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Europe is looking for alternatives to US cloud providers (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

101 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The global backlash against the second Donald Trump administration keeps on growing. Canadians have boycotted US-made products, anti–Elon Musk posters have appeared across London amid widespread Tesla protests, and European officials have drastically increased military spending as US support for Ukraine falters. Dominant US tech services may be the next focus.

There are early signs that some European companies and governments are souring on their use of American cloud services provided by the three so-called hyperscalers. Between them, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) host vast swathes of the Internet and keep thousands of businesses running. However, some organizations appear to be reconsidering their use of these companies’ cloud services—including servers, storage, and databases—citing uncertainties around privacy and data access fears under the Trump administration.

“There’s a huge appetite in Europe to de-risk or decouple the over-dependence on US tech companies, because there is a concern that they could be weaponized against European interests,” says Marietje Schaake, a nonresident fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and a former decadelong member of the European Parliament.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think you are dicounting how simple most cloud applications are - compute cores, bucket storage and virtual Networks make up the vast majority, with block storage and serverless compute probably making up a second to everything else being a distant third. I agree that there is specialization involved, but I also believe that regulation could go a long way to ensuring better access and making it possible for more competition. Right now, only a few companies have a monopoly on the datacenter infrastructure itself.

This is actually a lot more similar to power Utilities, which hides a vast and complex system of demand based generation that is hidden by ISOs. A regulatory system could work really well, and deliver much more and better service at lower prices. Otherwise we will see Cloud providers raising prices and offering deals more towards the large enterprises that can build billing support, which was the original complaint.

Not that I think we are close to that. Legislation around technology is woefully bad and behind in the US at least.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

The thing is, people often switch providers due to poor network speeds, overprovisioned resources, and outdated hardware. Budget hosts use older hardware and whatnot to keep prices down, and premium hosts use newer hardware to justify a higher price.

If regulations come in that cap certain costs, it'll likely devolve into a race to the bottom per unit, with larger companies generally winning because they can get better deals on hardware due to hulk pricing. I imagine it could kill segmentation as well.

Maybe it would be okay. I'm just not very confident in my government to craft sensible policy that doesn't just benefit the largest lobbies, as in, the largest providers.