Another European agency shifts off US Tech as digital sovereignty gains steam

Competition is good, but they should start from the OS level.

Outside of Windows and MacOS, there is no OS ecosystem that works as well and at scale for an enterprise level deployment.

I don't get the whole "US" aspect, why bring politics into this? We need alternatives and competition regardless of all that. I don't care if Europe, China or India make it, a viable alternative would be a game changer.

For Europe, they're solving the wrong problem. Solve the problem of low pay for developers, and a stifling regulatory atmosphere that inhibits disruptive startups.

If there is a good and viable alternative, why is it just for Europe? It could boost Europe's economy by selling to America and the rest of the world. The tech needs to be good, if the US can do it, why can't Europe?

Replacing office or one app at at time only addresses surface level issues.

> I don't get the whole "US" aspect, why bring politics into this?

There is some level of technology dependency after which it can become a national security risk (and therefore, political). This has happened a bunch in history (e.g. countries reducing reliance on adversaries oil supplies or foreign semiconductors).

The few examples in the article are small and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, but I think the article is trying to make the point that this is part of a larger divestiture from American tech companies.

Whether that larger divestiture is happening, however, is probably a pretty dubious claim.

This kind of reminds me of during COVID when everybody was writing articles like, “SF and NYC are dead and everyone is moving out!” Turns out… not so much.

Journalists love taking a few small data points and extrapolating to what feels like should be happening and leading the reader to extreme conclusions.

It’s much more fun to write that a hurricane is coming than it is to write, “we’re seeing some light rain today, and it’s probably within normal variance for this time of year.”

It's just that this isn't like raw resources like oil. there is no "good" or "superior" oil. it's just oil. and there are some differences, but there is no "american refined gas" that is superior.

But with tech, there is a question of quality and superiority. People that use M365 suite can work and collaborate more effectively, if not for actual superiority of the product and its OS integration, then simply because it is so well known and users prefer it the most (it does not repel talent as much).

Why give talented european skilled people more reasons to leave the EU for US, as if existing issues aren't enough? Why not instead directly compete with Microsoft and Google. Why isn't the EU investing in that? They're caught in the "open source" trap. I hate to say it, but they need to make closed source proprietary software that is commercially competitive.

I can see that - the open source stuff is just not good enough for most enterprise needs.