Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by itsamario » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

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…

Most of the 13 root dns servers are American. They're distributed geographically but still owned by American entities

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

#92

Post by jillesvangurp » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

A lot of these US vendors have data centers in the EU operating under EU law via legal entities in the EU. So, it's not all that black and white. And there are a growing amount of EU based alternatives.

And just to make a counter point, there are also US dependencies on the EU for some things as well. Mobile infrastructure is a good example; mostly comes from Nokia and Ericsson. What was left of US based network equipment makers was merged and acquired in the early 2000s. For example Bell Labs is currently owned by Nokia. It includes bits and bobs that once belonged to companies like Lucent and Motorola.

Another dependency is shipping; the US has very few ship yards left and is looking increasingly to the EU for things like icebreakers and some navy ships. Likewise, ASML the industry leader when it comes to making lithography machines used in chip making is based in the EU as well. And of course a lot of manufacturing uses machines made in e.g. Germany.

IMHO this mutual interdependence is actually a good thing. It stimulates maintaining peaceful relations and engaging in trade. We could use a little more of that. Isolationism didn't lead to anything good last century either.

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

#93

Post by em500 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #85

deeddy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason is that they are based locally, they charge in EUR, you can get the VAT back, and they are much more affordable than AWS.

I'm still amazed my company is paying £10k per month for AWS when they could have one or two servers on Hetzner do the whole thing.

It's not "the company" that makes such decisions, but some senior managers or directors who do. They don't see a penny extra in their paycheck for savings money, but they are on the hook if anything goes wrong with less mainstream tech choices.

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

#94

Post by santiagohzszmex » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

Woow

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

#95

Post by khurs » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

There needs to be more free DDOS offerings and inbuilt DDOS from vm providers.

There was a period of time where DDOS was always on the news and Cloudflare regularly published 'we stopped a quadrillion request per second attack', and so people who are unlikely to be targets were nether the less terrified of being targeted/running up large bandwidth bills and stuck sites behind Cloudflare as default.

Should also add not just served by US vendors, but also 'and on American brand servers' seeing as most are Dell & HP with some Super Micro.

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

#96

Post by nightpool » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #40

I did a similar study but analyzing actual API subdomains, and ignoring those fronted by Cloudflare, Akamai, etc and the conclusion was the opposite: European companied are more likely to be using OVH and Hetzner than AWS/Azure https://bloomberry.com/blog/we-analyzed-50k-apis-heres-which...

This doesn't say anything about which providers are the majority in Europe, which is what OP's study is about. Your findings (non-US companies are "more likely") and OPs findings (US companies are the majority) are both compatible.

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

#97

Post by khurs » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

deeddy wrote: post #74

AznHisoka wrote: post #40

I did a similar study but analyzing actual API subdomains, and ignoring those fronted by Cloudflare, Akamai, etc and the conclusion was the opposite: European companied are more likely to be using OVH and Hetzner than AWS/Azure https://bloomberry.com/blog/we-analyzed-50k-apis-heres-which...

The main reason is that they are based locally, they charge in EUR, you can get the VAT back, and they are much more affordable than AWS.

I think primary reasons are that:

-data is kept in EU,

-lower latency for SSH if nearer

-most companies's are not global, and so most of their customers are going to be in the same country or nearby so makes sense to keep near the serves close.

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

#98

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

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…

Computer software is so incredibly cheap in a business setting (that includes public sector) compared to all other tools and expenses, that it always makes sense to pay for and use the most feature complete software you can get.

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

#99

Post by mike97 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

earthnail wrote: post #83

deeddy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason is that they are based locally, they charge in EUR, you can get the VAT back, and they are much more affordable than AWS.

AWS / GCP can invoice with EU reverse charge so I don’t even pay VAT. With Hetzner I have to claim it back at the end of the year. Hetzner is just way cheaper and pricing is more predictable. I don’t need any advanced cloud offerings. And yes, being outside the US is another advantage rn.

> AWS / GCP can invoice with EU reverse charge so I don’t even pay VAT. With Hetzner I have to claim it back at the end of the year.

Hetzner can do the same as long as you have a valid VAT code.

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

#100

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #92

A lot of these US vendors have data centers in the EU operating under EU law via legal entities in the EU. So, it's not all that black and white. And there are a growing amount of EU based alternatives. And just to make a counter point, there are also US dependencies on the EU for some things as well. Mobile infrastructure is a good example; mostly comes from Nokia and Ericsson. What was left of US based network equi…

> IMHO this mutual interdependence is actually a good thing. It stimulates maintaining peaceful relations and engaging in trade. We could use a little more of that. Isolationism didn't lead to anything good last century either.

I think interdependence is a good thing, but I think the EU is _reliant_ on the US militarily and economically and that's ... not great particularly when the US leadership is openly hostile toward Europe (and toward the US for that matter). I'm speaking as an American.