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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.

#631

Post by arjie »

holowoodman wrote: post #623
arjie wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a sound point. I don't think your comment should be grey. In practice, I don't think geopolitics is played in the style of "Yurusenai!" that a lot of online commenters make it sound like. The world wasn't in some benevolent kumbaya between the various players involved here. America perhaps pioneered the mutual-defense agreement as an expansion of de-facto borders. America can attack you if you attack any of i…

> All this "Americans must realize you are now PARIAHS and will NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN" business will seem novel to people today, but this was true when I was younger and America had just invaded Iraq right after Afghanistan. Nobody really cared about Iraq or Afghanistan. Sure, it was fashionable to pretend to care, to get on a high horse and tell the USian rabble how immoral they were. But at the same time, people o…

Yes, and I'm sure that the next time the US does something against European interests it will again be the case that the last time was just pretense but this time is real. The thing with terminal declarations is that there is no pathway back. If the US was never to be trusted again after the Iraq War, we are never to be trusted again now, so telling us that we are never to be trusted now is not of any significance. We're now post that declaration. That's what the word 'never' means.

The US-Europe military-economic bloc is a strong structure, but of the two Europe is weaker and the participants in Europe stand and fall according to weak ties. Without NATO, it isn't even clear if Poland will have allies. Each of the constituent countries have leaders aware of this. And I'm sure they'll attempt to keep the structure intact. If they fail, they fail but all these dramatic declarations won't have been significant either way. The declarations themselves are just emotional outbursts without even the semblance of even self-interest.

I mean, think about it. If the US has no pathway back to normalcy in relations ("never be trusted") then the cost for all future Presidents to militarily intervene is low. After all, trust is at its minimum value and guaranteed not to rise. If Greenland is core to US interests and Denmark has decided there is no pathway back to normalcy, invasion is on the table for all Presidents, Democratic Party or Republican Party.

Essentially, once you decide that you will never normalize relations, then you're just an adversary: not even a potential future ally. And those who pitch themselves as guaranteed adversaries had better find allies quick.

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

#632

Post by edwcross »

alias_neo wrote: post #610
esperent wrote: post #381

For those who don't want to use Twitter: https://xcancel.com/lellouchenico/status/2015775970330882319 Or here's the linked article: https://www.numerama.com/cyberguerre/2167301-la-france-veut-... And here's the app, Visio: https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/produits/visio

> And here's the app, Visio That UI looks suspiciously similar to Jitsi Meet. I wonder if it's based on it.

It says "powered by LiveKit": https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet

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

#633

Post by LunaSea »

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.

Median savings in America: $8,000

Median savings in Belgium: €14,000

A lot of Americans just try to outspend the Jones' and are crippled in debt.

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

#634

Post by BrenBarn »

akst wrote: post #598
BrenBarn wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duplicating things is underrated. It's good for there to be multiple operators doing basically the same thing. Innovation can happen at the margins. It will be easier, not harder, for EU companies to innovate in meaningful ways after they've built their own systems and are no longer just following in the wake of big US companies. (Not to mention that half of what passes for innovation these days is actually bad.)

If you’re assessing things entirely on a strategic basis makes total sense. It’s understandable why they are doing it but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s underrated or suggest there are no drawbacks. Duplicating things without reason is wasteful. With a hobby project sure that’s your own time and is likely more an act of consumption and personal fulfilment. But these are national economic resources being redirect…

I mean there are pros and cons to many things. What I mean by underrated is just that a lot of people say "oh duplication, how wasteful" and don't realize the benefits that may exist in redundancy and diffusion. I think the US would benefit right now if there was more "duplication" in the sense of greater diversity across many industries. More car makers, more film studios, more news organizations, more social media companies, more record labels. Not more stuff --- not more cars, more films, more news, more social media, more records --- but just the same stuff spread over a greater number of entities. The consolidation we've seen over the past several decades is a bad thing.

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

#635

Post by BrenBarn »

account42 wrote: post #603
BrenBarn wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duplicating things is underrated. It's good for there to be multiple operators doing basically the same thing. Innovation can happen at the margins. It will be easier, not harder, for EU companies to innovate in meaningful ways after they've built their own systems and are no longer just following in the wake of big US companies. (Not to mention that half of what passes for innovation these days is actually bad.)

It's even better if they end up not doing exactly the same thing. For example we could use some tech companies that aren't so user hostile.

Right, and we can't get that if the only players are huge companies that face no competition.

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

#636

Post by holowoodman »

arjie wrote: post #631
holowoodman wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All this "Americans must realize you are now PARIAHS and will NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN" business will seem novel to people today, but this was true when I was younger and America had just invaded Iraq right after Afghanistan. Nobody really cared about Iraq or Afghanistan. Sure, it was fashionable to pretend to care, to get on a high horse and tell the USian rabble how immoral they were. But at the same time, people o…

Yes, and I'm sure that the next time the US does something against European interests it will again be the case that the last time was just pretense but this time is real. The thing with terminal declarations is that there is no pathway back. If the US was never to be trusted again after the Iraq War, we are never to be trusted again now, so telling us that we are never to be trusted now is not of any significance. W…

I didn't say "never", just "very very hard".

Just think of the relations the US has with the British. Back in the day, after the independence war, I'm quite sure that there were quite a few people in the US who said something like "never will we have cordial relations with the Kingdom of Britain"...

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

#637

Post by natas »

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

The odds that France will provide a competing offering is pretty high, because, in this day and age, and with AI, it's fairly straightforward to do so. The problem is adoption, do you think people in the USA or elsewhere will install it? Does that mean that only French companies and the French will be able to talk to eachother? Seems somewhat limiting and will limit business expansion.

Will the French government embed spyware in it, they can, since they'll be sponsoring this initiative, they've been intending to do with whatsapp and all the other messengers for years. Worrisome for the end user.

I'm all for competition, and I hope France succeeds in building a good product, because competition is great for everyone and creates jobs, and I hope it's going to take off soon, we'll see, bonne chance!

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

#638

Post by tpxl »

202508042147 wrote: post #296

This is great and definitely doable. It's the initial bit that's hard, people hate switching but then when they get used to it, they won't switch back. What I'd really like to see is a pan-european payment processor, a European alternative to Visa/Mastercard.

What's wrong with SEPA instant?

A payment flow of 'scan code, confirm in banking app' is hard to beat and we're 95% there. And all you need is your own banking app, no shady payment processors required.

You lose some stuff like the credit part of the credit card (although virtually no one I know actually uses credit, only debit cards) and consumer protections (chargebacks), but I don't think those outweigh the extra costs at all.

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

#640

Post by Lio »

samus wrote: post #613
jillesvangurp wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 40M people, Canada is about half the size of Germany in terms of population and GDP. Also smaller than France. Canada is more similar in GDP to countries like Italy. The Spanish economy is a bit smaller but it has slightly more people (48M). The EU + UK is a bit over half a billion people. The thing with Zoom, Meets, Teams, etc. is that these aren't that hard to replicate. There is not much of a technical moat.…

Teams has the upside that is is deeply integrated in Microsoft products.

I would imagine that many EU governments would like to replace MS Office too. EU sponsoring open source development for a mandated replacement would be a huge risk for Microsoft.

The European Economic Area + UK also have a lot of telecoms and networking experience. If they have to pay for improvements to edge networking for a reliable replacement for Teams they could easily bring farm that work out to their telcos.

With enough political motivation barriers will be removed one way or another.

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