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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.

#561

Post by afiori »

sbarre wrote: post #464
rchaud wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should also go without saying that Canada already had a vertically integrated telecoms giant in RIM/Blackberry that handled end to end smartphone comms globally in the 3G era, right down to compressing emails through their servers so they could be transmitted efficiently over 2G data networks. Unfortunately Blackberry was heavily dependent on US telecoms and corporations buying their servers and devices to pad the…

Canada's telcos are a "narrow waist" for a lot of software licensing. A lot of business customers bundle their business/productivity software with their phone and Internet services. Did you know you can buy Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Office through your telco? I was shocked to find out how many do this when I worked for one of the telcos. Just like how consumers bundle their streaming services with their home…

in the eu i think this is significantly less common

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

#562

Post by microtonal »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #546
bad_haircut72 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is some kind of move, fair play, but its ham fisted because rank and file westerners across the world have lost respect and faith in America, that wont be rebuilt by some other president. Nobody will want fighter jets etc controlled by America. Perhaps USA is fine with it but to me it feels severely damaging.

Twitter can think what it wants. The western alliance as of today is about as strong as its ever been. They are actively dismantling and destroying their enemies together one by one. Words matter little when US's alternative is actively supporting a war in europe.

The western alliance as of today is about as strong as its ever been.

No it is not. Very few people in Europe believe that the US would uphold NATO Article 5. The US did arguably not uphold the Budapest memorandum. Allies have stopped sharing intelligence with the US in many areas because they don't trust the US anymore (Trump would burn allied assets in a Truth Social post). Trump has done a lot of bidding for Putin in the Ukraine-Russian war because he does not care about a good outcome for the rest of the Western alliance, he only cares about some peace prize or whatever.

The Western alliance is almost shattered, NATO is on its lasts legs (well, technically, NATO with the US, I think a new NATO with Canada and Europe would rise from its ashes).

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

#563

Post by submeta »

The US has already employed its technology and financial instruments, including sanctions, to coerce and control its partners. Sanctioning an ICC prosecutor and subsequently restricting Microsoft’s access to his emails and documents are just a few instances of this. They have demonstrated their willingness to use their technology, financial instruments, and sanctions against their partners. It seems almost too late for Europe to achieve its independence in both technological and financial spheres.

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

#564

Post by tsimionescu »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #538
tsimionescu wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the USA does not, in any way, and has never wanted or even accepted EU countries being independent. They wanted the EU to spend more on US weaponry, and maybe on their own - but would have vehemently opposed any attempt by any EU country to buy Russian, Chinese, Iranian or any such weaponry. They want the EU to stop regulating American companies, but they certainly don't want EU companies being too successful in…

The EU would also have opposed it if the US bought Russian, Chinese or Iranian weaponry. The EU does seem to willing to reduce itself to a Chinese vassal. That would not improve the situation.

The right play is to maintain relationships (including arms trading) with multiple major powers - as Canada's PM very deftly pointed out at Davos. Getting closer to China doesn't mean exchanging one master for another - it can and should be a way to increase the alternatives available, without going all the way in the other direction.

> The EU would also have opposed it if the US bought Russian, Chinese or Iranian weaponry.

This is such an implausible counter-factual that I can't even begin to imagine what would have actually happened. Still, I doubt any more than some "public letters" would have been issued, whereas I'm sure that the opposite would have resulted in actual economic pressure from the USA against the EU/NATO country that would have dared, under any administration.

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

#565

Post by jongjong »

anticodon wrote: post #508
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…

EU is a colony of USA. If it would be necessary, US can simply force EU to buy US technology. If you check the EU politics, they never do or say anything that can be interpreted negatively by US or damage US interests. In 2025, EU and US signed an agreement that obliges EU to buy energy resources from US at ridiculously high prices, despite that EU is already struggling with the high price of energy.

In the tech sector, EU has been a colony of pretty much every other country which it used to colonize. IMO, the fines that the EU used to collect regularly from US big tech companies were bribes to keep suppressing the EU tech sector.

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

#566

Post by microtonal »

skeletal88 wrote: post #345
johnsmith1840 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current admin has been on record for years saying the same thing. Warning EU about russia, warning EU about China, warning them about not innovating. I don't know if this was planned internally but it seems the way they figured out how to get EU to actually do something is to make it seem like big bad trump is going to hurt them. Current admin has gotten more out of EU than 20years of asking nicely. Before: US: "plea…

No. The US does not want an independent EU. It wants an EU that lets any US company do here whatever it wants. It wants the EU to split up so it can force bad trade deals on our countries. We don't want a trade deal that lets you sell chlorinated chicken or other stuff that is currently banned here. The US wants us to spend more on military but not on our own weapons but to spend all our money buying US made stuff. N…

The US wants us to spend more on military but not on our own weapons but to spend all our money buying US made stuff.

To underline this point:

https://www.newsweek.com/europes-plan-ditch-us-weapons-spook...

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

#567

Post by nico_h »

sbarre wrote: post #464
rchaud wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should also go without saying that Canada already had a vertically integrated telecoms giant in RIM/Blackberry that handled end to end smartphone comms globally in the 3G era, right down to compressing emails through their servers so they could be transmitted efficiently over 2G data networks. Unfortunately Blackberry was heavily dependent on US telecoms and corporations buying their servers and devices to pad the…

Canada's telcos are a "narrow waist" for a lot of software licensing. A lot of business customers bundle their business/productivity software with their phone and Internet services. Did you know you can buy Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Office through your telco? I was shocked to find out how many do this when I worked for one of the telcos. Just like how consumers bundle their streaming services with their home…

Maybe the high sea will become less policed by the Canadian IP police

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

#568

Post by geek_at »

jonathaneunice wrote: post #37

Switching to sovereignty-protecting, locally-hosted collaboration, compute, and storage is by no means impossible. FOSS advocates have been eagerly beating this drum and providing options for 25+ years. The missing ingredient has always been the will to absorb the inevitable cost of change, and the friction of choosing something other than the standard, go-to, often at least apparently free (or at least bundled) tool…

> the will to absorb the inevitable cost of change

it's simple economics. When US services have to increase their pricese because of trumps tarrifs and these increases are higher than the cost of change, they'll do it. we're almost there

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

#569

Post by microtonal »

ecshafer wrote: post #479
schubidubiduba wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly so often I take my EU consumer and worker rights for granted, only to hear that they simply don't exist for 90+% of Americans. Amd then I wonder how they even live over there.

In large houses with lots of land, multiple cars and lots of money.

I looked up to the US as a kid. Then I went to the US about 8-10 times in my teenage years (lost the count) due to my dad's work. We travelled through ~20 states. Only during those trips I realized in what poor life standards most Americans live. My wife lived in the US for a year and had the same experience. She also found that average Americans have real weird believes about the rest of the world (this was in the nineties), like they would ask her whether Hitler is still alive, whether Europe only has US radio stations, and some believed that Europeans don't have fridges.

Another thing that surprised me was the segregation. One time we went out to eat something while crossing some states. Apparently we drove into a black neighborhood, and we walked into a large place with a buffet. And suddenly almost everyone was looking at us completely stunned. Then the other shoe dropped, we were the only white people, and they were probably surprised that white people showed up. They were extremely nice to us, but for me it also uncovered how weird the US is.

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

#570

Post by eeegor87 »

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.

As a European I'm glad for all of these pesky regulations. https://noyb.eu/en
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