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

#491

Post by pu_pe » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #369

9dev wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compliance and security testing does not go away just because you use cloud. The steps and questions will be different, but regulations like NIS and GDPR have extensive requirements regardless if you implement it yourself or buy it from an external supplier. That’s a bit disingenuous. If I don’t operate a physical server rack, I also do not need to take care of physical access control, fire suppression policies, ca…

Go through a security review. It not as simple as just saying "we outsource that so we have no idea what they do or how they manage the data". It is disingenuous to claim that people can just outsource the whole problem and not care. This would be part of the responsibility of the cloud managers, which need to be hired, paid and trained, on top of the cost of paying the cloud providers. There is no free lunch.

Sorry but I think it is indeed much easier to have a cloud provider take care of those things. That's partly how we came to the situation we are in: a lot of people outsourced this type of work to Microsoft or AWS, because it was easier.

I get what you are saying, that responsibility is still yours for making the correct choices, and to know what the cloud providers are doing. In the real world though hardly anybody cares, even though we have threats like the CLOUD act in place. So, yeah, people should care but ultimately they often don't.

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

#492

Post by constantcrying » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

Many European companies are already struggling financially, especially the large traditional businesses which form the backbone of the European economy at large.

Now you demand that these companies should rip out decades of the IT systems they have built up, which form the backbone of their day to day operations and replace them with third rate alternatives, nowhere near in capability, support and coverage?

Yes, I love open source and I wish to see it succeed, but this proposal is suicidal. Even if a superior and less costly alternative did exist (and it does not, just to be clear), just the effort of switching over would ruin these companies.

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

#493

Post by dev_l1x_be » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

Can’t wait until any European vendor gets 400 POPs around the globe with tier1 backbone and the same time has an API, can issue top tier certificates and has some of the features that for example Cloudfront has.

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

#494

Post by tliltocatl » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #480

tliltocatl wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Europe need AI datacenters to survive? AI is immature technology that is not yet critical to anything.

Define 'survive'. Given Europe's productivity gap with the US, they appear they are becoming even further a vassal. They will survive, but they further lose their leverage with each year. We see this in international politics as the US pivots away from Europe and towards Asia. (Although Russia's decline has also made it less necessary too) If you want Europe to rejoin 'great powers', as 'survival', yes they need AI.

Productivity in producing slop? Because that's the only thing LLMs are good for so far. And by the time this change the GPUs installed today will become obsolete.

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

#495

Post by tacker2000 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

Whats the best Euro S3 alternative?

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

#496

Post by 202508042147 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

severino wrote: post #401

202508042147 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you move the power from two American companies (Visa and Mastercard) to two American companies (Apple and Google)? What's that supposed to solve? Unsure what you mean, but for context I use an app developed by a consortium of local banks and it works by scanning a QR code. Indeed, I use an Android phone but my next one will be a de-googled one like a Fairphone with /e/OS. Hopefully the same app will work there..…

> Hopefully the same app will work there... That's the problem: currently many of those banking apps in the EU require having a phone with Google Play services and other "security" stuff that makes you reliant on American companies, like the post you're replying to claims.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, I am confident that those banking apps will (eventually) work without the likes of Google Play Services. Additionally, what i really want is an alternative to Visa/Mastercard, meaning I can use it for renting a car or paying online.

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

#497

Post by varispeed » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

swordbeta wrote: post #284

varispeed wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

online.net is quite close.

Why not just say Scaleway?

Thanks. I meant to say, but it's always been online.net for me. Can't get used to Scaleway.

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

#498

Post by cmenge » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

1. Europe doesn't have comparable offerings. The amount of money invested is below what a single hyperscaler spends per quarter. (StackIT might be on track to change that looking at the pure numbers)

2. European politicians still seem to believe it's about renting compute and storage; they seem to have little understanding of what "a cloud offering" really is; the EU has less than 5% of GPUs, supposedly

3. For healthcare, they already forced you years ago. This led to hosting on Telekom Cloud which runs on OpenStack by Huawei. (EU commision wants to ban Huawei from 5G but it's ok to use their software? 'Is open source and can be inspected' seems largely theoretical given the reality of cybersecurity)

4. If push comes to shove, the EU is critically dependent on the US in so many aspects (defense, lng to name two very important ones) that eventually, they would falter if the US wants your data in a specific case anyway

5. As a private citizen, given the incarcerations in the UK and Germany, it seems one should worry more about the EU getting your data than the other way around

That said, would be nice to have healthy competition, but after hearing this for 10++ years, it's getting really old. It might have been a good idea not to sleep on the AI trend, but, well...

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

#499

Post by _fizz_buzz_ » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

np_tedious wrote: post #465

202508042147 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going with the default, we were already using other services from them.

So you still have other stuff with AWS?

I think they meant it the other way around. They mostly used AWS and had already some stuff on Hetzner, which made switching over to Hetzner easier.

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

#500

Post by philipallstar » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

kaffekaka wrote: post #454

Zigurd wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but obv. Only lunatics would use a Russian cloud service. The interesting part is whether and what extent China is different. Also, why Europe should start treating us like Russians.

[flagged]

The massive sanctions he's placing on Russian oil make that impossible to believe.