Of course, the dependence on US products and services in IT is a well established fact of life for most Europeans. Big tech companies provide compelling, fully featured and easy to use product and services to anyone with an internet connection and a browser. Most of our on-line time is spent on the websites a in the apps of US based companies.
And what would you expect? In the EU, there are no restrictions on the use of websites and services on other continents. US companies built up a strong lead in on-line services in the early 2000s. Billions of dollars have been spent on rallying people to subscribe to services that were offered for free. For instance, Google has done such a good job of providing web-based e-mail that most people I know own a GMail account; to the point you kind of expect them to just have one.
This has never been a real problem. We were all aware that big tech companies only cared about privacy when it became good marketing practice. We knew our private data was sold to whomever wanted to pay for it. That never really bothered most of us. As long as you don’t have anything to hide, why worry about privacy? I mean, the deal is too sweet to pass up on. And as long as we kept using these services, the service providers we’re eager to keep the services on-line in order to monetize on new data.
With the recent developments in global politics, it seems this co-dependence is starting to bite. For the first time, people are genuinely worried about their dependence on overseas services. The direct relationship between changes in policies at big tech companies and the policies of the conservative right in the US is very clear and as subtle as a whale falling on your head.
Companies in the EU are now very much second guessing their risk assessments. What happens if Microsoft pulls the plug on Office On-line, because Denmark refuses to enter into a deal over Greenland? Will OpenAI have to build guardrails that prevent ChatGPT from uttering responses that are deemed “woke”? Can Europe rely on the services provided by US companies in the same way they have for the past 20 years?
Well, even if they can, it doesn’t really matter. The question no one has been asking all this time is now being asked. Are we too reliant on the products, services and infrastructure provided by the other side of the Atlantic? The answer is of course: Yes, we are. Many individuals and companies in Europe will have tremendous problems when companies like Google or Microsoft pull the plug.
With that realization we’re now looking around for alternatives closer to home that offer the same level of functionality, usability and availability, that can integrate with all our other on-line tools. We’re now finding out that there hardly are any. Basic functionality can be found in myriad software suites and on-line services. Given enough time and help you can probably set up an e-mail service or cloud storage solution, but good all-in-one replacements for Office On-line or Google Workspace hard to find.
We’re going to try anyway.
In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be writing about our attempts to move away from all kinds of on-line services. Maybe having our WordPress website hosted at Automattic is not such a good idea (especially with the apparent infighting going on there). I heard there are all kinds of alternatives to Google Maps, so let’s give those a spin. How can we set up an on-line office environment including cloud storage? We’re not sure yet, but we’re going to give it a whirl.
I don’t expect true drop-in replacements for any of this. Switching to other services or products is going to feel a lot like moving backwards. It will be frustrating as we miss powerful functionality and efficient integrations, and we’ll probably take a hit in productivity as well. And I am sure that in some cases alternative offerings are just not going to be good enough, or will weight up to having to leave an established ecosystem.
But if we’re going to take working on our co-dependence seriously, we’ll have to start sometime. Let’s hope our massive interest in “local” products and services will be a boost to product development activity in the EU. It seems like such a waste to have to duplicate all that effort just to have options. But here we are.
No regrets, the fish was excellent, but it is time to go.
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