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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.

#671

Post by LunaSea »

tormeh wrote: post #235
ddalex wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> build a better model with lower latency. That's mighty impossible for the european mindset - people here are not so risk-eager as to through hundreds of billions on infrastructure for something that might return a profit.

The US capital markets are truly a wonder to behold. There's no way to replace that. For good and ill, you'd only get weird looks in Europe if you asked for €10 billion for an unproven business model in what's somehow also a competitive market. To be fair this example does look a lot like insanity.

It's not really a wonder, Americans will simply lose their pensions if the AI business models don't work out. The same way it happened many times in the past.

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

#672

Post by LunaSea »

mgh95 wrote: post #449
iso1631 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Canada has a GDP of: Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Mississippi, New Mexico, Idaho, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together. That's the equivalent of 18 states. Throw in Aus and NZ too and you add another 7 states -- Louisiana, Alabama, Utah, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nevada and Iowa. Ontario alone has a larger GDP…

> Ontario alone has a larger GDP than 45 of the 50 US states, and a bigger GDP than New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together. This is not correct as of 2024. In 2024, Ontario had a GDP of CAD 1.17B. [1] In USD, this is (at .73 exchange rate, which is favorable for these calculations) this comes to US 854B. In 202…

The dollar losing its value probably makes it correct again now since early 2025.

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

#673

Post by carlosjobim »

dgxyz wrote: post #593
carlosjobim wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is great at translating, doing a task in seconds which would take days. For almost no cost. That is quite significant on a continent like Europe, with dozens of different languages.

I have a friend who's a professional translator. No it isn't. She's forever cleaning up after the mess it left people in. In fact business for her is really booming thanks to people who think that is the case. And I'm not talking about LLMs here but DeepL etc.

AI translates correctly, with a few minor imperfections which don't impede communication. Compare that to waiting a day and paying hundreds of euros for each message.

AI translation is comparable to the telephone or e-mail in how it improves communication.

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

#674

Post by tuetuopay »

k_bx wrote: post #658
natas wrote: post #637

> 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 limitin…

So I've opened their AWS replacement website (Outscale), Computing page. No dedicated servers (VM only). Ok let's check VM price https://en.outscale.com/customized-virtual-machines/ Press the "Do you have a Cloud Project?" which is the only button? Oops! Something went wrong here. Is this supposed to be an AWS replacement?

Outscale is kind of the stereotypical bureaucratic French thing. It's made by Dassault, that's better known for industrial stuff (like SolidWorks), not for modern-ish software.

For a more of an AWS replacement, look at Scaleway. It really is more what we think about when talking "public cloud": self-serve compute, with lots of managed services, actual API and Terraform, actual K8s, etc. (managed services is why I don't mention OVH, which is often touted as a "cloud provider", yet lacks a large managed services offering).

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

#675

Post by LunaSea »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #354
surgical_fire wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was good enough for the US A lot of things good enough for the US are not considered suitable or safe here. Correctly so, I might add. If your government is not concerned with public safety, why should the EU adopt the same stance?

Well I am unaware of any deaths or injury from dishwashers in the United States, so it seems those regulations are fine. Hope you don't accidentally fall off a historical ledge that can't get a handrail.

Did you remember to put a "Don't put your cat in the dishwasher" page into the user manual of your dishwasher for the US market?

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

#676

Post by soco »

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.

Or so the theory. But what is that specific functionality that I get from this integration? That I can preview an Excel attachment WITHIN Teams instead of starting another Excel instance? The only useful thing is that Teams calendar is the Outlook calendar, definitely not a reason I'd use Teams if not forced to.

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

#677

Post by holowoodman »

arjie wrote: post #651
holowoodman wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"...

No, you did not say that, but that was the context of the conversation. > I think every American needs to understand this quote: > > "We will never fucking trust you again."

I guess that's just the usual hyperbole in these kinds of heated talks. I mean, it is basically the same as all those instances of TACO: Propose something outrageous, outlandish and absolute, later compromise to do something lesser.

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

#678

Post by k_bx »

tuetuopay wrote: post #674
k_bx wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I've opened their AWS replacement website (Outscale), Computing page. No dedicated servers (VM only). Ok let's check VM price https://en.outscale.com/customized-virtual-machines/ Press the "Do you have a Cloud Project?" which is the only button? Oops! Something went wrong here. Is this supposed to be an AWS replacement?

Outscale is kind of the stereotypical bureaucratic French thing. It's made by Dassault, that's better known for industrial stuff (like SolidWorks), not for modern-ish software. For a more of an AWS replacement, look at Scaleway. It really is more what we think about when talking "public cloud": self-serve compute, with lots of managed services, actual API and Terraform, actual K8s, etc. (managed services is why I don…

I love Scaleway, been using it since micro ARM64 bare metal offerings they've now deprecated. Just saw Outscale in one of the announcements thus the reason I've checked them out.

Obviously, Hetzner is also great, as a European example.

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

#679

Post by michaelsshaw »

nbardy wrote: post #624

They should probably fund their military first. It’s petulant the way the EU is throwing a hissy fit after we’ve had lop-sided trade deals for years and funding the entire NATO alliance ourselves. They act like we’re going to war with them when we’re asking for parity and for their self reliance to increase.

>They act like we’re going to war with them when we’re asking for parity and for their self reliance to increase.

The US is literally threatening to invade an EU overseas territory.

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

#680

Post by tim333 »

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.

I don't see much sign of the EU becoming a Chinese vassal as in relying on it for defence in return for being told what to do. Trading with China is not the same thing.
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