That reminds me of a quote I heard once. Probably from Cory Doctorow but I cannot remember now.

"Everyone wants you to have privacy... just not from them."

Given they broke their own procurement laws to choose US tech companies for their cloud infrastructure its definitely silly.

I am too!

The alternatives don't have to be perfect. Reducing the dominance of any single country is a good thing.

Oh yes. Because Merz builds data centers, and Der Leyen is known for making IT decisions at EU companies. They also happen to be the queens of private investors.

Companies that have had their whole data on Google/MS servers for 20 years certainly don't care for privacy the way you and I do. But they are certainly realizing that US providers are not the way to go. Baby steps I guess.

They believe in trickle down economics despite all evidence pointing to it making everything worse.

It is high time we switch to Pinata economics.

The "C" in "CSU" is for "corruption".

what's a subpoena?

But I’m an American so what do I know?

You know much more about the world around you than the orange turd that claims to be the leader of the free world. Don't sell yourself short, mate! It'll take people like you to rebuild once this is over.

Europe is not ready for what that will cost.

Not true. We've seen the U.S. leverage big tech against its perceived enemies by shutting them down remotely. Unless Europe bends over backwards to serve the U.S. fascists' every whim, this form of blackmail-by-proxy is going to continue, and it's only going to get worse.

So the calculation is not: "cost of switching" vs. "cost of continuing the existing vendor lock-in".

It is: "cost of switching" vs. "cost of shutting down operations for good".

It's really easy maths if you break it down to its core. It's maths that even the most bone-headed of our leaders and business "experts" can do.

I think many companies are basically stuck with Microsoft (Excel, Word, Teams, Sharepoint, Onedrive etc).

Tbh, office and collaboration tools are the least of our worries; there are plenty of good alternatives which, with some financial support, can be adapted to suit companies' needs in very little time. What should worry us more are the tons of critical applications tailored to a very specific area of administration and business. The software that runs the power plants and hospitals. The software that manages logistics and industrialised production. The software that runs our accounting and HR. That's the Windows lock-in that we're not going to shake off over night.

Oh, that and the hardware vendors + hyperscalers...

thrirha klha mmkdn mmkn

i'm currently learning arabic. did i get your name right?

Yes, except for the last word, there's no 'd'

When it's the government asking.

right, i misread it as ممكدن

I like you

Same with industrial automation, power grid, production management, etc. Most people don’t even realise how much critical software is Windows-only.

You know how there's theory and practice?

It hasn't stopped countries like France, and Italy (not a complete list just examples) from being some of the least privacy friendly western governments.