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European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

only-eu.eu

61–70 of 178 posts

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#61

I find it somewhat odd that "European software/servers" has taken off for what is clearly political purposes, but without any clear definition of what "Europe" even means. How can you claim that "Made in Europe has stood for top quality and durability" if "Europe" is defined based on current political allegiance, not geography? In fact, the domain "only-eu.eu" and the title, "European" are contradictory. Belarus and…

I believe there are two levels.

1. The US becoming relatively hostile even to countries that considered themselves allies means that being totally dependent on US monopolies (the TooBigTech crew) is a problem. So the first level is "it's important to reduce the dependency to US services". Doesn't matter if it's in the EU, Canada or Mexico.

2. When you start caring about digital sovereignty, or course it's better if you can depend on national services. But that's often not possible. The next best thing is to rely on allies, and diversify the risk.

So it's a gradient. What has taken off is "we need to care about digital sovereignty" and "the US has already used their monopolies against us, we need to do something about it". I think.

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#62
"Europe does it better".

Sorry, but as an European who roots for EU very much, I found that branding laughable, because it's absolutely not true at all. Those Eurooean alternatives are absolutely of significantly worse quality almost across the board, simply because there's less money thrown at them. It's also making it sound pretty, disingenuous, and adding to ongoing gamification of relationship with the US.

"Europe does it differently" would be so much better, because of the obvious better privacy, openness and standards compliance, as mandate by our regulations.

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#63
post #37

NordVPN claims to operate under Panama jurisdiction (but is otherwise still based in Europe). The specific reason why they want to operate under Panama law is that there's no mandatory data retention. So it seems misguided to claim that purely-EU-based alternatives to NordVPN are 'safer' and 'more private' than Nord due to the location alone.

Their parent company, Nord Security, is based in the Netherlands.

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#64

I find it somewhat odd that "European software/servers" has taken off for what is clearly political purposes, but without any clear definition of what "Europe" even means. How can you claim that "Made in Europe has stood for top quality and durability" if "Europe" is defined based on current political allegiance, not geography? In fact, the domain "only-eu.eu" and the title, "European" are contradictory. Belarus and…

Russia is definitely not unquestionably European.

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#65
post #41

only-eu.eu registered on Porkbun LLC and hosted on Cloudflare, Inc https://whois.eurid.eu/en/search/?domain=only-eu MX points to route1.mx.cloudflare.net as well. they should use their own product before giving others advice.

> registered on Porkbun LLC and hosted on Cloudflare, Inc

And is built with Astro, which was created by an American, existed as an American company, and then was absorbed by Cloudflare.

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#67

I find it somewhat odd that "European software/servers" has taken off for what is clearly political purposes, but without any clear definition of what "Europe" even means. How can you claim that "Made in Europe has stood for top quality and durability" if "Europe" is defined based on current political allegiance, not geography? In fact, the domain "only-eu.eu" and the title, "European" are contradictory. Belarus and…

I guess you can make that same argument about USA and America. Canada is clearly America but a Canadian would not refer to himself as American whereas a US national would. Europeans hardly refer to themselves as such but when European countries are lumped together, it has become common to ignore geography and refer to those affiliated with EU membership or bilateral EU affiliation (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland) as Eu…

Europe is a geographical region, the only question is where does it border neighboring regions (Asia). There is no ambiguity about whether Switzerland or Norway and so on are in Europe. They are.

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#68

The affiliate information shows that it the website shows mostly / only affiliate offers, and omits (intentionally?) much better a lternatives like posteo.de for email. Listed vendors like OVHcloud must follow the US cloud act, so not really independent from US. Just advertising, no real privacy focused.

Domain is registered 23 March 2026. This is not a real product, with zero effort put into it.

Perhaps they spent considerable effort putting the data set etc together, and subsequently decided to launch as a standalone domain. I wouldn’t take registration date as the final arbiter of seriousness

Re: European alternatives to Google, Apple, Dropbox and 120 US apps

#69
post #22

I’m working on a free and open-source invoice generator: https://easyinvoicepdf.com - No sign-up, works entirely in-browser - Live PDF preview + instant download - VAT EU support - Shareable invoice links - Multi-language (10+) & multi-currency (100+) - Multiple templates (incl. Stripe-style) - Mobile-friendly - QR code support GitHub: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf Would love feedback, contributions, or…

Can't we just use claude desktop / cli to generate an invoice. In my experience if you provide some skills and access to some data it can generate pretty consistent invoices. No other tools needed at all.
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