A shame that OP recommends Proton. The fact they don't support open email protocols like IMAP/SMTP without an extremely frustrating proxy setup is what ultimately turned me away from their service. Being able to "just" use a native mail client is pretty much a must. The vendor lock-in from something like Proton feels way worse as a result. Can't speak to Proton Pass, but it strikes me as a replacement that seems unne…
What's a good alternative to Proton? Still haven't migrated my business away from Google Workspace, and I was thinking Proton would be a good alternative, but apparently not if they don't even support IMAP/SMTP.
Moving away from US cloud services
231–240 of 383 posts
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perfect is the enemy of good. The EU has it's flaws, but if you can't see the difference between the US privacy climate and the EU privacy climate then you need a reality check.
Yup, in the USA you can still have VPN server that is not storing logs, something that is simply illegal in European Union countries. In the USA you can purchase prepaid SIM card in Wallmart with cash, put it in your phone and you have anonymous phone number, again, this is illegal in Europe in a typical stupid European way, as any criminal who needs an anonymous card would pull in to the retailer some drunk or homel…
In all of Eu countries I visited, only FI and DE asked for id when buying a prepaid sim card. And prepaid sim card days are almost over, as there is Airalo etc.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#233> Wrapping up - Migrating away from US cloud services was easier than I expected. This is absolutely not the main takeaway and I find it difficult to see how he could write this - there are gaping holes. Git repos (it's too difficult). NPM (ditto). Startpage uses Google's index. The only meaningful switch he mentions is Proton, but as other comments have pointed out they have vendor lock-in problems. The real takeawa…
"there's a real opportunity here for European companies to step up" and what would be business model? From tiny fraction of people that care about this - wast majority are also the same types, that are known to be unwilling to pay for any service ever even 1 cent.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#234> Wrapping up - Migrating away from US cloud services was easier than I expected. This is absolutely not the main takeaway and I find it difficult to see how he could write this - there are gaping holes. Git repos (it's too difficult). NPM (ditto). Startpage uses Google's index. The only meaningful switch he mentions is Proton, but as other comments have pointed out they have vendor lock-in problems. The real takeawa…
> It feels like there's a real opportunity here for European companies to step up and make a big play, but will they? Big plays are possible only with big capital, and that isn't what happens in the EU tech market. Lack of serious VCs is a problem on one hand, but to blame is also the EU Horizon program which will favor large established companies (which innovate very little), and the fact that the funding direction…
VC is almost every time grow and sell (to us).
So i think lack of vc can be good.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#235> Wrapping up - Migrating away from US cloud services was easier than I expected. This is absolutely not the main takeaway and I find it difficult to see how he could write this - there are gaping holes. Git repos (it's too difficult). NPM (ditto). Startpage uses Google's index. The only meaningful switch he mentions is Proton, but as other comments have pointed out they have vendor lock-in problems. The real takeawa…
> Git repos (it's too difficult) Sourcehut > Startpage uses Google's index. If they have enough users/make enough money, they'll make their own. Ecosia and Qwant (both european search engines) are working together to make their own index. In any case, even if a european is a proxy for an american service, you need to prove that there is a market for an european equivalent for change to happen.
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Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
he mentioned also Quad9 - Cloudflare DNS replacement. I didn't know about and will probably switch to it. My other picks: SEARCH: qwant (france) LLM: mistral (france), librechat.ai, openwebui VPN: mullvad (sweden), protonVPN (swiss) AUTH: OpenID (sadly seems like not many sevices implement it) CLOUD: Hetzner (germany), OVHCloud (france) MAPS: here wego, openstreetmap EMAIL: protonMail (swiss), fastmail (australia) DN…
Yes, but nobody competes with AWS, Azure or GCP, everything else is easy. And most likely, most of the services/saas you mentionned relies on "US" cloud infrastructure.
There is also https://UpCloud.com
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#237The biggest elephants in the room are cloud providers, but I didn't find an easy alternative yet (hetzner, ovhcloud). ATM, the idea to the business is sold, that data resides somewhere near by in a datacenter, EU proximity. However, the EU businesses are realising that, well, whole region is at a mercy of one person.
I think this is less of an issue than people actually think - if it gets to the point where this becomes a real problem, individual EU countries can force the datacenter owners like Google/MS to change ownership structure for these datacenters to EU-based subsidiaries or completely new companies if they want to continue to operate.
I wonder if there will be some kind of setup like AWS did in China - with a local partner managing the DC.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#238> Wrapping up - Migrating away from US cloud services was easier than I expected. This is absolutely not the main takeaway and I find it difficult to see how he could write this - there are gaping holes. Git repos (it's too difficult). NPM (ditto). Startpage uses Google's index. The only meaningful switch he mentions is Proton, but as other comments have pointed out they have vendor lock-in problems. The real takeawa…
he mentioned also Quad9 - Cloudflare DNS replacement. I didn't know about and will probably switch to it. My other picks: SEARCH: qwant (france) LLM: mistral (france), librechat.ai, openwebui VPN: mullvad (sweden), protonVPN (swiss) AUTH: OpenID (sadly seems like not many sevices implement it) CLOUD: Hetzner (germany), OVHCloud (france) MAPS: here wego, openstreetmap EMAIL: protonMail (swiss), fastmail (australia) DN…
Add Netcup for great and cheap hosting from Germany. I've been a customer for years.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's a good alternative to Proton? Still haven't migrated my business away from Google Workspace, and I was thinking Proton would be a good alternative, but apparently not if they don't even support IMAP/SMTP.
Fastmail[0] is what I use for my personal email. They support all the standards, but are also pushing things forward with standardising the JMAP protocol[1] which is much better suited to mobile clients than IMAP. They only have email and calendaring though, no equivalent of Drive/Docs/Sheets. [0] https://www.fastmail.com [1] https://jmap.io
I have used Fastmail for well over a decade, but they have their servers in the US, so I have been looking at alternatives.
Re: Moving away from US cloud services
#240Self-hosted Gitea instance to replace GitHub
Their "Gitea Actions" are based on "GitHub Actions", you don't even need to rewrite your CI Yaml