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France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

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Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#551

Post by microtonal »

terminalshort wrote: post #519
dleslie wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think every American needs to understand this quote: > "We will never fucking trust you again."[0] It doesn't matter that Trump will eventually no longer be President, and it doesn't matter that there are still members of the American political establishment that support the old way of doing things. Trump does not act alone, and there is rapid attrition of those older bureaucrats who valued the USA's allies. Trump'…

Germany elected Hitler and we pretty much trusted them again in less than 20 years.

Yes and no. West-Germany was not trusted enough to allow them to make nukes or to make a powerful-enough army. For a long time, Germany has pretty much been a vassal state of the US. I cannot see that happening the other way around (given the relative powers of the militaries).

Besides that, living in a neighboring country, the generation of my parents and grandparents had a deeply-rooted aversion towards Germans. They would communicate with Germans politely, but when no German was around, they would often use not-so-nice names or jokes. Luckily that aversion is gone with later generations.

When I was young (early 90ies), we would often go on holiday to Czechoslovakia (before the split) and the Czech Republic. The staff at restaurants and shops would be cold and distant until they discovered that we were not German, then they would be very warm and kind. At some point, we would always start the conversation in English. At the time most staff would only speak German, but we would use it as a signal that we were not from Germany.

This kind of distrust can stretch many decades. I think we have mostly healed as Europeans, but it took a damn long time.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#552

Post by enaaem »

terminalshort wrote: post #519
dleslie wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think every American needs to understand this quote: > "We will never fucking trust you again."[0] It doesn't matter that Trump will eventually no longer be President, and it doesn't matter that there are still members of the American political establishment that support the old way of doing things. Trump does not act alone, and there is rapid attrition of those older bureaucrats who valued the USA's allies. Trump'…

Germany elected Hitler and we pretty much trusted them again in less than 20 years.

The EU was meant to pacify Germany. Also a lot of effort was done to denazify the country.

Germany is now allowed to remilitarise again, and that’s going to be interesting. I believe we should never underestimate a remilitarised Germany.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#553

Post by ArnoVW »

terminalshort wrote: post #519
dleslie wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think every American needs to understand this quote: > "We will never fucking trust you again."[0] It doesn't matter that Trump will eventually no longer be President, and it doesn't matter that there are still members of the American political establishment that support the old way of doing things. Trump does not act alone, and there is rapid attrition of those older bureaucrats who valued the USA's allies. Trump'…

Germany elected Hitler and we pretty much trusted them again in less than 20 years.

Yes. After having flattened it and occupied / denazified it for a bunch of years. The Germany after WW I was not trusted.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#554

Post by worksonmine »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #527
softwaredoug wrote: post #113

Americans fail to appreciate a few things about our economy 1. We have a large homgoneous market where you can build a product and it’s expected it can succeed for hundreds of millions of Americans 2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market 3. there’s not an easy 3rd economy that replaces EUs wealth, population, and comfort with Englis…

US perspective: EU looks like a great place to expand into once I've reached some critical size threshold. But I can't imagine starting a business there. In the US we have effectively limitless capital, tons of tech talent, and many fewer regulations. Just about everything I'd want to do in a startup appears illegal or otherwise infeasible in the EU because of the morass of data and AI and energy regulations.

> Just about everything I'd want to do in a startup appears illegal or otherwise infeasible in the EU because of the morass of data and AI and energy regulations.

Sounds like you're doing some shady, disgusting bullshit or you're exaggerating the regulations. I hope it's the latter.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#555

Post by microtonal »

tensor wrote: post #425
storystarling wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like France is actually leading on the infrastructure side of things right now. With Mistral and Hugging Face both in Paris, the open source AI ecosystem is pretty heavily concentrated there.

And OVH and Scaleway. Also Gandi.

And Murena, one of the best shots at an alternative mobile OS ecosystem in Europe (preferably on Fairphone, which is Dutch).

Though Germany has a lot of light and heavyweights as well, SAP, SUSE, NextCloud, Hetzner, etc.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#556

Post by bgilroy26 »

xp84 wrote: post #436
Propelloni wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that I'm not saying everyone should give the US a pass or maintain as much economic and defense dependency on the US. But I think it's hyperbolic to make all your long-term plans assuming something as stupid and self-defeating as his worst anti-ally policies are a new normal, because they harm the US at least as much as they harm everyone else, and everyone but those two knows this. It is debatable if everyone…

> After all, according to the last NYT poll the current POTUS commands an approval rating of 41 % in the USA. The number of people I meet who do not understand how tariffs work, for example, is staggering. For sure -- the bottom 41% of economic literacy are so misinformed that they have no clue what they're talking about. But those voters aren't picking the nominee for President from among a circus of general morons,…

This ignores the career of Rush Limbaugh

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#557

Post by ben_w »

slifin wrote: post #411
xp84 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weaponized against us I take a more optimistic stance here. Trump can only live so long, and everybody except basically Trump and John Bolton knows that the majority of his idiotic tariffs (and nonsensical belligerence like pretending NATO control of Greenland doesn't meet all our defense needs) are wealth-destroying on net, as well as wealth-destroying for at least 10x the number of people than they help (many of…

The real thing that's changed here is that the US gets no benefit from defending Ukraine or Europe European politicians need to wake up NATO was really an exercise in helping the US with its proxy wars their support will not be reciprocated Not with trump and not with his successor

The US may believe the US gets no benefit from defending Ukraine or Europe, but that belief is false.

Even with greedy short-term thinking: The economic connections between the US and Europe are a big part of US wealth, and failing to protect your market and your investors is bad for business.

Ukraine… Europe supports Ukraine to keep Europe safe. Ukraine is not in NATO, nor is it covered by the EU treaty's mutual defence article.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#558

Post by kettlecorn »

xp84 wrote: post #388
beloch wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take the Canadian market for granted. There's a strong desire to forge closer links with the EU now and reduce dependence on products that could be weaponized against us at any time. Geographic proximity doesn't count for much when it comes to software.

> weaponized against us I take a more optimistic stance here. Trump can only live so long, and everybody except basically Trump and John Bolton knows that the majority of his idiotic tariffs (and nonsensical belligerence like pretending NATO control of Greenland doesn't meet all our defense needs) are wealth-destroying on net, as well as wealth-destroying for at least 10x the number of people than they help (many of…

The decades long level of trust in the US and its institutions was unprecedented and built off of the tremendous goodwill and momentum post WW2.

It was an unusually high degree of trust, and now it's unusually low. Even if the US reverses its policies it will take a very long time to rebuild trust, and even then the historical warning marker of the Trump admin will be studied as a reason to never return to the prior level of trust.

Without total trust software products are a natural target for any country that's thinking more about how to defend its own sovereignty. Policies and subsidies for locally built software that previously would have seemed frivolous or wasteful now seem prudent and badly needed.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#559

Post by microtonal »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #413
xracy wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I am praying that one of the things pushing back on this administration will be American Companies that have gotten rich on the back of "American Globalism", learning just how much it hurts when the US doesn't do its responsibility to remain Allies with it's nominal Allies. And the EU, Canada, and anyone else who the current US administration is slighting, should absolutely be moving cash hard and fast…

The day I heard trump wants to fire Powell and manage the fed « his own way », I emptied all my trading accounts and bought gold. I guess I’m not alone, gold is exploding.

European pension funds are also slowly getting rid of US bonds. They don't talk about it because they don't want to attract the ire of Trump and they don't want to create panic in the markets as long as they are still invested. But e.g. the Dutch fund ABP sold 1/3rd of their US bonds in 6 months (10 out of 30 billion in US bonds that they have). They reinvested the money in Dutch and German bonds.

Re: France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

#560

Post by kettlecorn »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #374
xracy wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I am praying that one of the things pushing back on this administration will be American Companies that have gotten rich on the back of "American Globalism", learning just how much it hurts when the US doesn't do its responsibility to remain Allies with it's nominal Allies. And the EU, Canada, and anyone else who the current US administration is slighting, should absolutely be moving cash hard and fast…

There is no unringing this bell. Maybe a sane administration would slow the migration, but the damage is done. America is a capricious partner who can flip the table at any moment.

A terrible potential is that US products may find themselves unable to get footing internationally, due to broken trust and increased competition, so instead they'll try to rely on every-expanding protectionism and corruption to stay dominant in the US market.

Just as we've seen in the car industry we'll wind up less innovative, less productive, and less economical.

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