'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers -- "Barriers stack up: Datacenter capacity, egress fees, platform skills, variety of cloud services. It won't happen, say analysts"
Posted by throwaway16830261@reddit | linuxadmin | View on Reddit | 38 comments
ExcellentJicama9774@reddit
I always love "analyst's" opinions. Especially when they rule something out.
RealUlli@reddit
If analysts knew their stuff, they wouldn't be analysts...
Especially the guys in the stock market - if they knew what they're talking about, they'd use their own money and be rich enough to never have to work again in short order.
Or maybe they do use their own money, but not to do what they say, but to make money from the masses doing what they say...
MrOaiki@reddit
They’re not wrong. Sure, Europe could remove all the practical and legal hurdles, but in an economy of scale, I don’t see how a European company would open up a global cloud service with more than 200 services, at a lower or as low price point as Azure and AWS.
Many_Ad7628@reddit
With friendly relationship and therefore very good deal about the energents with Russia it is possible for sure. But it is some kind of 'forbidden'. US does not like that possibility, and is afraid of.
hblok@reddit
Europe's biggest problem is the EU, Leyen, and its Soviet style five-year plans.
Pretty soon, every line of code written will have to be registered with the authorities, lest it runs foul of a myriad of legislation on everything from cookies, chat functionality, storage, charger cables, encryption, transactions.
In fact, I think we're already there. Besides local-only tools, there's probably not many applications which can be built without running into EU legal restrictions of some kind.
warbisshop@reddit
don't underestimate people when it comes to how far they wanna go out of spite
readonlycomment@reddit
Yet in many circumstances, quitting the cloud trap is often better and cheaper.
AdrianTeri@reddit
Many possibilities for the EU with removal of austerity and/or "balanced budgets" biases.
Commendable for recent things like Docs by France & Germany but more off shoots like are possible. E.g pioneering replacements for Apple's & Google's application stores with compliments of various services e.g payments, cloud/storage, maps/location(maybe existing FOSS apps need a bit retooling here?) etc
Druben-hinterm-Dorfe@reddit
Aren't they planning to amp up the austerity, and lean into rearmement, though?
AdrianTeri@reddit
That is called selective austerity.
On both ends of the spectrum of "high" & "low" deficits if you are doing the wrong things i.e not improving social well-being you are setting up crisis in you social & political realms.
Is Trump really continuing to fuel extreme right wing & fascism in Europe or has something else taken the driver seat after the pit stop called the US election?
The political costs of austerity -> https://www.ricardoduquegabriel.com/publication/gabriel_klein_pessoa_2021/
szank@reddit
This is a pure infrastructure problem, not a software problem. If one can build a bridge , one can build a data centre. The problem is funding. As usual.
There's a bunch of people who also know to build this stuff. A bunch of Europeans that have moved to the US because there they're paid much more and actually have an opportunity to build this stuff.
Now ofc in the eu they would never be paid as much as in the US because it would be "unfair". And there we go.
wideace99@reddit
This is not related only to IT&C infrastructure.
It is a general U.E. political problem (socialism/communism mentality) where any higher wages are overtaxed in a desperate hope (utopia) to achieve equality.
Such utopia is destroying meritocracy and promote idiocracy, laziness and any improvement in professional performance since it remove the money incentive.
szank@reddit
Last time I've checked running your own business is a pretty good way of earning good money. Even in Europe. The problem is that it requires a totally different skill set than being an excellent it/engineer/programmer person.
The US companies do pay their engineers way way better because in Europe imho paying employees a lot is frowned upon because the people on 30k€ would find it unfair.
And if a business owner earns a million or two a year that's totally fine tho. It's like "it could not be me so it's understandable, but here I am working 40h a week on employment contract and someone in the office on the opposite side of the street gets 300k€ for "the same office job".( yes there's a missing closing quite but it would look strange to add it).
Just a personal opinion.
In general I agree with your take with the exception that the top management is paid quite well.
wideace99@reddit
In US at least someone gets 300k on the opposite side of the street... this is not applicable in the neomarxism U.E. on any street :(
Related to open your own company... in U.E. if you have contracts with the government it's very profitable even if you need to pay lots of bribes to officials since it's public money. Of course, beside the public sector you can also have business with the private sector as a side business and you have more then an edge in the competition since there is alway a flow of money income from the pubblic sector.
This is how most of the incompetents climbe the money ladder in U.E, many of them are policitan relatives that also laundry money for the politician or the party.
Do you even think you can stand a chance against such competitors ? lol
HomoAndAlsoSapiens@reddit
those are a lot of big words and I am not sure we're using them correctly :(
yourfriendlyreminder@reddit
It's absolutely an infrastructure and a software problem.
Just as an example, Hetzner recently finally decided to release an object storage product, and it sucks. Object storage is literally 20 year old technology at this point, but Hetzner still struggles to provide it despite having the infrastructure.
szank@reddit
From that thread it's just the usual infrastructure snafu, nothing related to object storage, although if its a new product managed by a new team then I would call it business as usual.
I will go on: whoever is responsible for allowing it to happen did not have enough experience with running stuff at scale and seeing it go down for various reasons.
That is a process problem, imho. I am hand waving things here and I cannot claim that I've ran anything at herzners scale, forget about aws /Google but I don't that that team at herzner will make the same mistake again.
It's not like aws does not have any outages either.
Darchrys@reddit
This is an interesting take - why do you not think this is a software problem?
The infrastructure part of this is trivial by comparison to recreating the full stacks of services offered in AWS and Azure (cannot speak for GCP as don't know much about it) - it requires funds, yes, but at a fundamental level its very possible to do. Solving the rest of the "stack" problem (and this is just considering public cloud services - put services like M/DS 365 or Google Workspace to one side) would appear to be much, much harder. Why do you think this is reversed?
szank@reddit
Because this problem has been solved now, multiple times. As a stupid example, kubernetes exists already, eu does not need to build that from 0 just because.
The hyperscalers did all the hard work of building up the Linux kernel to suit their hyperscsly needs for the last 20 years, we don't need to redo that either.
Software is fungible and fast to iterate on. Ofc it's not as simple as slapping together a few open source libraries and a react ui but the know how, is there. The people who have built it before, made mistakes, learnt from them , made more mistakes and again learnt from them are out there. Ready to be lured in by free but mostly crap healthcare , expensive housing and a wage celling at the high end.
Super-Admiral@reddit
Nothing is impossible, but it will take years to leave the comfort zone. Let's hope our governments have the will and the guts to kick start the movement.
war-and-peace@reddit
I love the argument presented by the register. Just give up.
mdvle@reddit
I am shocked.
What a surprise that people with a financial interest in maintaining the status quo insist changing it is impossible, and presumably spend money lobbying to prevent a change from happening.
Yes, the biggest problem is money. Google, Amazon and Microsoft all built up their cloud businesses using money from their other monopolies which essentially gave them "free" money to spend. Any non-American competitor is not going to have this advantage.
The bigger issue though is that there will be a tendency to justify doing nothing on the basis of "it's only Trump, and he will be gone soon". That ignores the hidden elephant that much of the issues aren't Trump but rather the people behind the scenes like those who created Project 2025.
Those people aren't going away.
So like in 2020 the world may get a temporary reprieve in 2028, but at some point the problems will return.
So better to accept the need to leave the US based stuff now and begin a 10 year project then get more unwanted surprises down the road.
Boustrophaedon@reddit
Yep. Until very recently I thought FOSS outside of server and dev environments was a cute pipe dream for academics and beardies - I was wrong, very wrong.
biffbobfred@reddit
The fact that Trump was reelected after all the shit that happened in 2017-21 shows the problem is a long term one. It’s a pain getting out of the way of a vicious cycle but the longer you wait the more painful it becomes
Complex_Quarter6647@reddit
We need more excuses for the feckless Europeans to be reliant on American data and Russian oil.
nanoatzin@reddit
I suspect Trumps tariffs could change tech dominance.
lnxrootxazz@reddit
Problem is money.. Who pays for this? With enough money, they can build the infrastructure very quickly. They just need a long term vision to move away from US production. Yes, the best vendors are US and Chinese and they still need the hardware plus the support contracts for the routers, firewall appliances etc.. . Europe has the capabilities to make their own but they cannot do it as is. They must reduce regulations, free money and get engineering skills into the continent.. Right now this is a very itchy situation. In theory Trump can stop Europe using US products with one executive order.. That will cost US companies billions so it is unlikely but still... This is always a nice thing to have for extortion and having Europeans depending on security and technology from the US, they will never mature and be a big player
biffbobfred@reddit
Decoupling (in the short term) is unrealistic. That shouldn’t stop them from moving towards that in the long term.
I literally was just telling my daughter about systems and cycles and be careful of getting caught in vicious cycles and catch 22s. She’s 10 - maybe I should have that lesson for adults as well
minus_minus@reddit
EU neolibearals wanted states to get out of the way of international competition, ... but not like that!
Barrerayy@reddit
It is possible, it just needs funding.
MairusuPawa@reddit
We kept telling you to not fuck up.
You fucked up.
catwiesel@reddit
of course its possible. dont be daft. especially if you hire personal and dont just hire one devops who knows 2 products and puts everything in aws and microsoft 365 like he was taught with the certs....
Wicaeed@reddit
Companies got addicted to being able to just spin up w/e the hell they wanted for the low low price of their Corporate Credit Cards Soul
gmuslera@reddit
What should be possible is to get rid of that lack of long term vision. I mean, what is happening was not impossible, should have not be considered even a black swan event, if anything Brexit should had been a big clue even for the most boneheads in that area. Investment should not be only considered for winnings but also for not losing so badly if some not so improbable risks become reality. And we didn't see yet the full extent of the problem, among other reasons, because it is still developing.
The above comments are not only about tech. But if you want to focus in tech, investing in open source software, protocols, formats, capabilities, government and so on may not give ownership on that, but it will give you options.
brunogadaleta@reddit
"My manager wants to talk to your manager because our users don't like Odt and still received a ton of 'malformed' Docx."
Human learn by trial and error: nothing's better that a good tariff war to get funding for EU and opensource solutions.
brunogadaleta@reddit
We need to build new software solutions by taking this in account. Then slowly let the legacy die where it is. Sometime a few years is enough.
darklinux1977@reddit
as it was impossible for France not to have the A-bomb, for Europe to have an equivalent of Windows or Mac OS (Linux)...we will see
throwaway16830261@reddit (OP)
From https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/1k53dkc/im_going_in_an_international_trip_to_visit_family/
"My Solution Without Relying on Global Vendors" by vawaver (April 22, 2025): https://help.nextcloud.com/t/replacing-office365-how-to-keep-os-secure/223289/3 from https://help.nextcloud.com/t/replacing-office365-how-to-keep-os-secure/223289 ("Replacing Office365, how to keep OS secure"), https://archive.is/tW8Iv
From https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxadmin/comments/1k3g123/europes_cloud_customers_eyeing_exit_from_us/
"Why Do Hyperscalers Design Their Own CPUs?" by Sally Ward-Foxton (April 10, 2025): https://www.eetimes.com/why-do-hyperscalers-design-their-own-cpus/ , https://archive.is/vZ09c
"SaaS Is Broken: Why Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) Is the Future" "BYOC lets companies run SaaS on their own cloud infrastructure." by Noam Levy (March 30, 2025): https://thenewstack.io/saas-is-broken-why-bring-your-own-cloud-byoc-is-the-future/ , https://archive.is/aeoRw
"Global Shift to Bypass the Dollar Is Gaining Momentum in Asia" by Catherine Bosley, Harry Suhartono, and Tao Zhang (May 8, 2025): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-09/global-shift-to-bypass-the-dollar-is-gaining-momentum-in-asia , https://archive.is/t3DNu
"Investors dump bonds globally as U.S. credit downgrade, Trump's tax bill ignite fiscal worries" by Lee Ying Shan (May 22, 2025): https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/22/global-bonds-selloff-investors-turn-away-from-long-dated-debt.html , https://archive.is/wEMXB