[nonrandomstring]

There's always good news and a silver lining. We've been saying for years that BigTech is the cybersecurity threat. Working toward European cloud migration has been like pulling teeth as so many companies felt locked-in to insecure US products. In just two months Trump has done more to motivate abandonment of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta products than any hackers or criminals in the past 25 years.

[h4ck_th3_pl4n3t]

This.

If you are a European startup and were considered "only an alternative" to a bigger competitor...now's the time to push it out and be seen for it. There's a huge demand right now, and it won't easily go away for the next (remaining) 4 years. The civil war that in my opinion is unavoidable won't make it better for US stability.

[StefanBatory]

A reneval for sysadmins and devops in EU for the next few years? :P

[BjoernKW]

Moving towards a "European cloud" remains an eternal pipe dream, simply because such a thing doesn't exist, the reason being the EU actively regulating against businesses trying to innovate in this and other seminal areas.

[nonrandomstring]

You're right that a "European Cloud" has been a 'dream' for a long time. But I don't see the reasons you cite (regulation) as a cause of impediment.

And you slightly mis-parsed my words. A migration of cloud services from US providers isn't the same as to a "European Cloud". Canada, Australia, India, Vietnam, South Africa... there's a whole world of nominally friendly and economically viable suppliers out there. What matters is moving from Microsoft, AWS, Google and other services that cannot be considered "safe" any longer.

I notice from your profile you're an AWS disciple. You must know AWS want to build a "Euro Sovereign" division? Not that I think it will be successful, but look at which way the wind is blowing.

[BjoernKW]

> Canada, Australia, India, Vietnam, South Africa... there's a whole world of nominally friendly and economically viable suppliers out there

Where generally EU-based businesses aren't allowed to move their cloud infrastructure either.

With the US and Privacy Shield there at least used to be an agreement in place. While that agreement was frivolously nullified by EU courts, at least so far authorities haven't been overly eager to enforce that, probably because they know that'd put pretty much every EU-based company out of business.

Have fun trying to convince zealous bureaucrats and lawyers that hosting your customer data in Vietnam is fine for an EU-based business, though.

[palata]

> the reason being the EU actively regulating against businesses trying to innovate

Oh come on, can we stop with that? Not having regulations results in quasi-monopolies and oligarchs. Preaching against regulation is only worth it if you are Google, Amazon & Co. Regulations don't prevent fairly big companies from existing.

Maybe the lack of regulations in the US pushes EU companies to move there. But right now maybe non-Americans will start looking for non-US alternatives, and that's good.

[BjoernKW]

Funny thing is, due to overly complex regulations such as GDPR, there are no EU-based alternatives to speak of and as an EU-based company moving your cloud-based business to other countries mentioned in this thread often isn't legal according to GDPR either.

With the US and Privacy Shield there at least was an attempt to come to some sort of reasonable real-life solution (which of course was shot down by EU courts, so as of 2020 pretty much every EU-based business is in a legal limbo).

[palata]

> due to overly complex regulations such as GDPR, there are no EU-based alternatives to speak of

You're talking specifically about AWS competitors, right? I don't think it's related to GDPR. It's really that everybody uses AWS. Would you say that Canada doesn't have a competitor to AWS because of their regulations, too?

Regulations like the GDPR precisely try to give incentives for competitors. Which is hard to do because people/companies fight to use the US solutions and don't care about privacy, just convenience.

[BjoernKW]

> Regulations like the GDPR precisely try to give incentives for competitors.

It failed miserably at that, too. Apart from Plausible there's hardly any business worth mentioning that used GDPR as a competitive advantage. GDPR for the most part has been a stimulus program for lawyers and government busybodies.

[palata]

Maybe it failed, but that's the goal.

You can't take the GDPR, and conclude that regulations as an idea is bad.

[decide1000]

That's quite opinionated.

The privacy shield was 'shot down' because it would allow the US unprecedented access to personal data of EU civilians (including unlimited surveillance).

GDPR is not that bad. It has downsides but it is not overly complex.

Companies (including cloud services) have to comply if they want to have business in Europe.

Fines by EU: Meta: 1.5 billion Amazon: 750 million TikTok: 350 million Clearview: 30 million Apple: 1.5 billion

[BjoernKW]

> That's quite opinionated.

That's just a perspective from reality, where people are doing business rather than contriving impractical regulations out of thin air .

> GDPR is not that bad. It has downsides but it is not overly complex.

It might seem simple to consumers or politicians who claim they could implement it in a day, but it is highly complex once you have to implement it as a small or medium-sized business.

> Companies (including cloud services) have to comply if they want to have business in Europe

Large corporations - i.e. the supposed target of that regulation - scoff at GDPR. They have legal departments and the funds necessary to deal with GDPR however they see fit, while small and medium-sized business bear the brunt.