotely like it in the tech sector. And if you say "Hezner" I've got a bridge to sell you.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#429

Post by peyton » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

gchamonlive wrote: post #408

gottorf wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you elaborate on what constitutes far-left political activism?

I don’t know if this counts as activism, but I was at my university’s Faculty Club and a faculty member walked over and immediately started bitching about Donald Trump without introducing themselves. Like, you’re supposed to be in the business of developing people. What a gigantic waste of time and money.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#430

Post by barnacs » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

ndr42 wrote: post #375

barnacs wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other important aspects like what?

I will just provide 2 examples, but you can find a lot more. If your data is in the hands of a nation that uses this to block you from your data you should do something about it. [1] If your data is in the hands of a nation whose representatives are threatening your territorial integrity (greenland) you should find alternatives. [1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Criminal-Court-Microsoft-s-emai...

Right, but next time your data may be threatened by some European idiot rather than one from the US.

To quote from my other comment:

> In my view, data can only be protected by its rightful owner. And for that, we need education, not regulation.