Google Warns EU Risks Undermining Own Competitiveness With Tech Sovereignty Push (ft.com) 81
Europe risks undermining its own competitiveness drive by restricting access to foreign technology, Google's president of global affairs and chief legal officer Kent Walker told the Financial Times, as Brussels accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants. Walker said the EU faces a "competitive paradox" as it seeks to spur growth while restricting the technologies needed to achieve that goal.
He warned against erecting walls that make it harder to use some of the best technology in the world, especially as it advances quickly. EU leaders gathered Thursday for a summit in Belgium focused on increasing European competitiveness in a more volatile global economy. Europe's digital sovereignty push gained momentum in recent months, driven by fears that President Donald Trump's foreign policy could force a tech decoupling.
He warned against erecting walls that make it harder to use some of the best technology in the world, especially as it advances quickly. EU leaders gathered Thursday for a summit in Belgium focused on increasing European competitiveness in a more volatile global economy. Europe's digital sovereignty push gained momentum in recent months, driven by fears that President Donald Trump's foreign policy could force a tech decoupling.
We're not restricting the technologies... (Score:5, Insightful)
... we're going to buy them from European companies
Re:We're not restricting the technologies... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We're not restricting the technologies... (Score:4, Funny)
You don't understand. Not using Microsoft's cutting edge super advanced technology chat app or Google's, um, spreadsheet I guess, will clearly cripple any business, country or even a whole continent!
I'm having trouble thinking of any of these irreplaceable software technologies, at least ones that aren't tiny niche things.
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Proton and Standard Notes seem to have gone in together to write their editors.
It's not particularly hard to write a spreadsheet or word processor. It's not even hard to write one that runs in a web browser. Supporting Microsoft's document formats is hard, but that seems like an argument in favour of the EU developing their own standard, not against.
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Indeed. Google is basically yesterday's hot tech. Well, the day before yesterday.
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like?
Re:We're not restricting the technologies... (Score:5, Informative)
There's literally countless providers of products and services that you've never heard of providing alternatives. The problem is American companies keep buying them. Heck Slashdot's favourite office suite (LibreOffice) is German, and open source to boot. It integrates with a self hosting cloud system that is also developed in Germany (ownCloud). The biggest competitor to Office 365 and whatever Google's online groupware is called is from Collabora (UK based). If you don't want to use NextCloud Talk as a Teams alternative, you can grab some open source program like Rocket.Chat and host it in a European cloud provider like OVHCloud.
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ok, i applaud these alternatives, if anything because they're opensource rather than because they're european led, but just the same i'm happy if the current international context now favors their growth and wider adoption. this is a good thing. however i don't think these sort of technologies are what this is about. i'm not saying there isn't talent and good ideas in europe, there are, but i doubt it is enough and above all we lack the political leadership to drive and faciltate any significant independenc
Re: We're not restricting the technologies... (Score:2)
Your comment surprised me, it's not 100% factually correct but overall yes, it looks like Harmony OS 6 is becoming a legit competitor as a mature fork of ASOP
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I'm not sure why the comparison to Huawei. They are not some example of exceptional engineering talent, they are an example of massive financing and support. As a strategic partner to the Chinese government they weren't just as massively well funded propped up mega company serving the world's second largest population, they also faced an existential crisis due to its borders and at the direction of their government created an alternative in a market where the primary is explicitly banned.
Harmony OS succeede
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Nokia back in the day didn't make their own handset chips. Apple does, but they have no infrastructure, etcetera.
And Huawei came practically out
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Good luck. It's not going to happen. It would have happened decades ago if it was possible.
Here's a list of alternatives already available in the EU. [european-alternatives.eu]
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On the other hand, if they buy from different companies, those companies get money and that money can be used to improve the product.
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Tech sovereignty doesn't mean one has to buy one's products/services from European companies. What it means is that companies that sell products/services into the EU should comply w/ their laws, such as having their data physically on datacenters located in the EU itself. The non-European product may well be better, but if it refuses to comply w/ those rules, they don't get to play there
US too has an issue w/ data of citizens being on datacenters abroad, particularly in China. While some countries may
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Tech sovereignty laws are something all countries aspire to - and should! In the US, we wouldn't be happy if datacenters containing our tax records, our health records and so on were located in China. We needn't even be okay w/ them being on servers in Australia. It's fine for every country to want its data on datacenters physically within their borders
I'm not quite getting Google's objections on this one. Most services are now replicated on datacenters all over the world, which is the main reason tha
What competitivness? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just the fact that EU has no own major companies like Google, Microsoft or Amazon means that it is not competitive already.
So what does it have to lose?
Re:What competitivness? (Score:5, Insightful)
How difficult is it to put up a website with an LLM?
And European companies already have their own search engines and cloud providers, they're just not as big as the Amazons of the world.
I don't think you realize the magnitude of the stupidity of Trump's shenanigans. Europe is just coming out of a millennium of savage, brutal wars. The EU started as a treaty organization for coal and steal. It was a peace project to intertwine European economies. We enjoyed an unprecedentedly high standard of living while the US could go off and be exceptional all they wanted. Everything that happened after WWII was a win-win, with the quiet understanding that the US wouldn't go and make a mess on our side of the Atlantic with all its exceptionalizing.
But now the US has exceptionalized all over our faces for purely internal political reasons and broken the status quo.
We are fucking livid. We could stand by and keep our cool until one single thing happened. You threatened our borders.
Welcome to the decline of the US as a world power, you motherfuckers.
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There's still a little bit of exceptionalism in your hair. Sorry.
Re:What competitivness? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you cite any sources?
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Can you cite any sources?
my very american google and llm aren't broken (yet) so i'll try. let's first check the numbers:
A typical EU country rakes in 40-50% of GDP in taxes of one form or other
this is correct.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/... [europa.eu].
Just to increase defence spending from 2%-5% of GDP means cutting 6-8% from the rest of government spending.
this is about correct, no sources but only elementary math required:
3 / 45 = 0.067
3 / 40 = 0.075
ofc this assumes no extra debt (which there will be, which just postpones and potentially worsens the problem) and no magic money.
now for the other claims:
Most of that will have to come out of welfare
too soon to prove but likely and there are already some indicators:
germany:
20 billion € increase in defense for
Re: What competitivness? (Score:3)
How exactly have "we" been bullying Russia? In case that's relevant: no country has sought to expand its borders in what is currently Russia. Russia, on the other hand, is trying to expand its borders in what is currently Ukraine.
Re:What competitivness? (Score:5, Informative)
Because Americans were paying to defend you so you could afford to follow crazy policies and fund bloated welfare states.
European here. Wow you MAGAs will believe any bullshit. The vast majority of the $900Bn of US military spending is on US defence and most of that actually spent within the USA on things like soldier's pay, running bases in the US, carrying out training exercises etc.
The does not fund the majority of NATO. The US spends $33Bn a year on NATO the same as Germany does, it accounts for 16% of the total NATO budget. And most of that spending is on US bases in Europe that it uses to launch operations in the Middle East and North Africa so actually isn't spent on NATO operations. If the US attacks Iran and ends up in a war with it many operations will be launched from it's bases in Europe and just like in Iraq and Afghanistan seriously injured troops will be sent to Randheim for treatment. The US economy also benefits massively financially for being the major party in NATO. $100 billions spent by NATO allies with US defence sector companies buying US military equipment. Lockheed Martin has made a fortune from the US being the the leading nation in NATO.
Re: What competitivness? (Score:3)
You can't stop using US tech
Are you sure you want to go there? How independent from China, Chinese products, Chinese manufacturing and Chinese capitals is your lifestyle?
Also congratulations on missing the point. The point was that Europe is happy to use American products as long as its sovereignty is respected. Stop respecting that sovereignty, start treating Europe like a bunch of vassal states, find out that they're not and that you have more to lose. Europe prefers the post-WW2 mutually beneficial situation, but the US is shitting
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Sorry Lavandera, I replied to the wrong post.
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Oh no, who will rent terrible software and sell counterfeit products without Google, Microsoft, and Amazon?
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Just the fact that EU has no own major companies like Google, Microsoft or Amazon means that it is not competitive already.
I think you really do not know how tech works. Large companies are only good for shoveling tons of money, not for making good tech.
Re:What competitivness? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is they sold it. Google wants to talk about European competitiveness? Their share price is entirely propped up this past year by a company they bought in the UK - which formed the centre for all of Google's AI developments.
But I think you (or rather Google) begged the question. Why do you need one singular mega company to be competitive? How does having one big company compare to having 10 smaller ones? Amazon is a good example, the jack of all trades company. Well Europe has plenty of cloud providers. Europe has local video streaming providers. Europe has multiple online stores (bol, and otto to name two major ones) that are a far better one stop shopping experience than Amazon.
Who needs Microsoft when we have Linux and LibreOffice (or Collebra if you want an online cloud based office suit), the former Finnish, the latter German, and a Slashdot darling as well. Who needs to be privacy raped by Gmail when we have our nice Swiss friends at Proton mail providing superior services?
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Doesn't have it yet. If EU authorities want to migrate to Linux and free software (current push) there is a lot of opportunity for EU companies to grow by providing that. And some of them may become competition for Google.
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One of the challenges with the most EU countries is that trying to create a startup is lot harder. Just consider the extra bureaucracy and stricter labour laws. These often end up playing to the advantage of establish medium to large businesses, who don't have the innovative drive needed in many cases.
If there was some carve out for startups then we could see a more dynamic IT sector, but right now it may actually be better to incentivise Canada to work with the EU to find a solution that works. I say Canad
Re: What competitivness? (Score:4, Informative)
Tech innovation is not driven by "major" companies anymore. Everything that Google, Amazon or Microsoft is famous for is either Linux, or something Linux does betyer anyway.
What major companies have is good marketing and an early head start. That'sot something that will keep EU back.
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You're thinking way too narrowly. You can look way beyond Linux. Check out how Google performs in AI. Where do they do their primary AI development? UK. Google's entire game in the AI bubble is 100% the result of acquiring a European company and continues to operate it as a somewhat autonomous division. Gemini is a product of Europe, ongoing development in Europe, etc. I say Europe specifically but it was EU at the time of the acquisition. Amazon is doing amazing work in robotics in its warehouses. They are
Re: What competitivness? (Score:3)
On top of this there's the brain drain: getting an academic position in US used to be the holy grail. Now nobody wants or seeks that; and those who have it, want to go away for fear of not being to return to their families after their next international conference.
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It is the tech drug talking. "If you stop taking tech, you will go down!" Do not listen to that voice
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Just the fact that EU has no own major companies like Google, Microsoft or Amazon means that it is not competitive already.
So what does it have to lose?
Those three companies you mentioned all use technology either provided by European companies, such as robotics Amazon are using in their warehouses, or like in the case of Google's Gemini, European companies that they'be bought up. In fact talking about Gemini all it's development is still done in the UK. Also remember that without the Dutch company ASMLs lithographs no US chip manufacturer is building any microchips. Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia all rely on ASML lithographs to make their CPUS, G
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I'm curious if Europe would need those companies anyway. If they get enough open source software to replace things that normally "require" Microsoft, like AD, then the software may be generic, and people pay cloud services for more of a white-label SaaS/PaaS/IaaS provider. This overall would benefit because there wouldn't be any vendor lock-in.
What would be nice is if SuSE worked on FreeIPA/IdM to focus on getting that into a scalable product, where it could handle insanely large amounts of objects, and m
Corpo Panopticon (Score:3)
Do not leave us.
Doom, DOOM, DOOOOOOOM I say!
Tech bros so pathetically desperate... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't want to lose business outside the U.S. ? The solution is simple: Stop supporting psycopathic child-rapists who threaten with military action the sovereignty of allied nations.
And to the republicans out there: Choose your presidential candidates better. The rest of the world don't give a fuck if your president is a democrat or a republican. They do care, however, if he's an authoritarian bully and wannabe dictator. Haven't you noticed yet that no previous U.S. president, democrat or republican, has ever caused such an international uproar before ? It's no longer a R vs D thing, it's a "at least seemingly decent, competent human being taking his job seriously" vs "one of the most narcissic, sociopathic, childish, disgusting american public figure" thing.
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You missed "stupid" and "rapist" in there, but yes, that is the problem. But the US economy is long-term fucked and hence the military might will go away as well a bit later. And then nobody will care about it anymore unless it finds out how to get somewhat decent leaders again. I am not hopeful on that front. Too many deranged fanatics.
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Haven't you noticed yet that no previous U.S. president, democrat or republican, has ever caused such an international uproar before ?
No. Europeans are always complaining. It's the French cafe thing.
Put the money toward using/developing Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Then everyone benefits, at lower overall costs (because there won't be the inevitable rent-seeking from greedy corporations, U.S. or otherwise).
Finland (Score:2, Offtopic)
Exactly. Linux comes from Finland and is GPL. Android runs Linux. Best technology in the world? Not a problem for Europe!
Re: Put the money toward using/developing Open Sou (Score:2)
Even NON-FOSS is better. Skype was great (feature-wise) until Microsoft got to it, and eventually killed it with no equivalent (feature-wise).
Isolationism does that (Score:5, Insightful)
Isolationism cuts off the ability to benefit from others advances, but what choice do you have but to become self sufficient when your greatest ally and largest trading partner becomes hostile?
Re:Isolationism does that (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, we're not trying to be self-sufficient. There's a whole world out there willing tohave healthy trade and strategic relations with Europe. We just struck deals with Australia, India and Mercosur. We're just cutting off the US since it's behaving like a hostile power, the rest of the world is welcome.
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An alliance is worth jack shit if the ally throws a hissy fit and flips the table.
He has a point (Score:3)
I'll say this as a developer working for years in the US for a EU-based company.
Ignoring GDPR, we spend a significant amount of time developing solutions that maintain compliance EU or country-specific laws (Germany and France are pretty notorious). We do charge for these compliance levels - it's not free. We do the same for other parts of the world too, from Argentina to Australia. But the EU is on a whole other level for regulation and other geopolitical restrictions.
In our specific field, many of our competitors just choose not to deal with it and I think that's what the OP is getting at. If you are a company in Germany shopping for software or SaaS solutions, the market is much smaller and more expensive than if you are in US, Canada, Brazil, or Singapore. That is a drag on your ability to build and sell whatever you are doing.
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the market is much smaller and more expensive than if you are in US, Canada, Brazil, or Singapore
Is it really more expensive in the long-term, given the inevitably increasing rent-seeking by the greedy "Big Established Tech" corporations?
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Re: He has a point (Score:2)
The regulations are there for a reason. The USA should implement them too.
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Meh. Those regulations are nothing compared to trying to maintain compliance with various US government bureaucracies. DoD is a notorious example.
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Different countries have different electrical sockets, different supply voltages, different RF spectrum allocations, different building codes, different taxation systems, even different grades of petroleum-based fuels. These are as much the products of history as the different languages and cultures. Most industries cope with this just fine and build their products and services to accommodate market requirements.
It's a peculiarity of the IT industry that it has historically been resistant to acknowledging t
"Google warns..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, nothing self-serving there, is there?
Actually this is gold! (Score:3)
When big tech complaints to me it looks we're on the good track.
Dear Google, we've seen the alternative... corrupted politicians bribed by big tech in government contracts with millions of licenses for text editors and paying am arm and a leg for "cloud storage".
Dear Google (Score:2)
It's their risk to take. Let them take it.
Just imagine how great American would be with an noncompetitive Europe.
Whether it's good or bad for Europe is yet to be seen. That it will be bad fro Google's sales is not in dispute. Suck it.
We don't want competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Is what they're really saying. Because you better believe that if the EU develops better software platforms that people outside of the EU will want to use them.
In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Google is complaining they need to reduce their shady stuff.
The EU is waking up (Score:4, Insightful)
After decades of allowing the USA to shaft our IT industry we finally start looking inward at what remains of our tech industry because uncle Sam becomes a greedy, selfish megalomaniac and now google acts all butt-hurt?
There are loads of companies in the EU providing what Google, Microsoft, and Amazon could provide.
But, alas, these companies are based in the USA and so can only be considered untrustworthy (because of the CLOUD act, for example).
SuSE gmbh (German) provides an entire operating system; both for desktop and server, and they are able to provide SLA arrangements.
SoftMaker (German) provides a nice office package.
Proton (Swiss, soon to be German) provides a bunch of security related services, email, word processor, and a spreadsheet.
NextCloud (German) provides a nice cloud platform, including meeting place and office software.
ONLYOffice (Latvia) provides an office suite which has collaboration features.
Linux Mint (Ireland) is an excellent desktop operating system.
OVH (German) provides cloud infrastructure.
There are others, but these are the companies I can think of this quickly.
So, yes, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, worry as your reputation gets destroyed by the simple fact that you're US companies. All we need to happen is that all those EU governments and large companies wake up (and it's starting to happen) and start pouring money in these EU companies.
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OVH is a french company ;)
https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/ab... [ovhcloud.com]
China (Score:3)
China seems to be doing "just fine" without Google, and increasingly without Microsoft (Windows) too. I'm sure Europe can manage too. Maybe it'll be painful to quit the habit, but ultimately it will be worthwhile.
Russian gas (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or US gas...
There is a difference with your analogy. While Europe is dependent on exterior providers of fossil fuels, and it is unlikely they will start to exploit their tar sands, they have a software industry they can lean on. But making them work for a common goal will be a challenge. this is what (good) politicians are for.
They also must build the conditions to avoid EU tech companies to be bought by US ones.
It will undermine their competiveness (Score:2)