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

#541

Post by Juliate » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #383

Juliate wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's up to you (and the customers) to understand that the location where the compute/data is happening is as important a criteria to consider. As it is today.

What if your customers disagree? Businesses generally shouldn't be trying to fight ideological battles, they should just be trying to meet their customers' needs. As long as they're not doing anything immoral/illegal like engaging in discrimination or dumping toxic waste.

Totally.

Risk = (probability of it happening) x (cost when it happens)

That a man/administration decides to cut off, or take hostage, or tax, online services because they are hosted on their premises, but benefits to/operates for "once good friends but now very unfriendly, bad, incompetent, the worst people", this is definitely not a law of nature.

But, that he/they decide to trigger absurd actions with long-lasting damaging consequences, while not a law of nature, that happened more often than not in the past 12 months than in the whole century before. Or, granted, maybe not "absurd", but definitely "not in line with a century of rather predictable behaviour".

So... you'd be rational to consider that the risk has moved from "low" to "med high" or "high" category in a lot of areas you do not control.

If the customer disagrees, fine: their business, not mine. My duty stops at notifying and documenting the risk.

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

#542

Post by tonymet » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

> I'm an eighth-generation American, and let me tell you, I wouldn't trust my data, secrets, or services to a US company these days for love or money. Under our current government, we're simply not trustworthy.

Thank you Redditor, you must have forgotten about the Patriot Act and how every President since has only worsened Privacy at home and abroad (we could easily go back to the 60s, and beyond). Remember CableGate, Prism, FISA Courts, or 3 dozen other Privacy violating programs?

Yes it all started with Trumpoldemort, lest we say his name.

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

#543

Post by dijit » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

hbogert wrote: post #489

tosapple wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they ditch Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle: we still use Linux, Sel4, ASML and ARM. There's lots of interesting stuff to watch out for.

what's wrong with using european stuff? (ARM, ASML) :P

Isn’t ARM owned by Softbank? (Japanese)

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

#544

Post by cteiosanu » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

cmenge wrote: post #498

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 health…

"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"

As a private citizen given the cold blood murders of US citizens by ICE, it seems EU citizens should really be worried of what such an administration is willing to do and can do to their long time allies.

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

#545

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #355

pjmlp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution is that sustainable companies are more worthwhile to society, than late scale capitalism companies that always lay off employees when the exponential growth targets set by their C suites aren't met.

The only reason companies exist is to make money for the founders and/or shareholders. Everything else is a pipe dream.

Only in capitalist minds.

Companies are nothing without their employees.

Naturally shareholders would rather have robots.

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

#546

Post by locknitpicker » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #357

kioku wrote: post #43

> This isn't just compliance theater; it's a straight‑up national economic security play. The woes of LLM contrasts… In all seriousness, the points made ring true not only for European companies and should make everyone consider the implications of the current situation, as dreary as they are.

Russian and China are already getting rid of Microsoft.

> Russian and China are already getting rid of Microsoft.

I don't know what you mean by China "getting rid of Microsoft" in the context of cloud providers. I mean, Azure is already present in China's internet, and just like any cloud provider present in China it's presence is a partnership with local cloud providers.

Russia is getting rid of Microsoft not because it has a choice. They are subjected to sanctions due to their invasion of Ukraine, and that essentially cut their access to all tech services. By that measuring stick, Russia is also getting rid of Boeing and Airbus.

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

#547

Post by fdgfikgfv » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

202508042147 wrote: post #58

Last week I migrated our db away from AWS RDS to a European cloud provider. Everything runs fine and we also have it cheaper! One of our domains is due for renewal in a couple of months. I'm setting up the transfer to a EU registrar for it next week. This all takes time and it's not the most important thing for the bottom line, but on the long run I'm sure I'll look back and say it was a great investment.

This is happening in the US firms too. Yesterday, our CTO asked us to look into multi-cloud solutions. We know it is politically motivated decision with no cost savings or benefit.

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

#548

Post by christophilus » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #518

tosapple wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they ditch Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle: we still use Linux, Sel4, ASML and ARM. There's lots of interesting stuff to watch out for.

Isn’t Sel4 Australian?

All of the things OP mentioned are non-US tech. I think the OP was speaking from a US perspective, though it’s not clear.

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

#549

Post by vga42 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

moltar wrote: post #507

Good luck rebuilding AWS. It’s a massive undertaking if you want feature parity.

Sure, but how many people/companies are perfectly served by serverless functions + queues + gateway + database + file service? I'd guess >90%. How much of that remaining 10% can be adequately patched by lauching virtual servers?

Scaleway and OVHCloud both provide all of that. The problem is more about marketing and a modern variant of the good old "nobody got fired for buying IBM".

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

#550

Post by paradox460 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 6:06 PM UTC

kioku wrote: post #43

> This isn't just compliance theater; it's a straight‑up national economic security play. The woes of LLM contrasts… In all seriousness, the points made ring true not only for European companies and should make everyone consider the implications of the current situation, as dreary as they are.

It's not just big, it's large