What I can't do is write a funding proposal in libreoffice, because docx is the standard form and if your proposal looks odd they are happy to desk reject it.

You could always just use PDF. If there's no reason for the person receiving the proposal to edit the file, it shouldn't really be in an editable format anyway.

I also can't just use my own search engine, browser, social media. Well, I can, but I'll have to be tech savvy and will be isolated. This is by design.

Switching your browser is easy, you just download a different one. Vivaldi is from Norway, Ecosia is German, and Mullvad is from Sweden. Switching search engines is also pretty easy, including the built in address bar ones. On Android I was able to switch from Google to Kagi easily between the browser settings, and app. No need to be tech savvy beyond knowing how to install an app. Kago itself is US, but there are European alternatives, the steps to switch are just as easy.

Technically we're on social media right now, but most usage of that term means more like Facebook and that sort of site instead. "Social media" like that should generally be avoided if only to help with mental health.

Yes, but nobody cares about Spotify. [...] But I can use my own cd collection instead if I want to or play my own music or none at all. Nobody cares.

I really wish this was the case, but a lot of people feel like they're stuck with Spotify, and buying music to own is increasingly difficult. You and I, and people like us who maintain our own collections are outliers.

I recognise however that Spotify isn't an essential service in the sense that say, a word processor is. I'm also not saying that Spotify, Skype or Klarna are good services by any means. Skype doesn't really exist anymore so fuck them, but Spotify and Klarna are terrible corporations.

What I'm saying is that there are services outside of the U.S., as well as popular software that isn't developed in the U.S., though many of these might just exist to cater to needs that U.S. software doesn't fill. For example, we have a software suite that's ubiquitous in government and public institutions here called Platina developed by Formpipe.

I wouldn't say that the ubiquity of American services is because their services are higher quality or in general better than other offerings. I think a lot of it has to do with the absolutely bananas funding of the U.S. tech sector, as well as the anti-competitive practises the tech giants have been engaging in for decades at this point. Word became the de-facto standard not because it was the better software, but because Windows was the de-facto standard.

Had as much time and money been poured into FOSS alternatives, they'd be at the forefront now. We might see this happen now with a lot of European governments attempting to move over to a FOSS software stack to minimise their reliance on proprietary, particularly U.S., technologies.

I'd further argue that a lot of the U.S. tech sector is actually backed up and powered by FOSS software that doesn't necessarily have an inherent "location" to it. Any sort of big media platform that serves video or audio (Netflix, HBO, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, etc.) will be using ffmpeg to do the heavy work for them. Most of the web runs on Linux servers, and the ecosystem that comes with. None of the tech giants would even function if not for the smaller software projects developed and maintained in large by private individuals.