The rallying call to put European tech first — backed by companies including Airbus, Element, OVHCloud, Murena, Nextcloud, and Proton, to name a few — follows the shock of the Munich security conference, where U.S. Vice President JD Vance tore into Europe like an attack dog, leaving delegates in no doubt that the post-War international order is in tatters and all bets are off when it comes to what the U.S. might do under President Donald Trump.
Key tech infrastructure that’s owned and operated by U.S. companies doesn’t look like such a solid buy, from a European perspective, if a presidential executive order can be issued forcing U.S. firms to switch off service provision or terminate a supply chain at a pen stroke.
“Imagine Europe without internet search, email, or office software. It would mean the complete breakdown of our society. Sounds unrealistic? Well, something similar just happened to Ukraine,” Wolfgang Oels, COO of the Berlin-based, tree-planting search engine Ecosia — one signatory to the letter that was already taking steps aimed at reducing its dependency on U.S. Big Tech suppliers — tells TechCrunch.
Finally they recognize that there are alternatives to Google and Microsoft!
If OVH can run separate organizations structured so as to avoid targeting by the US and its CLOUD act, then so can Google; so can Microsoft.
If needs must, then AWS, Google and Azure will split and re-home themselves in Ireland, France, Switzerland – faced with a line that doesn’t go up, corporations will move figurative heaven and actual earth. If risk of enough revenue loss becomes an issue, then they would and will run a separate and distinct operation in each country; each region, if need be, if new Mexico fears Texas, for instance. And while they’ll all trumpet their success in creating a perfect privacy wall and legal separation to where even state powers cannot legally compel inspection or direction of their operations, after one of them is shown to be lying or incompetent the effort will be done properly. And we’ll have services we CAN trust - warily - to preserve our sovereignty.
But with their financial might, Google and Microsoft will respond to a real threat of churn. We will not see exodus.