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Moving away from US cloud services

martijnhols.nl

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Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#271

Post by fransje26 »

The problem I see with this article, is that 3 of his chosen options rely on Swiss companies. And Switzerland is most definitely not the EU.

For the time being their interest are very much aligned with the EU (and logically so, from a geographical and economic standpoint), but Switzerland also has a history of happily changing sides when their "neutrality" or their financial interests are at stake.

Their historical dependency on finance (and their shady practices), combined with a high dependence on US trade, and high financial investments in the US make them particularly vulnerable to economical and financial blackmailing by the US. For a case-in-point, see the particularly weak response (or "diplomatic" response, staying charitable..) of Karin Keller-Sutter to the Trump developments, in a bid to hopefully avoid tariffs.

Therefore, companies obeying Swiss laws simply do not offer the same "privacy" guarantee as companies obeying EU law.

Secondarily, putting your trust in a company who's CEO openly supports the Republican party is, in the current context, very questionable. No matter the Proton PR denials and clean-up attempts after the facts.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#272

Post by fhennig »

teekert wrote: post #7

I find the Proton tools to be a joy to use and I use them for my business. For clients, I can't do that to them. Microsoft completely dominates and people just expect to be able to video call, chat, work on docs, etc. MS365 remains incredible value for money and pretty optimal for normies.

I agree!

I switched because of their calendar integration. I needed an email tool that would send 'accept' replies to calendar invites send from outlook and google, and I landed on proton.

To any self-hosters if you have a working setup for that (email+calendar), please let me know! I couldn't find anything decent.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#273

Post by lagrange77 »

favflam wrote: post #91

Is anyone migrating away from microservice architecture back to just big box single monolith blob like back in the 1990s/2000s? I really liked using Hetzner and pure metal. The only real hold-back I have from switching from Google is email and doing backups.

That would be HN, i guess.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#274

Post by mprev »

teekert wrote: post #142
CER10TY wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you recommend moving from Google Workspace to Proton? Including emails and so on.

Well, there are no (classical) office tools. There is a text editor, but no spreadsheet. Their "Drive" solution is very mvp, you can collaborate on text docs, but it's very minimal. Email is great, looks great, fast, nice feature set. Calendar is mvp-ish, I can accept invites and they go into the calendar and they have nice links to Teams or Meet etc, pretty seamless. They also have widget for a iPhone now, but it's…

Important to note that the migration works well one way only. If you later want to migrate out it'll be more painful.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#275

Post by pjc50 »

m000 wrote: post #186
frereubu wrote: post #58

> 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? Or for the EC to stop their "rearm" BS, and actually do something useful for the people by helping such companies. This is the real battleground for European independence and freedom.

The US demanded rearmament for years, and the combination of US and Russia has now forced Europe - including previous neutrals Sweden and Finland - into rearmament. Only a proper, just, end to the war in Ukraine can remove the need for it now.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#276

Post by iagooar »

cinntaile wrote: post #55
iagooar wrote: post #37

[flagged]

Something important to keep in mind... It's the current US leadership blowing up relationships, not the other way around.

The US has been vocal about Europe having to spend more on defense as part of NATO. Yet most countries didn't, preferring to spend the money on other things. Governments of the largest European economies have been so full of themselves, yet now their strongest ally is asking them to actually deliver.

I understand that for Europeans this might cause a negative reaction, but the reaction is pure emotion, not an attempt to understand both sides of the partnership.

The current administration has been pushing things very fast, that is true. Maybe too fast. But it is also refreshing to see that you can get rid of bureaucracy if there is a strong will.

And let's not forget that the change in the US administration has had a direct impact on the debate around de-regulation and making the business environment in the EU more friendly for entrepreneurs and new business. But it came only as a reaction to what Trump is doing, not as part of a clear strategy or execution plan.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#277

Post by pjc50 »

egorfine wrote: post #217
frereubu wrote: post #58

> 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…

> European companies to step up ... and drown in regulations and taxes. There's a reason why the vast, vast majority of IT startups are not in the EU. Source: am a startup in the EU.

There shouldn't, in theory, be a heavier regulatory or tax burden on an EU company operating in Europe than on a US multinational operating in Europe.

There is in practice, which is how we got into this situation.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#278

Post by pjc50 »

bamboozled wrote: post #183
Foobar8568 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you think all these massive companies will successfully continue to operate in a country where the rule of law is no longer respected? Like I understand how that might sound like hyperbole, but everything I'm reading seems to indicate the USA is on an express train to hackville.

Bribery.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tech-ceos-meta-amazon-don...

(the risk is of course that the administration is not stable enough to stay bribed, or intra-oligarch fighting breaks out between Musk and one of the others)

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#279

Post by sylware »

I am self-hosted, then I don't mind clouds, US or not, but... I am fed up with those "clouds" which are closing their eyes on the fact that they are weaponized by hackers, to point I started to think they actually want that, aka wrecking small hosting namely more business for them.

Nearly everyday I get a scans/hack attempts(script kiddy grade for what I can see...) from some of them, this is seriously annoying and those 'scans/hack attempts' have been usually referenced by security communities, OFTEN FOR MONTHS IF NOT YEARS.

No "cloud" is spared: aws, microsoft, google, ucloud.cn (the worst), ovh, etc...

On top of that, they are "protecting" 'scanners' (onyphe/stretchoid/cyberresilience/etc), you know those guys who are scanning(when it is not some kind of script kiddy look-alike hack attempt) the whole internet, that 'for your own good' with the second line of their website being 'pricing (ahem... scan data)'. We all know that you do not scan any system without being explicitely asked for unless... military/police.... or mob.

Re: Moving away from US cloud services

#280

Post by bad_user »

On Bitwarden, at least for now, it's mostly Open Source … for techies, for the server-side, there's Vaultwarden which is easy to self-host and with self-hosting of FOSS software you achieve true data sovereignty.

https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

I'm an EU citizen and I worry about the US as well, but we need to be careful about this migration to EU services, as in some areas the European alternatives aren't good enough and people will go back to Big Tech, instead of preferring a FOSS solution that happens to have US dependencies.

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