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Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

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Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#61

Post by williamdclt »

rukshn wrote: post #2

I find the Europe's relationship with tech to be wired, there is one section that is hardcore-opensource fanatics, they want to host everything by themselves, and want to go through the trouble of keeping things updated, and would not want to use a close source tools even though they are developed by European counterparts. On the other side there are people who are techy but happy to use US products, and when you pit…

Well it's because few people have "European-ness" as a strong personal value. Some people have strong values around open-source, or even around the specific country, but the sense of being European and valuing European things is just not very widespread, so in absence of a specific personal value, they pick the cheapest/biggest/most-known option which is usually American.

This is quickly changing though: my subjective take is that the US antagonism is pushing people away from American product AND making the European identity stronger.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#62

Post by shevy-java »

Europe right now is the ultimate US vasall. Germany is the leader here; France and Netherlands are much more self-conscious but also way too dependent on US corporations. The worst part is that in Germany with Merz in charge, this will not change. He is a good puppy for the USA.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#63

Post by jurgenburgen »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #36

Let me repost another comment of mine. TLDR: Yes, ofc we use Microsoft, Amazon (AWS), Cloudflare and Cisco... There is even mainstream press articles about it here in Sweden. "dependance on microsoft ooh so bad" etc. I find it laughable. Unless you have a time machine to 2005 (EC2 came out in 2006 that should have been the signal) there is no way to compete now. That train has left the platform. Second, Nokia and Eri…

So just lie down and take it?

Let the yellow man put some more tariffs on imports from the EU. Let him ban EU citizens from Visa/Apple/Microsoft when they disagree with MAGA. Maybe give east Europe to Russia, the west half can be the 51st, 52nd and 53rd states.

As long as there are no options we have no freedom.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#64

Post by mrtksn »

embedding-shape wrote: post #57
mrtksn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't going to be "EU tech" as long as US can access the EU market as freely because for the mainstream anything it doesn't make sense to have a duplication effort for the EU. USA is/was easier to start business and get funding, you can access Europe just as well from there so why bother with the European based stuff if you are targeting a broad market? After Trump now there is a reason to actually go for Europ…

> USA is/was easier to start business and get funding I think this would highly depend on the country. With a solid business plan, I could easily get funding via banks and literally start a company with the press of a button in web portal, in Sweden. Similarly, Estonia seems to have made it ridiculously easy as well. In Spain it's slightly harder, I have to fill out some forms, but with stable income, very easy to ge…

Seden is a success story, just as Estonia but instead doing that and god knows what complications it creates across EU borders you can just create a company for pretty cheap in US and be clear on the situation across all the EU since US is a 3rd party with much clear rights and obligations towards EU. AFAIK that's why the EU wants to have a 28th regime.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#65

Post by LucaSiviero »

mrtksn wrote: post #53
LucaSiviero wrote: post #26

As an Italian solo-founder, I have to admit that the US vendor dependency is really strong, but when you look at what you need to build a serious product, what can you actually use from European vendors that is even close to US products? Take Stripe as an example: is there a real alternative that covers what they do? Not to talk about Cloud and Edge Computing vendors: GCP, AWS, Cloudflare... does anyone even get clos…

There isn't going to be "EU tech" as long as US can access the EU market as freely because for the mainstream anything it doesn't make sense to have a duplication effort for the EU. USA is/was easier to start business and get funding, you can access Europe just as well from there so why bother with the European based stuff if you are targeting a broad market? After Trump now there is a reason to actually go for Europ…

Totally agree. As you said, the gap is significant and closing it requires a lot of effort and investments to cover a risk that could eventually cool down if the general situation stops being this critical.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#66

Post by ExoticPearTree »

amiga386 wrote: post #49
karambahh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funilly enough, payment might be the area where it's the easiest to find a credible european alternative. Adyen is an enormous PSP Mollie is aiming at smaller companies. Scaleway, OVH, Hetzner, Infomaniak and others do have pre-packaged, managed services, but you might not find "eveything and anything" that you find at, say, AWS. The other side of the same coin is that you're as vendor-locked if you buid something wi…

The UK Government just replaced Stripe with Ayden for most payments, so good suggestion. https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/02/building-for-the-future-m...

There was a thread about it, and Ayden will not talk to you if you sell less than $5mm/yr using online payments.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#67

Post by gempir »

LucaSiviero wrote: post #26

As an Italian solo-founder, I have to admit that the US vendor dependency is really strong, but when you look at what you need to build a serious product, what can you actually use from European vendors that is even close to US products? Take Stripe as an example: is there a real alternative that covers what they do? Not to talk about Cloud and Edge Computing vendors: GCP, AWS, Cloudflare... does anyone even get clos…

Adyen is a big payment processor from the Netherlands which many EU retailers already use. Even with some worldwide customers.

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#68

Post by embedding-shape »

mrtksn wrote: post #64
embedding-shape wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA is/was easier to start business and get funding I think this would highly depend on the country. With a solid business plan, I could easily get funding via banks and literally start a company with the press of a button in web portal, in Sweden. Similarly, Estonia seems to have made it ridiculously easy as well. In Spain it's slightly harder, I have to fill out some forms, but with stable income, very easy to ge…

Seden is a success story, just as Estonia but instead doing that and god knows what complications it creates across EU borders you can just create a company for pretty cheap in US and be clear on the situation across all the EU since US is a 3rd party with much clear rights and obligations towards EU. AFAIK that's why the EU wants to have a 28th regime.

So is the US easier than the EU or not? Now you're saying Sweden is a "success story", does that mean it's easier than the US then?

> god knows what complications it creates across EU borders you can just create a company for pretty cheap in US

What? That doesn't make any sense. If I'm a Swedish resident, and I want to sell to Danes, then in no way is it easier for me to start a US company (?!) then sell to Denmark from outside the EU, than just starting a Swedish company and selling directly to Danes inside of the EU.

This is starting to sound like someone who never done intra-EU B2B or B2C at all. Where are you getting this from?

Re: Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors

#69

Post by mrtksn »

LucaSiviero wrote: post #65
mrtksn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't going to be "EU tech" as long as US can access the EU market as freely because for the mainstream anything it doesn't make sense to have a duplication effort for the EU. USA is/was easier to start business and get funding, you can access Europe just as well from there so why bother with the European based stuff if you are targeting a broad market? After Trump now there is a reason to actually go for Europ…

Totally agree. As you said, the gap is significant and closing it requires a lot of effort and investments to cover a risk that could eventually cool down if the general situation stops being this critical.

> a risk that could eventually cool down if the general situation stops being this critical

Exactly, EU must guarantee that there's no going back even if the next US president is likable, cooperative politician and not this thing that Trump is. Otherwise all your investment can perish if switching to MS, Oracle or Palantir or something becomes acceptable again 2-3 years.

A Trump invasion or something just as hard to fix needs to seal the deal.

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