[HN Gopher] European Alternatives
___________________________________________________________________
European Alternatives
Author : s_dev
Score : 560 points
Date : 2026-01-23 13:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (european-alternatives.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (european-alternatives.eu)
| s_dev wrote:
| Same submission from a few years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627097
|
| What's insightful to me is how fast the list of alternatives are
| growing.
|
| The list is much better now than 2021 and we still have a long
| way to go.
|
| Also Constantin Graf needs to add a new Category: "LLM Clients"
| or "AI Tooling"
| enopod_ wrote:
| Wow, nice! Great resource, thanks a lot!
| oulipo2 wrote:
| If you want an EU-made (and repairable!) e-bike battery, check
| what we're building at https://infinite-battery.com :)
| agumonkey wrote:
| an European energy sector (mainstream or industrial) HN would
| be great btw
|
| ps: congrats on your success
| pjmlp wrote:
| Categories missing:
|
| - Operating systems, for various kinds of workloads
|
| - Programming language toolchains
|
| - Hardware vendors
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I don't see the issue with Operating systems or programming
| languages. There are FOSS alternatives and since they are run
| locally have no connection outside of the EU.
|
| Hardware vendors is a different issue
| pjmlp wrote:
| You are missing the big picture who develops them, pays the
| salaries of people in the trenches, implement LSPs, and
| whatever else around the ecosystems.
|
| Example, Java, .NET, Go and co are FOSS, how long do you
| think they will keep on going without their overlords?
|
| For complete alternatives we need to go back to the cold war
| days, where programming languages were driven by vendor
| neutral standards, and there were several to buy from.
|
| As it is, it suffices to take the air out of existing FOSS
| options.
|
| Even if you quickly point out to GCC and clang, one reason
| why they have dropped implementation velocity from existing
| ISO revisions is due to a few well known big corps focusing
| on their own offerings, while other vendors seldom upstream
| stuff as they focus on clang.
|
| EDIT: As I missed this on the first comment, same applies to
| the big FOSS OS projects, most contributions to the major
| Linux distros, or the BSDs come from non European companies,
| there is naturally something like SuSE, but then we get into
| the whole who is allowed to contribute, security, backdoors
| and related stuff.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| For the OS stuff wouldn't a European distribution of Linux
| do. Worst case if Europe could no longer get access to
| patches it could fork it. OK Europe might get behind, but
| that doesn't seem like an immediate issue, in the same way
| that not having AWS would be?
|
| On programming languages it is a concern how popular .net
| and Java are in Europe. However being stuck on the current
| state of Python is less of a worry. I feel like I was
| always 10 years behind on needing new features.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Edit: I concede my .net concerns do pull through to
| Linux. If you were selling Linux solutions to Government
| or big business, I fear Redhat might be chosen before
| Suse and Ubuntu
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The EU is asking for information on how to support open
| source, as they currently do through NLNET. It seems to
| prefer decentralised open source to the hyper-capitalism we
| got from American tech. Both have their downsides, of
| course.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| People are still running on Java 1.8, which was released in
| 2014. If no more Java work happened, that'd be unfortunate,
| but realistically we'd all be fine.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| A lot of European people spend their energy on those FOSS
| languages. Why would they go away?
|
| There's C++ if you want something that has an international
| standard.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes that would be one of them.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Open source generally meets the needs of the first two. There's
| barely any proprietary toolchains left in common use; maybe
| Oracle Java is one of the last?
|
| Hardware you can buy from China. Distant, predictable
| authoritarianism that doesn't make annoying social media posts
| is sadly preferable to .. whatever is going on over there.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Only if there are European resources to keep the lights on.
|
| Java is FOSS by the way, however it is also a good example,
| its runtime capabilities isn't the product of long nights and
| weekends.
| ben_w wrote:
| Keeping the lights on is sufficient for the immediate
| concerns.
|
| We can worry about feature growth later, if at all. It may
| be age finally changing my preferences, but so much of what
| I've seen sold as "new" in tech in recent years has been
| either worse than what I already had or a reinvention of
| something that already existed. Like, contactless payments
| were already a thing before they were available in phones,
| and social media didn't start with FB and twitter, and
| Apple's API updates in the last few years feel like as much
| of a downgrade to me as their icons seem to be to UI blogs.
| palata wrote:
| > Java is FOSS by the way
|
| What was the problem between Android and Java then? Wasn't
| there some dispute between Google and Oracle on that?
| Genuinely interested.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Back then the licence did not apply to embedded systems,
| and Google did a Microsoft move as well, Android Java is
| their J++.
|
| Sun did not sue, because they were out money already, and
| Oracle used the argument they were using Apache clone
| implementation of Java, with copyrighted headers.
|
| To this day you cannot pick a random Java library and
| have it run on Android.
|
| Even after having won, they refuse to implement full
| compatibility.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Java has FOSS implementations. Oracle is very much NOT
| free: https://oraclejavalicensing.com/who-needs-an-oracle-
| java-lic...
|
| To the extent that my employer blocks Oracle dot com at the
| outbound firewall to stop anyone accidentally incurring
| license costs. You don't want to deal with Oracle license
| enforcement.
| gtirloni wrote:
| They accept suggestions - https://european-
| alternatives.eu/register
| pjmlp wrote:
| Thanks
| dismalaf wrote:
| - OSes is easy, Suse and Ubuntu are European. As well as a
| bunch of smaller ones.
|
| Programming language toolchains? You must be very NPM-brained,
| stuff like C and C++ is generally quite decentralized with OSes
| taking care of packaging. There's also plenty of languages that
| originated in Europe.
|
| Hardware vendors? There's a few. Most hardware vendors in
| general are Asian though.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| For consumers, these computers look interesting:
| https://starlabs.systems/
| qznc wrote:
| I recently discovered these: https://www.schenker-tech.de/en/
| badsectoracula wrote:
| FWIW Free Pascal and Lazarus communities and developers are
| largely European and there isn't a single company behind them.
| Though at the same time there are also several devs from
| outside EU so i do not think it can be called a "EU
| alternative" - which is the case for most FLOSS projects
| actually.
|
| Some projects, especially high profile ones, do have US
| companies behind them (e.g. Google, etc) so you could claim
| they are US-centric, but at this point it becomes a question of
| _why_ you are looking for an EU alternative. If it is to help
| EU businesses (like others mentioned), then unless you
| financially support these US companies (either directly or
| indirectly via, e.g., your data) it doesn 't matter if the
| FLOSS project you are using is made by them or not.
| pjmlp wrote:
| For the same reason people on the wrong countries aren't
| allowed to contribute to US projects.
|
| The way things are going it becomes a national security issue
| where those PR are coming from.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| So, to be clear, your reasons for looking for EU
| alternatives (i.e. that "same reason" you refer to) is that
| some countries are not allowed to contribute to US
| projects?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yes, as it stands we should remove our independence on
| US, given current geopolitics, when technology can be
| weaponised.
| palata wrote:
| > why you are looking for an EU alternative
|
| I think recently it has been made obvious by the US that
| relying on US technology is a risk, because it can be used to
| bully entire countries.
|
| So I think there is a movement right now of "non-US
| alternatives", but of course if you are in the EU and got
| burned by relying too much on the US, maybe it is wise to try
| to fix that by having some kind of digital sovereignty _in
| the EU_.
|
| But I'm pretty sure many companies would switch to a Canada-
| based product if it allowed them to reduce their dependency
| on the US.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > - Operating systems, for various kinds of workloads
|
| I agree that OS is missing but OS for any workload that is not
| "desktop computer" or "laptop computer" in the EU, and anywhere
| in the world, is already dominated by Linux. Phones, routers,
| Internet of Things, servers, supercomputers, smartwatches,
| satelittes,... Whatever really. It's all Linux.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Using a French server has been a pain. Their level of customer
| service is much worse than that in the US sadly
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Have you tried Hetzner
| tarkin2 wrote:
| No, I was looking for a French one. I'll persist with this
| for a while and then switch if things don't get better.
| Thanks
| s_dev wrote:
| Scaleway is slick. It's like a European Digital Ocean.
| troupo wrote:
| Last time I wanted to try it it was nowhere near DO:
| https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1835649083345649780
| s_dev wrote:
| You've posted that twice in this thread. I don't think
| it's as damning as you think it is.
| mg794613 wrote:
| I agree, seems he's on a mission instead.
| troupo wrote:
| Ah yes. The "mission" of pointing out how bad companies
| are in the most trivial details.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Agree, I've been impressed with Scaleway so far during
| some early experiments. Including a quick support
| response to a query I had.
| cthulberg wrote:
| OVH? I hate the dashboard, but the support seems fine to me.
| retired wrote:
| I like it. No fake smiles, no tip required. They can be a bit
| grumpy but French food is amazing which makes up for it.
| breezykoi wrote:
| That's what I like in the US: the servers are so friendly...
| and yes, I know it's all for the tip.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Well they're not friendly then are they? It's an act to get
| a tip - and if you don't you get chased down the street.
| nolok wrote:
| It's a different social contract. It's not just the
| waitress, it's service in general. One trying to judge
| the other is never quite going to work because it rubs us
| wrong in some weird internal way.
|
| Eg go into a big store brand in most of the US and the
| cashier will be all flashy smile asking how is your day,
| and you ignore it and ask your request, and that's the
| game. A french person would mostly hate that, feel the
| question as annoying.
|
| You go to a similar french store and the cashier and
| yourself will say the bonjour / merci / ... yada yada
| game and if someone doesn't do his part he's considered
| rude; I found a lot of foreigner surprised by that, the
| fact that you're not answering "merci" or asking "s'il
| vous plait" because it's nice, but because not doing it
| puts you in unpleasant person territory.
|
| Ok business meeting, even in tech. American are always
| super optimist and happy, and seeing a solution and the
| end goal, French are over realist bordering on pessimist.
|
| It's not that black and white of course there is a lot of
| inter mingling and differences, but overall which one you
| feel "better" is very personnal and based around what
| you're used to.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| "French server", what is that? Usually we judge customer
| service on the company, not the nationality of the hardware,
| care to share exactly where you had a bad experience?
| retired wrote:
| Is there a European alternative for this website?
| noodlebird wrote:
| techposts.eu i reckon
| timeon wrote:
| Seems to be US-hosted.
| breezykoi wrote:
| journalduhacker.net (in french)
| drnick1 wrote:
| The irony is that European alternatives are still in English,
| when no European country (since the departure of the U.K. from
| Europe) actually uses that language.
| s_dev wrote:
| Ireland and Malta.
|
| You would be shocked at how well certain nationalities like
| the Dutch and Swedes speak English.
| palata wrote:
| > You would be shocked at how well certain nationalities
| like the Dutch and Swedes speak English.
|
| Totally. All Northern countries to be fair. And then in my
| experience at least some Eastern countries (like Slovenia).
|
| Really it seems like the South of Europe is a bit weaker in
| English, my guess being that their native languages are
| latin and not germanic (so it's further away from English).
| bradyd wrote:
| The UK is still in Europe. They didn't move from the
| continent.
| retired wrote:
| It has been around 300 million years since the UK drifted
| away from continental Europe but it is still very much part
| of it!
| robin_reala wrote:
| The British isles were still connected to the continent 20k
| years ago.
| retired wrote:
| Technically they reconnected 31 years ago with the
| tunnel.
| tene80i wrote:
| The UK did not leave Europe. Just the EU. But also English
| fluency is widespread, so it's not a bad starting point.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| English is also the lingua franca (French language) of
| computers.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Fun fact: The term Lingua Franca originally meant
| something closer to Portuguese than the French spoken at
| the time. Eventually though, the French language did
| become the Lingua Franca truly, for some time.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > But also English fluency is widespread, so it's not a bad
| starting point.
|
| Being able to string together a couple of sentences is not
| "being fluent." By that standard, all of America would be
| fluent in Spanish.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Neither is pedantry a sign of intelligence, a message
| many a contributor to this here site would be good to
| take to heart. As to the choice of language English is
| and will most likely remain the _lingua franca_ (pun
| intended) in most of Europe as it is the language which
| is most often learned as a second language. While many
| Europeans are not _fluent_ in this language they do
| manage to read and make themselves understood in it. This
| makes it _not a bad starting point_ just like the
| grandparent stated.
| technothrasher wrote:
| Basic fluency in English is widespread enough that I've
| had to be way out in the boonies in pretty much any
| country I've visited for me not to find somebody who can
| speak English. It makes me feel like a bit of a fool not
| being able to speak anything but English myself. I've got
| a learning disability that affects my ability to learn
| languages, so as much as I've tried, I'm not able to get
| much further than being able to get fed and find the
| bathroom in any other language.
|
| I did hit a funny situation in rural France once where I
| was talking to a French restaurateur through one person
| who spoke French and Spanish, and then a second person
| who spoke Spanish and English. It was convoluted, but it
| worked enough to get me a meal. Alternatively, when I was
| in rural Spain, near the French border, a French speaking
| lady desperately tried to get me to help translate for
| her since she didn't speak Spanish and the merchant she
| wanted to talk to didn't speak French. Unfortunately,
| neither of them spoke English. The best I could do was
| communicate to the merchant in my broken Spanish that I
| couldn't help.
| dpassens wrote:
| Except for Ireland.
| nolok wrote:
| The amount of things wrong is impressive
|
| You're confusing Europe and the EU
|
| You're forgetting about Ireland and Malta
|
| You're thinking that because the UK left the EU it will
| change the main language countries use to speak to each
| others
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > You're forgetting about Ireland and Malta
|
| In both countries English is only _one_ of the official
| languages.
| nolok wrote:
| And how does that change anything to what is being said ?
| English is only _one_ of the official languages of the UN
| or NATO or the WHO or ...
| ben_w wrote:
| Mae hyn yn wir o fewn y DU hefyd.
|
| :P
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Hardly anyone uses Irish in daily life or for official
| purposes, notwithstanding its official status. 99% of the
| Irish you hear outside a classroom is performative.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > You're thinking that because the UK left the EU it will
| change the main language countries use to speak to each
| others
|
| Yes, and that's precisely the irony. Europeans still need
| to subject themselves to Anglo "cultural imperialism" or
| absolutely nothing works, starting with communication
| across national borders.
| schubidubiduba wrote:
| The english language has ceased to be something unique to
| the anglocultural world a while ago. You're making this
| out to be much more than it is
| timeon wrote:
| We actually already use Globish that has different idioms
| and so on. End we can express different kind of
| information _s_ there.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| And the US still uses Arabic numerals in spite of banning
| visas for basically every Arab country in the world.
| palata wrote:
| > Europeans still need to subject themselves to Anglo
| "cultural imperialism" or absolutely nothing works,
| starting with communication across national borders.
|
| Do you have a single clue about Europe? That's not true
| at all.
| microtonal wrote:
| First, we co-opted English. It's now ours as well. Thank
| you.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English
|
| Besides that, besides my native language and English, I
| had German and French in school (which are required
| topics in our country). So I can speak the native
| language of all nearby countries.
|
| Auf Wiedersehen!
| jacquesm wrote:
| A language is a tool, not a nationality or a border.
|
| Your average educated European speaks at least three, one of
| which is English because it is a good language to have
| because it is the language of international commerce. This
| has been the case since many decades and has nothing to do
| with using the language internally.
|
| But: many people _do_ use it internally. French tourists
| abroad are more likely to use English than French. European
| colleagues usually standardize on English, both for their
| communications as well as for their documentation needs.
|
| Scientific literature is predominantly in English (at least,
| for now).
|
| So there are many reasons to use English which have nothing
| to do with allegiance or dependence.
| pepinator wrote:
| > Your average European speaks at least three
|
| ok ok I get the point but let's not exaggerate
| retired wrote:
| It has been edited to "average educated European". If
| going by tertiary education, that is about 30% to 35% of
| the European population. I wouldn't be surprised if that
| group speaks three languages. In Spain it is typical to
| speak three of Spanish, Catalan, Valencian, Galician,
| Basque, Portugese, Arabic, English. In The Netherlands
| basically anyone speaks Dutch and English plus a third
| language, usually Frisian, Limburgish, German, French,
| Spanish, Turkish or Arabic.
| palata wrote:
| It was edited to "average educated European", whatever
| that means.
|
| But I think two languages is probably not exagerating.
| And not only in Europe. People have their native language
| and usually an international one (in Europe that would be
| English).
|
| And then there are similar languages. Say a Spanish
| person will speak Spanish and English, and possibly
| French/Italian/Portuguese, so that quickly goes up to 3.
| Also in many countries there are already multiple
| languages (a portion of Spain speaks Catalan and Spanish
| as native languages, then probably English as
| international language, and they are probably not bad in
| French/Italian because of the similarity).
|
| Same in the northern country that are all germanic
| languages: Swedish is pretty similar to Norwegian for
| instance, both are not too far to German, and everybody
| there speaks English fluently.
|
| And then if you go in the Eastern Europe... like in
| Slovenia people seem to all speak 5 languages, it's
| insane :-).
| BeetleB wrote:
| Two American tourists were backpacking in Europe when a
| car pulled up next to them. The driver rolled down his
| window and asked in german:" Where is the nearest diner?"
|
| The two Americans, not knowing a fraction of German,
| stared blankly at the driver. "Sorry, but we have no idea
| what you are saying."
|
| The driver tried again in French and again was met with
| blank stares and shakes of the head from the two
| tourists.
|
| Getting frustrated, he tried again in Italian, in
| Spanish, each time receiving nothing but sheepish smiles
| from the two of them. Finally, he cursed under his breath
| and drove away angrily.
|
| The first American asked his partner:" Maybe we should
| learn a second language." His partner shrugged and
| replied:" Why? That dude knew four languages and it
| didn't help him."
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| Its founder lives in europe so there's that.
| s_dev wrote:
| I think he means Hacker News rather than EU Alternatives.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| I also mean Hacker News
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Paul Graham lives in UK.
| s_dev wrote:
| That doesn't make Hacker News European. It is American. Y
| Combinator is American even if pg is originally British.
| Stripe is American but its founders are Irish.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Yeah i know, my response was a clarification that
| BenoitEssiambre was referring to the founder, not the
| site itself. My interpretation of the "so there's that"
| part of the message, was an acknowledgement that Hacker
| News is hosted in US, but if nothing else the founder is
| living in UK.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| Someone should make news.eucombinator.eu...
| fsflover wrote:
| Perhaps Lemmy may count based on distributed ActivityPub
| protocol with some servers in Europe.
| loehnsberg wrote:
| Isn't it sad that we now have Russian, Chinese, American,
| European, etc alternatives? I mean I get it, Sept 11 paved the
| way for FISA orders and NSA overreach, Russia and China reverted
| back into dictatorship, but Europe is also at the edge. Shouldn't
| we rather fight that nationalistic power grab that just makes us
| all poorer and less free? And instead propagate global
| alternatives that are not subjected by some power-hungry
| state-/capital-sponsored overlord?
| AndroTux wrote:
| Competition is always good. It's sad that there's been so
| little alternatives in the past. I'm glad that this is now
| slowly changing.
|
| What we should work towards, though, is interoperability and
| open source solutions.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Nothing against global standards and similar. But even "global
| alternatives" are usually rooted somewhere locally, and that
| starts to matter more and more, it seems.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| This _might_ be possible for software, if we assume that being
| open source can protect software from state or corporate
| control (doubtful to be honest). For other things I don 't
| really see how it would work. Your hardware has to be
| manufactured somewhere, your infrastructure has to be located
| somewhere.
|
| It is not "nationalistic" to prefer things that are made in
| Europe. Europe is not a nation and very few people feel
| anything close to national pride about it. I like that we have
| European alternatives instead of German, French, Swedish, etc,
| alternatives.
| nolok wrote:
| I'm really not sad about having alternative and choices,
| especially it also leads to reduce corporate overlordship.
| madwolf wrote:
| What are global alternatives? Every company is connected to
| some country, there are no global alternatives. I live in EU
| and want to use EU services mainly because I want this part of
| the world to prosper. I want to leave my money and incentivise
| innovation in this part of the world because this is where I
| live and I want a better life here for me and my kids. And
| alternatives are always good, especially that they're not
| closed. People in the US can use services from EU companies as
| well :) why not?
| kromokromo wrote:
| Theoretically possible in a distributed way, though usually
| inefficient. IPFS is a good example.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Sept 11 paved the way for FISA orders and NSA overreach_
|
| It's not even that. We euros were more than willing to look the
| other way (see the umpteen attempts to reconcile our privacy-
| friendly legislation with the free-for-all of American
| services, ongoing for decades) in the name of convenience and
| fundamentally shared values. The turning point was really in
| 2024/2025, when those shared values were summarily swept away
| on the other side of the Atlantic.
|
| Besides, the "global alternatives not subjected to power-hungry
| overlords" are actually very much subjected to the worst of
| humanity, and wide open to exploitation from such overlords.
| tucnak wrote:
| > Besides, the "global alternatives not subjected to power-
| hungry overlords" are actually very much subjected to the
| worst of humanity, and wide open to exploitation from such
| overlords.
|
| This is, in fact, what "overlord" means!
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I think the opposite as you. These global companies often act
| as a nation with laws unto themselves. Most of them don't
| actually have real support that can do anything unless you make
| a lucky Twitter post or something. Having a local company that
| is realistically beholden to local laws and local politicians
| that you can actually potentially go and talk to if needed is a
| major feature.
| tpoacher wrote:
| No,not sad, centralisation is always problematic even if well
| meaning. The presence of diverse alternatives is a feature, not
| a bug.
|
| As long as they're _actual_ alternatives of course, rather than
| just another monopoly but at a smaller scale.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| > Isn't it sad that we now have Russian, Chinese, American,
| European, etc alternatives? [...] Shouldn't we rather fight
| that nationalistic power grab [...]
|
| While I agree with your sentiment, _European_ and
| _nationalistic_ are two contradicting positions, unlike the
| other three mentioned superpowers.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Not really. The forging pan-European nation composed of many
| nationalities is a thing in all meaningful contexts. European
| civilization, European economy, European products, European
| voters etc.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| Not really, no. Europe is neither a sovereign state nor a
| single political entity. It's a continent composed of many
| individual nations with a versatile history.
|
| I mean sure, your example shows that the virtue of being
| "European" represents a certain demographic and a sovereign
| territory. Again, it's a continent, so what?
| lmf4lol wrote:
| yet
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| Probably never... European nations rather seem to enjoy
| forming Unions, Agreements and Organizations.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| The European alternatives are not restricted to Europe.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Qwant seems to be.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| It is a sad reality. The US has recently threatened to annex
| Denmark and Canada. Some of us are suddenly keenly aware that
| the US is in a position to take control of most of our
| computers and phones via software updates.
|
| Open source is the global alternative you're looking for.
| There's even interesting hardware options like
| https://starlabs.systems/
|
| The US also has had an unfair advantage in tech/defense and
| finance because it hosted the global hubs of the free world.
| This attracted eye-watering amounts of money to places like SF
| and NY. With this newfound isolationism, tariffs etc. reducing
| the viability of hosting the global hubs, there's massive
| opportunities opening in europe and elsewhere.
| oytis wrote:
| First of all, US is at the edge of a dictatorship. If US falls
| completely, Europe will likely too, but untangling ourselves
| from US is an attempt to prevent that.
| ungovernableCat wrote:
| European leaders fundamentally have no issue with Americans
| dominating tech and were happy to have their entire digital
| infrastructures rely on US companies. If the Trump admin could
| give them some sort of nod behind the scenes that all of this
| is just a big show and they're not actually going to break NATO
| or invade or w/e insane shit they're saying I guarantee you a
| sizeable amount would just say hey no worries then let's keep
| the status quo going.
|
| But that's not what's happening. It's a clear and obvious
| security risk to their sovereignty. If the government can't
| guarantee that to its citizens then what even is its purpose?
| The Trump admin has already tried to use American tech
| dominance as leverage.
|
| Ask yourself this question, what if there was a foreign tech
| competitor that managed to scale up to be basically a better
| cheaper AWS. Would the US government ever allow it to encroach
| its market to the point that AWS or Azure did in Europe? Look
| at what happened to tiktok if you want to see what approach
| they'd likely take.
|
| So how exactly would you envision an objective and neutral
| provider in a world of geopolitical competition?
| troupo wrote:
| Last time this came up I decided to try Scaleway which is at the
| top of their "cloud computing" list.
|
| "European alternative" that doesn't know that European addresses
| have non-ASCII characters:
| https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1835649083345649780
| s_dev wrote:
| I'm sure there are much bigger and more worthwhile criticisms
| to be had than this.
|
| It's something they should fix and if they did would you
| suddenly switch to Scaleway? I think you would consider other
| factors first.
|
| A good critique for example is OVH lost a lot of customer data
| due to a fire. Where was the redundancy? That would make me
| think twice before switching to OVH.
| troupo wrote:
| > It's something they should fix and if they did would you
| suddenly switch to Scaleway?
|
| You know why I have this screenshot? Because I literally
| tried to switch to "great European alternative" that is "as
| slick as DO".
|
| After a third or a fourth screen, most of which felt
| completely isolated and disconnected from any previous ones,
| I gave up on the screen that couldn't handle _a standard
| European address_.
|
| This was literally the point that I gave up.
|
| So I went ahead... and signed up with Hetzner.
|
| _Edit_
|
| So I decided to try again. Literally the first page of
| account sign in tried to trick you into accepting tracking
|
| Since I apparently had an account, I could login... So
| redirected to a subdomain with the same cookie popup. On a
| site that is solely for billing address collection
|
| which then redirects you to a _third_ domain with the a
| similar but different popup.
|
| Which ends up on an empty page indistinguishable in
| "usability" from Hetzner (or worse)
|
| That's the end of my experience of my "European DO that is
| Scaleway".
|
| They did fix the addresss boxes, kudos to them
| alberto-m wrote:
| A lack of Unicode support in 2026 is like someone coming with
| dirty clothes to a job interview: it might not affect too
| much how the work is done, but immediately raises doubts
| about the underlying level of professionalism.
| troupo wrote:
| That was 2024 (still inexcusable), they managed to fix it
| at one point https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734771
| u8080 wrote:
| Hetzner/Linode were MITMing their client(jabber.ru):
| https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/
| troupo wrote:
| Was it Hetzner, or was it an attacker hosting on
| Hetzner/Linode?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| It was the German equivalent of the NSA, with the German
| equivalent of a National Security Letter, sent to Hetzner
| to force them to intercept this customer's traffic. The
| same thing happens in the USA.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| > A good critique for example is OVH lost a lot of customer
| data due to a fire. Where was the redundancy? That would make
| me think twice before switching to OVH.
|
| I lost a VPS in that fire, but I was up and running a few
| hours later with a new VPS at a different OVH location.
|
| Not to deflect blame away from OVH and their large screw up,
| but we should never rely only on the redundancy of the
| hosting provider. Even on AWS, I wouldn't trust them to not
| lose my data if one of their datacenters burns down.
|
| At the time I was making regular backups to two different
| providers with servers somewhere else. When I noticed that it
| was serious, I ordered a new VPS and restored everything. If
| OVH itself went down, I could have used Scaleway, Hetzner,
| Contabo, etc.
| gtirloni wrote:
| This is nice but if Europe doesn't fix their tech salaries
| situation (half US' in most cases, if not lower), I don't think
| it's sustainable.
| s_dev wrote:
| High US salaries come from US VCs having to bid against other
| to capture talent. US VCs have more capital than EU VCs. This
| is why.
|
| The EU is now going to start pumping money in to building
| European alternatives. EU software dev salaries are going to
| increase. All 27 states agreed to establish the saving and
| investments union.
|
| Nothing will happen overnight but you'll see this start to play
| out over the next 5 years. It will take decades to catch up but
| we are starting.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I suspect China or Russia don't have higher salaries, they
| still manage to build their own alternatives. And Airbus builds
| better planes than Boeing with European salaries.
|
| I'm sure that with a bit of protectionism, we would build our
| tech as well as anybody else.
| u8080 wrote:
| Tech jobs in IT in Moscow are paid(net) relatively similar to
| what you could get in EU.
| nazgob wrote:
| So not US salaries.
| u8080 wrote:
| Indeed, but cost of life is different as well. People
| usually compare US Bay area net salaries to Western EU
| salaries - but there are so many different things to
| consider as well(rent, insurances, taxes, etc) which imo
| spoils any constructive comparasion.
| kmac_ wrote:
| It's not just about salaries, but also the lack of a culture
| for seeding and financing. The fear of failed investments
| really dominates. Government and EU-backed financing is a joke,
| and I'm not even talking about the terms or amounts, but who
| actually gets them. It's pure waste of taxpayer money and
| should be abandoned.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| I am not saying you are wrong, but Trump has shown exactly
| how quickly a "culture" can crumble down. Despite "checks and
| balances" the American democracy has done nothing to slow
| down the slide into dictatorship.
|
| So how long will the culture last?
| Tade0 wrote:
| I wouldn't want US salaries with US costs of living.
|
| Also working for companies located in Ireland[0] or Switzerland
| you can have your US salary, it's just that the pool of jobs is
| limited.
|
| [0] Provided it's a company in the first of Ireland's two
| economies.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Not sure about Ireland, but Switzerland used to be true, but
| now it is also far behind since 5+ years.
|
| See, Google Zurich vs Seattle
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-
| engineer/locations/greater...
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-
| engineer/locations/greater...
|
| Hm, after carefully reviewing the entries seem more or less
| the same, Zurich slightly lower.
| ragall wrote:
| Considering the low taxes and lower cost of living in
| Zurich (yes, lower than Seattle), and the much higher
| quality of life, Zurich is a no-brainer.
| alberto-m wrote:
| I'd say if you get a job in the same company, Zurich is
| competitive. The problem is that if you lose your job at
| Google in Seattle there are several hundreds of FAANG
| positions and probably thousands of other 200k$+ SWE jobs
| you can reapply to. In Zurich you will maybe see a dozen
| of openings in the small subsidiaries of Apple, Microsoft
| & Co., and maybe some individual job offers from small AI
| companies, and applying to any of these positions
| basically means competing against the whole rest of the
| continent.
| palata wrote:
| > and applying to any of these positions basically means
| competing against the whole rest of the continent
|
| Which should not be an issue, if as I read a lot in this
| page, "all good European engineers move to the US". It
| means that you only have to compete against the "bad
| ones" that stayed back, right? /s
| lostmsu wrote:
| https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... says Zurich is 33% more
| expensive and I remember it that way.
| ragall wrote:
| Numbeo shows averages, and the basket of goods that it
| considers is not what a well-off person would buy. I
| Zurich I could live perfectly well without having a car,
| just with public transportation, and French and Italian
| cheeses and wine are a cheaper than in Seattle.
| tene80i wrote:
| But why? What's unsustainable about an email service, for
| example, run by competent European engineers at European
| salaries?
| gtirloni wrote:
| The huge influx of competent European engineers to the US is
| a real thing.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| Will this continue?
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| That might not be the case any more if things get to the
| point where someone in Europe must use a European
| alternative.
| ragall wrote:
| That was true a few years ago, but not any more. Covid made
| a lot of US-based companies sack local developers and
| actually open offices in Europe. I have friends in Italy
| who, between 2022 and 2023, moved from local companies to
| US companies opening offices in Rome and Milano, and got a
| salary bump from ~30-35k to 80-90k plus bonus and RSUs.
| Same thing happening all over Europe.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I don't think that's motivated by money. The US companies
| simply solved more interesting problems. Working for a
| start up in the Bay area trying to invent a new industry,
| or scale systems to global is generally more interesting
| than working on a CRM system for mid-size lumberyards in
| Sweden. The CRM system pays well enough to have a
| comfortable lifestyle and provide for your family, but it's
| a little boring if you're 25 with a shiny new CS degree.
| palata wrote:
| Because many European engineers move to the US does not
| mean _at all_ that most European engineers move to the US.
| There are _many_ engineers in Europe.
|
| I hear that argument a lot, and honestly it sounds
| uninformed and downright disrespectful. Some kind of "I am
| a US developer, we US developers are the best, and the few
| good European engineers come here. The remaining ones in
| Europe are dumb".
|
| Not to mention that I have talked to quite a few European
| engineers who could earn a lot more by moving to the US,
| but just _really don 't want to live in the US_. Maybe
| there is a reason for that?
| kuon wrote:
| I might get lower salary, but if I break my leg I pay nothing
| and I am paid during my leave.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I doubt you break your leg every year though. The kind of
| companies that we're talking about (big tech that are
| national champions) offers health insurance (among other
| benefits) and 200-500k USD/year salaries.
|
| I think culture and quality of life not withstanding, the raw
| numbers simply don't favor the EU becoming a tech leader with
| the current incentives.
| Juliate wrote:
| The thing is that in Europe, you don't need your employer
| to have health insurance. It's more beneficial for everyone
| in the end (well, obviously not for the private health
| insurance companies who care more about their margins than
| public wellness).
| palata wrote:
| > I think culture and quality of life not withstanding, the
| raw numbers simply don't favor the EU becoming a tech
| leader with the current incentives.
|
| But maybe culture and quality of life should not be ignored
| :-).
| skrebbel wrote:
| You simply don't need such inflated salaries if schools are
| free, roads are not broken, trains exist, healthcare is
| affordable, grocery stores are in biking distance, parks are
| good and free and plenty, labor laws are in your favour,
| utilities markets mostly aren't dysfunctional and a 2-bedroom
| apartment doesn't cost $10000/m.
|
| Americans compare their salaries to European ones but never
| stop to imagine the insane high "taxes" they pay for stuff that
| we get cheaply or for free.
|
| I'm not even saying the one is better than the other. There's a
| lot to be said for the American system of only paying for what
| you need. It's just.. you can't just compare dollars/euros like
| that. There's reddit posts of people who earn $900k/y and
| openly wonder whether that's enough to live in NYC and that
| shit is equally unfathomable to the average European as the
| idea of a dev earning EUR70k/y is to the average American.
| lmf4lol wrote:
| True. But the systems are more and more breaking down. Its
| unsustainable. At least what I can tell from Germany and the
| Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait
| 3-6months in some cases. Not talking about the trains.
| Germany DB runs on time in only 50% of the cases. So thats a
| big problem
| maigret wrote:
| The trains that are 10 min late in Germany mostly not exist
| in many other countries. Sure Switzerland is the best, but
| Germany is pretty high up. It's just less good than it used
| to be. Oh and you can ride almost everywhere for 60 EUR /
| month.
|
| For healthcare if you get an IT salary you can either move
| to private insurance, or buy additional insurance, or just
| pay a consultation yourself for a fee that US people won't
| believe.
| lmf4lol wrote:
| Last 7 times i took the ICE, i had 5 delays. 3 times the
| restaurant wasnt available. 2 times they didnt stop at my
| destination and I had to rent a car. so yeah. I try to
| travel now either by car or plane. But even by car is
| terrible, especially in the south. More construction
| sites every year and none are finishing. . Health care is
| totally broken if you dont have private insurance. My
| step dad, who has, gets an appointment 1 day after he
| calls. my grand ma, who worked all her life and is now on
| public needs to wait 5 months IN PAIN.
|
| the system is breaking down in front of our very eyes.
|
| i am not living in Germany. i moved to fthe NL, but the
| situation is very similiar.
| palata wrote:
| > Not talking about the trains
|
| How does that compare to the public transport situation in
| the US?
| microtonal wrote:
| Ehm, my parents some serious health issues the last two
| years and they usually had their appointments in days or at
| most a small number of weeks. (NL)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Do you want to live in a school, on the streets, in a train,
| in a hospital, in a park or in a grocery store?
|
| As long as housing is extremely expensive in Europe, nothing
| else matters except for higher salaries.
| lukan wrote:
| Housing is not extremely expensive in europe. Only close to
| the big cities it is.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It is extremely expensive almost everywhere when you
| compare to local salaries.
| Teever wrote:
| This talking point went out the window After America threatened
| to invade Greenland.
|
| After that I bet some people would actually _pay_ to develop
| software to defang the American threat.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The higher US salaries are a bug, not a feature, in this
| context.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Assuming that people are solely motivated by money, which most
| aren't. You can't pay me enough to put my children into a
| school system that has "active shooter" drills. After a certain
| point money stops being a motivation, that point is well within
| the average EU tech salary band (perhaps excluding places like
| Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and that general area).
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Personally it's not all about money. I even moved to a lower
| wage country in Europe for better quality of life.
|
| Having enough is what I care about and things are a lot cheaper
| here too. Not to mention free healthcare, social security. I
| don't need a car and a public transport pass is 25EUR a month.
| That alone saves me so much money. The time till the next metro
| train counts down in seconds here.
|
| When I had a car in the past it would cost me hundreds per
| month and it was such a headache.
|
| I'd never move to the US even if I could make 3x as much. In
| fact I got an offer from a FAANG once (with the whole H1B
| managed by some agency I think) but I declined. I only applied
| because they advertised it as a local job but then when the
| offer came it was in California. Nope.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| Before we closed our office in Mountain View years ago, every
| time we went over there:
|
| - I could not get out of my San Francisco Hotel to get to a
| deli across the road without having to step over at least 5
| homeless people.
|
| - I could not fail to notice that even those people who did
| have jobs and not lost their homes to tech bros had a
| surprisingly low number of healthy teeth for a modern western
| first-world society
|
| - An apartment with noisy air conditioning, dirty carpets and
| questionable building codes would cost more in rent than a
| villa at the Cote d'Azur.
|
| - The air quality during fire season was a nightmare. During my
| time there I developed asthma.
|
| - Everybody hated the arrogant ignorant tech people that
| invaded their communities, forced them out of their houses to
| then have to commute into the city or valley to serve tech
| bros. Yes, as a European I am not that well trained to
| constantly ignore that my privilege are causing the community
| around me to suffer. That I do not "earn" this gigantic salary,
| I am just grabbing the resources pretending the "normal" people
| don't deserve to have any of that.
|
| You are getting paid so much because you in exchange are living
| in a sh*thole country without education, healthcare, public
| transport, clean air, or anything else that I as a "wealthy"
| developer person would expect to receive in exchange for my
| work.
|
| Take your US salary, and invest it into a travel into some of
| the more up-to-date regions of the world. Those with clean air,
| education, healthcare. Places I have visited that are better
| than the Valley in this regard include:
|
| - Pretty much all of Europe. Maybe with the exception of Greece
| and Spain, when they are now burning thanks to the "drill drill
| drill" people. - China - Iran - New Zealand - Australia -
| Canada ...
|
| Yes, the amount of zeros on your US salary might look
| soooooooooooooooo impressive. But they are zeros. They don't
| buy you a livable live in a modern civilization.
|
| Right now you are just bribed with money not to see the civil
| war getting ignited in minnesota.
|
| Oh oh oh, now I remember! I have even been to two countries
| with civil wars a while ago, who had clean air, education and
| healthcare. And I think even directly after the civil war, all
| of Kosovo had a lower percentage of homeless people than the US
| has today.
|
| Yes, another one of my drastic postings. But you will survive.
| Be brave: With someone who clearly is being paid a lot for
| being clever, I can assume that you think this through again,
| to calculate what the better deal is. You know the average
| amount of student debt people who want to become programmers
| have? Zero.
|
| You are not getting more VALUE out of working in the US in
| high-tech compared to other places. There are places on this
| world, where being a good programmer buys you a wonderful life
| with nobody around you being poor, or without healthcare, or
| homeless. Try Estonia. They have a lovely tech community, a
| fully digital government. You can become a digital citizen,
| open your own company in minutes. And you will have a far
| better life.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Why not?
|
| I had offers from companies across the pond, and likely could
| make about 2x-3x what I make here.
|
| What for? I live a comfortable life here.
| ggm wrote:
| Over what period of time do you predict economic downfall for
| European tech because of salaries?
|
| Please explain your working. These last 40 years or more there
| has been a cliff of money, but Europeans continue to live and
| work in europe.
|
| You have to have an incredibly narrow definition of "only good
| people work for more money and only poor/ineffective people
| work for less" to say people who don't chase the millions in a
| US company are somehow failures.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| Ugh, back to nationalism.
|
| I think there is some sort of Darwinistic reason for this. Maybe
| its inevitable.
|
| Not to say that the US didn't help spur this, but its just sad to
| see.
|
| When I was younger, I was such an idealist. Anarchy, open
| borders, free market open trade, pacifism.
|
| Even as Trump started getting aggressive, I kept trying to tell
| myself: "Well, these other countries surly know that most of the
| population doesn't support this. Surely they know we are fans of
| liberalism, democracy, and human rights. One bad election,
| everyone knows it was influenced by Russia, no big deal. They
| know a sane person will be elected in a few years."
|
| But I saw the comments of how quickly it seemed the general
| population of other nations flipped like a dime.
|
| It has shooken me. (And I don't blame that its shooken them)
|
| It has made me the exact person I was against. Now I think we
| really do need to look toward the national interest. If 1 bad
| politician can alienate us from 100+ years of debatably good
| behavior, why shouldn't we be selfish?
| sublimefire wrote:
| Buy local is a well known and used tactic globally in many
| places big and small. Another observation, saying it is
| nationalistic is odd given it involves multiple nationalities.
| US has protectionist policy EU has it, there is nothing new
| here. The odd thing is that it triggers the person for it being
| so small.
| mg794613 wrote:
| Can you imagine, knowing so little of the rest of the world,
| you call this nationalism without irony.
|
| Sir, please read up on Wikipedia what the EU is. What Europe
| is. Also, this is a very mild response to a "American first"
| new world order.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| Depends on what level you are looking at. Did you know the US
| is comprised of 50 states with their own laws and security
| forces?
|
| Pedantic. My state didn't vote for the US president, yet you
| are looking to buy from a different state now.
| daotoad wrote:
| US states are, in some ways, less independent than UK
| countries.
|
| Wales can no more disavow the PM than California can
| disavow POTUS. So this separate status is limited.
|
| The big counter to this is the idea that US states have
| their own militaries. States may have militias, but they
| can be subsumed by the federal government pretty easily, as
| we saw in California in 2025. They are not truly
| independent armed forces.
|
| OTOH, states are not allowed to leave the US, we had a war
| about this a while ago. Meanwhile Scotland had a referendum
| on leaving the UK a few years ago.
|
| Love it or hate it, we are Americans first before we are
| New Yorkers or Mississipians and so forth. This is
| especially true when it comes to international relations;
| that's handled on a federal level and most people in the
| world couldn't tell a Nebraskan from an Alaskan.
| dpc050505 wrote:
| >One bad election, everyone knows it was influenced by Russia,
| no big deal. They know a sane person will be elected in a few
| years.
|
| You're at 2 out of 3, while Biden was mid at best and your
| senate has been horrendous for a very long time.
| sodapopcan wrote:
| And who's to say it's not going to happen again in 2030?
| bildung wrote:
| People in the US need to become more aware of the _dramatic_
| impact this current administration has on the world. A paper in
| the Lancet, not exactly your average leftie rag, extrapolates
| the deaths resulting from the sudden USAID defunding to amount
| to about 14 million people. That 's about 10x Pol Pot.
|
| People around the world distancing themselves from these
| actions is hardly nationalism.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| I'm sorry, my cognitive bias says 'Look! See! That proves my
| point at how great the US is/was.'
|
| 1 bad politician elected by a fraction of the population is
| enough to turn the world against us. Why bother with such
| altruism when a single election can turn everyone against us?
| rkomorn wrote:
| Altruism is not transactional.
|
| If you think the US' "altruism" should buy us goodwill,
| then you're not for altruism, you're for good PR.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| But it's not just one politician or just one election. The
| current guy was elected twice. His position on tariffs,
| NATO, and Greenland are not new. The movement supporting
| him is unlikely to disappear any time soon. From the
| outside, it doesn't look like one wrong step, but just part
| of the new normal.
|
| It's also important to understand that those on the
| receiving end of the threats are not taking them lightly.
| No one's laughing. It's easy to understand the change in
| behaviour if you understand this.
|
| Back to the European Alternatives stuff, I've been looking
| at the services I use and which ones might become
| unavailable if, let's say, the US takes Greenland. It has
| nothing to do with nationalism, I just don't want to be
| caught with my pants down.
| maigret wrote:
| It was a single election in 2016, and a few governors and
| senators and... oh it's actually a pattern, a system that
| people feign to ignore when convenient for them.
| s_dev wrote:
| To clarify empowering the EU is literally the opposite of
| Nationalism or are you discussing the recent surge of 'American
| Exceptionalism' of the current US administration?
| graemep wrote:
| Brexit made to clear that for some people being in the EU is
| an important part of their identity so that enables EU
| nationalism for them.
|
| There are racist European nationalists - the Anders Breivik
| type.
|
| This website is not either. However I think its worth looking
| beyond Europe. Avoiding the US and China and a few other
| countries leaves a lot of possibilities.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Even as Trump started getting aggressive, I kept trying to
| tell myself: "Well, these other countries surly know that most
| of the population doesn't support this. Surely they know we are
| fans of liberalism, democracy, and human rights
|
| A huge proportion of your electorate is actually not only fine
| with the current direction, but actively cheer on this.
|
| > One bad election, everyone knows it was influenced by Russia,
| no big deal. They know a sane person will be elected in a few
| years."
|
| This sounds a lot worse than you imagine. We will be always one
| election away of anothe asshole that will want to leveraged the
| US relative strength to cause harm. Better to not keep
| strengthening it.
|
| > 100+ years of debatably good behavior, why shouldn't we be
| selfish?
|
| I almost choked at this.
|
| The US has a long history of fucking over other countries.
|
| The only thing that changed is that it just decided to be more
| direct about it, even with former allies.
|
| I actually prefer it this way.
| vldszn wrote:
| I submitted my project EasyInvoicePDF (a free & open-source
| invoice generator) a couple of months ago to European
| Alternatives but never heard back unfortunately.
|
| The project has no backend and is purely browser-based, but I'm
| based in Europe and developing the project here, so I consider it
| a European project =)
|
| App: https://easyinvoicepdf.com/?template=stripe
|
| GitHub: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf
| s_dev wrote:
| It's a cool project but it is 'niche'.
|
| I think the purpose of the site is more about the alternatives
| to 'large players', platforms and infrastructure companies.
| Still Constantin Graf should have clarified out of politeness
| but possibly he's busy or doesn't have time to respond to every
| email.
|
| However I'd point out there is a market for European 'Product
| Hunt' that would include more of these smaller projects.
| vldszn wrote:
| Thanks for the comment. I hadn't thought about this before,
| but it makes sense - I agree.
|
| About European Product Hunt - very good idea.
|
| I was thinking recently that we need more European social
| networks, messengers, etc.
|
| It's a very good time to build imo =)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > About European Product Hunt - very good idea.
|
| Older members of HN will remember that Product Hunt
| probably came to life a lot because of HN and the
| submissions/comments from rrhoover (founder of Product
| Hunt). He's still active here, but before/during Product
| Hunt launch he was very active if I remember correctly.
|
| Maybe a grander idea is a European Hacker News, that has
| the potential to spawn the European Product Hunts of
| tomorrow :)
| tialaramex wrote:
| I don't know that an EU Hacker News makes sense, a core
| EU idea is Freedom of Movement.
|
| This started out as an ideal about Goods. You make a
| Doodad in Venice, clearly there should be as few
| obstacles as possible to prevent somebody in Dublin
| having that Doodad, so no export taxes between Venice and
| Dublin, shared regulatory framework so that your Venice
| "This Doodad won't choke a baby/ burn down a house/ spy
| on you/ etc." paperwork is valid in Dublin, and so on.
|
| But immediately people who _make_ goods said well this
| rule needs to include Capital, it 's great that I can
| sell Doodads from Venice in Dublin, but if I want to
| build a Doodad factory in Venice but my money is in
| Dublin that should be easy too. And Workers realised if
| it's just Capital and Goods then it's a race to the
| bottom for Labour, the Capital and Goods will go where
| it's cheapest but the _workers_ can 't move. So very soon
| Workers can move freely too, in order that Hans the
| Doodad Engineer can move to Venice and the courts ended
| up deciding that in practice _everybody_ gets this
| freedom, a 5 year old can 't have a job and a 105 year
| old probably doesn't want one, but maybe Hans needs to
| support his 5 year old grand-daughter and his 105 year
| old grandfather, so Freedom of Movement must apply to all
| EU citizens.
|
| So, with that idea in mind, I suspect the EU's
| perspective is that you should come to Europe and write
| software here, rather than that you should stay exactly
| where you are and if it's not an EU country then too bad,
| no EU Product Hunt for you.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I'm sorry, but what are you talking about? Yes, a core
| idea is freedom of movement, but you make no case for why
| that makes EU Hacker News infeasible? It has nothing to
| do with where people write software. I'm using US Hacker
| News, and I'm in Europe, is that wrong/bad, or what's
| your argument here?
| tialaramex wrote:
| EU Hacker News isn't infeasible my argument is rather
| that it's largely pointless. The EU should avoid key US
| dependencies, but that means things like we shouldn't
| design a system that needs Microsoft's stupid "Co-pilot
| 365" or whatever they are now calling Word and Excel,
| rather than it's important never to visit a web site
| hosted in the US.
|
| "The new government policy shouldn't require iPhones" is
| a long way from "Nobody can read The Onion", and even in
| its hardcore "Sign up for YCombinator" mode Hacker News
| really isn't anywhere close to the former.
|
| Although because idiots I am no longer in the EU I'm in
| Europe too.
| coryrc wrote:
| There is one, it starts about 11pm my time at
| https://news.ycombinator.com :)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I don't think creating an invoice is "niche". It is such a
| common need for users that invoicing software should be
| included in the operating system application suite. (Which it
| is somewhat if you consider Pages invoice templates).
|
| Millions and millions of people need to make and send
| invoices. Many more than people who need domain name
| registrars, uptime monitoring services, content delivery
| networks, or microblogging services.
| vldszn wrote:
| Hard agree
| reconnecting wrote:
| Same here.
|
| Open-source security framework (1). Applied 16 August 2025.
| Company registered in Switzerland (EFTA). No reply.
|
| However, European Alternatives is a personal (sole
| proprietorship) website and has nothing to do with Europe,
| despite the name and style, which are slightly misleading as
| they mimic official EU website aesthetics.
|
| 1. GitHub: https://github.com/tirrenotechnologies/tirreno
| vldszn wrote:
| Make sense.
|
| Btw tirreno looks very cool, just starred on GitHub :)
| reconnecting wrote:
| Thanks so much!
| quicksilver03 wrote:
| I've seen the same thing, the site accepts submissions but
| there's no one to either approve or reject them.
|
| Unfortunately they did really well at SEO at one time, and more
| active alternatives appear far below in the search results.
| vldszn wrote:
| Do you know any good alternatives?
| quicksilver03 wrote:
| I've been able to submit new entries to
|
| https://eucloud.tech/
|
| https://buy-european.net/
|
| I've also found other problematic ones:
|
| https://euro-stack.com/ (I couldn't understand how to
| submit a new entry)
|
| https://www.goeuropean.org/ (all submissions fail with an
| AirTable error [sic] that the workspace is at the record
| limit)
| vldszn wrote:
| Interesting. Thanks for the info
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Euro-Stack.eu is a scam that promotes European software
| using: A wordpress.com based website
| hosted in California by the US company Auttomatic
| Fronted by Cloudflare, a US monopoly (this is probably
| part of wordpress.com paid subscription)
| Edits its letter to EU Commission asking to support
| European IT industry in Microsoft Word.
| Converts it to PDF with Adobe software
| layer8 wrote:
| Someone should make european-alternatives-alternatives.eu.
| schubidubiduba wrote:
| > template=stripe
|
| Maybe this was enough to not include it?
| vldszn wrote:
| What is the problem with "/?template=stripe"...?
|
| =)
| cocoto wrote:
| I think the biggest issue is that your product is not from a
| company generating money (and taxes). IMO as an european, I
| think we should aim for open source, not corporate software,
| but free and open source software is generating way less jobs
| and taxes money.
| vldszn wrote:
| Yes, make sense.
|
| I plan to add a paid "pro" version with more features, but
| the current functionality will remain free.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| The site has a lot of open source projects though, in fact i
| found about copyparty[0] from it because it was listed as an
| alternative to file hosting services (though it was removed
| since then, probably because it isn't a service :-P but still
| there are various FLOSS projects).
|
| [0] https://github.com/9001/copyparty
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Same, can't get https://mailpace.com listed, no idea why
| Notch123 wrote:
| I have been working on https://1launch.eu for the past two
| months. Very MVP stage. I don't plan to be in the same niche as
| european-alternatives, but it is very much inspired by this. It
| is largely meant to be a ProductHunt / AngelList for Europe
| with a couple of key features especially for the European
| market (like instant translation into all 24 languages of the
| EU to launch in the whole European market in one go). If you
| want to launch on the platform or want to be involved in a
| different way, send me an email on hackernews@1launch.eu
| vldszn wrote:
| Wow, 1launch looks great! Will definitely launch there very
| soon.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Do you have a plan or idea of how to get the minimum critical
| mass of genuine users once the platform is built out?
| vldszn wrote:
| Just submitted EasyInvoicePDF to launch on 1launch :)
| e38383 wrote:
| You probably need to include EN16931, XRechnung, Factur-X,
| ZUGFeRD, ... and how they all called, the new standard for
| electronic invoices.
| vldszn wrote:
| This is planned =)
|
| Starting working asap on this because in Poland (where I
| live) it will be required from April 2026.
|
| Issue to follow: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-
| pdf/issues/121
| mpaepper wrote:
| Free generator for e-invoices here: https://www.e-rechnung-
| online-erstellen.de/kostenlos/e-rechn...
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Unless you do Peppol... it's not intresting at all.
| johneth wrote:
| Is this only for companies within the EU or EFTA? I can't spot a
| single UK company listed, even though there are plenty that would
| fit.
| kieranmaine wrote:
| On https://european-alternatives.eu/about the listing criteria
| state:
|
| > The company is based in an EU, EEA, EFTA, or DCFTA member
| country or in the UK.
|
| but
|
| > For hosting providers: It is not allowed that a hosting
| provider is simply a sub-hosting provider of a company that is
| not based in an EU or EFTA member country.
| s_dev wrote:
| https://european-alternatives.eu/about
|
| It's all clarified here. If you think it's missing some great
| companies add them!
| Semaphor wrote:
| Thought I'd have another look at mail providers, but from what I
| can see, none support the features I use with fastmail (custom
| domain, security key, unlimited on-the-fly aliases for sending).
| gassi wrote:
| They don't, but you shouldn't feel too bad as fastmail is
| australian, ie not american, which (at least personally) is
| where we're trying to divest.
| Semaphor wrote:
| US servers, though.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| Their servers are in the US
| earthnail wrote:
| Do they have any plans to move off the US?
| sublimefire wrote:
| It is good to have a dedicated location to find these. The
| problem is that you want a sufficiently large company when buying
| the services so that it does not fall apart or get acquired and
| runs to the ground, and we have a few. Also, putting a country
| flag to the service is cringe, it might even be odd to some
| because it implies a specific language/culture. We just all want
| to consume a proper business staffed with pros and the one which
| does not resell AWS services.
| freekh wrote:
| Wanted to submit my CMS, Val, but there's no CMS category yet?
|
| I tried to create a category here if it is useful for others as
| well: https://european-alternatives.eu/admin/category-
| votes/3daefd...
|
| Oh, and here's the product page: https://val.build
|
| GitHub is here: https://github.com/valbuild/val
| jacquesm wrote:
| This list is very impressive, but it is the wrong approach. We
| simply need an EU alternative to Google, Microsoft, Apple,
| Twitter, Facebook, Amazon etc.
|
| The closer to a drop-in replacement the better. Tying all of
| these functional bits and pieces together to form a consistent
| whole is just not going to happen. You need to approach this on a
| per-company level.
|
| So, who will step up to the plate and re-implement as much of
| Google as necessary to catch 80% of the functionality and their
| EU customers?
| yabones wrote:
| Isn't massive tech conglomerates locking people into their
| ecosystems how we got here in the first place? The quest to
| replace US with EU products is really just treating symptoms of
| the problems that tech has created in the past 2-3 decades.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but the cost-to-switch is more important right now than
| the details, the bigger fear I have is that if such an EU
| alternative is successful that the US incumbents will swoop
| in and buy it and then you're back to square 1. That has
| happened quite a few times already.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Is there a mechanism the EU could use to inhibit
| acquisition by a non EU entity?
| atmosx wrote:
| It's not a matter of mechanism. It's a matter of mindset.
| Until today the mindset wasn't there. Maybe this will
| change.
| palata wrote:
| I'm not convinced. If a company owner can get rich by
| selling their company to the devil himself, they will
| rationalise it so well that the employees will think it's
| helping humanity.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is in France. They have a government investment arm
| that will invest relatively small amounts but with a
| string attached: a veto on any majority acquisition. This
| was used for instance to block the takeover of
| Dailymotion by Yahoo iirc.
|
| It's a double edged sword: it may help in some cases but
| it hurts the investment scene overall because an exit to
| the USA is what most EU investors dream about because
| their returns overall are pretty crappy. Fragmented
| markets are a lot harder for investors than uniform ones.
| atmosx wrote:
| And the EU governments will be advertising it.. already
| happened in Greece... few companies with strong core tech
| were bought by Microsoft and the gov was "so happy" for the
| "success story".
|
| Everybody and their mother is using Gmail anyway
| palata wrote:
| > Everybody and their mother is using Gmail anyway
|
| Though that's one of the easy ones. Get your own domain
| and you're free to use whatever you want forever.
| trinix912 wrote:
| In theory yes, in practice the messages from your random
| domain way too often end up in spam for Gmail and Outlook
| users, if they get delivered at all.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's not as simple as it may seem. I've been running my
| own mailserver on an alternate domain for decades now and
| it is one thing to be receiving mail there but to send it
| is a nightmare. Google, Microsoft etc have made it all
| but impossible to get through their anti-spam measures to
| the point that they reject tons of perfectly good mail.
| palata wrote:
| > the bigger fear I have is that if such an EU alternative
| is successful that the US incumbents will swoop in and buy
| it
|
| That's usually what happens indeed. There is a lot of great
| tech coming from [the rest of the world] and being bought
| by the US.
|
| > the cost-to-switch is more important right now than the
| details
|
| I kinda disagree there. The lack of competition is the
| problem today. If, instead of AWS, there were 50 services
| all over the world and companies were distributed amongst
| them, then it would be much less of a problem. The problem
| right now is that the US can bully entire countries because
| those countries 100% rely on US services.
|
| Instead of building a European replacement for AWS, I would
| like to see open standards allowing companies to easily
| switch, and different providers competing behing those
| standards. Or even better: companies could even mix the
| services: say "I want my backups replicated between this
| French company and this Croatian one".
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's obviously the idea, but unfortunately everybody
| just wants convenience instead of decentralization. Hence
| Mastodon's amazing adoption rate...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| A few friends and I have thought similarly, although we focused
| on Apple first and the Google/Office suite second. We wrote our
| thoughts here: https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/ and the
| alternatives here: https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/status.html
|
| I personally don't think it makes a lot of sense for consumers
| or small business to have to wrangle dozens of IT providers.
| How can we consolidate them?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Excellent question and great to see you thinking in the same
| direction.
|
| Consolidation of various open source projects is underway
| with projects such as owncloud but it is still very fragile
| and hard to maintain.
|
| I think a pledge never to be bought out and a way to restrict
| stock to EU UBOs would be one step in the right direction,
| then you'll need a massive amount of capital to pull this
| off. But maybe the climate is finally right to raise a proper
| amount of money for such an undertaking.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Hmm, I wouldn't say it would take a "massive" amount of
| capital. EU is rich enough and they don't pay developers as
| well, correct? Most of the building blocks already exist.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but integrating them seamlessly and securely is
| still a huge undertaking.
| petcat wrote:
| > EU alternative to Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter,
| Facebook, Amazon
|
| This is basically just saying "we need to start by replacing 5
| of the richest and most powerful companies the world has ever
| seen".
|
| I think the EU should start a little smaller so they might
| actually make some progress on digital sovereignty within the
| next century.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You don't have to do all five at once, and a proper
| replacement based on the integration of a number of partial
| solutions should in principle be workable. What is required
| is the capital and the will to do it. If someone pulls this
| off they can count on my company as a subscriber and I think
| there are many more like me.
| rambambram wrote:
| The open web is your European alternative, not the Silicon
| Valley-approach but then in Europe. That just invites the same
| abuse of data, the same enshittification and the same rent-
| seeking behavior.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Alternatives to Amazon.com? I'm totally serious when asking about
| this. I think delivery apps (like the one comically named
| "Deliveroo") are all potential alternatives to Amazon, but I
| think they charge a premium.
| mk89 wrote:
| In DE probably Otto.de is the closest you get (?).
|
| In NL I remember Bol was quite good.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yeah bol and coolblue are good in Holland
| realityking wrote:
| For clothes Zalando is a big one.
|
| Beyond that it gets fragmented into companies serving only a
| few markets. Alza, Cool Blue, and Media Markt are some that
| come to my mind.
| dutchCourage wrote:
| It depends where you live. There's no one company that's
| implented in all European countries. All countries have a shop
| similar to Amazon (often with fewer sponsored products and less
| drop shipping garbage). There are also a few specialized shops
| (for books, sports, electronics...). Since 2020 I only buy
| Amazon if they're significantly cheaper than other sellers.
| That's about 10% of my purchases.
| 202508042147 wrote:
| There's galaxus.com
| layer8 wrote:
| Galaxus.eu, even.
| m00dy wrote:
| we should have also claude-alternatives like projects that are
| entirely built by vibe-coders.
| 202508042147 wrote:
| Doing my bit: migrating my small company's db this weekend from
| AWS RDS to Hetzner VPS + volumes. Fingers crossed!
|
| Already done: replaced SendGrid with Sweego.
|
| Later: move domains from US registrar to EU based.
|
| The difficult bit is the Microsoft Office because we are also
| using Azure DevOps for code, tickets, wiki and ci/cd.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| What EU based registrars would you recommend?
| wolvoleo wrote:
| For me personally, one that's well supported by DNS-01
| providers for let's encrypt.
|
| Unfortunately there's not that many and often the process is
| broken.
| 202508042147 wrote:
| I haven't looked into this yet, so I cannot recommend. I'll
| work my way through the list here: https://european-
| alternatives.eu/category/domain-name-regist...
| mindhunter wrote:
| https://www.inwx.de/en
| 202508042147 wrote:
| Hetzner might be a good choice to keep things together, as
| we're already using some services from them.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| I like Hetzner, but I'd avoid having everything under the
| same provider.
|
| Sometimes hosting companies suspend accounts. If that
| happens, it's useful to have your domains and backups with
| different providers.
| layer8 wrote:
| SchlundTech
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I wouldn't hard recommend based on lack of solid experience
| of using them over time, but Gandi showed a lot of promise
| for me.
|
| Context: I used to run a domain-related service that used
| registrar api's and gandi's seemed the most well thought out
| by a considerable way. The drawback was they're quite
| expensive for registrations/renewals unless you're doing it
| at volume.
|
| I had reservations about them being a French company wrt
| support but their API was so good I never needed to contact
| them on anything.
|
| Definitely worth a look.
| hulitu wrote:
| Funny, the first 3 are web analytics, cloud computing and CDN. So
| surveillance.
|
| I would have expected an OS, an Office platform.
| j1elo wrote:
| Does this hook up with promotion of the EUPL [1] as a preferred
| license for software? Does it even make more sense for european
| FOSS authors over the GPL family?
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Public_Licence
| mschae23 wrote:
| The EUPL is a fine license, especially if your goal is wide
| compatibility with other copyleft licenses. However, that
| compatibility also weakens its own copyleft, which could be
| surprising if you just read the main text.
|
| Also, the GPL is not as short and has more explicit wording for
| how it behaves in common situations (like the P2P copying
| stuff, for example), and it allows certain additional
| restrictions and exceptions (like what the LGPL is). It's just
| more well thought-out in my opinion.
|
| Edit: Reading it again, I also just remembered that the EUPL's
| warranty disclaimer is a lot weaker than usual licenses, and
| weirdly also asserts the program is a "work in progress".
| palata wrote:
| > However, that compatibility also weakens its own copyleft
|
| Can you elaborate on that?
|
| My understanding is that EUPL is a bit like MPLv2 or LGPL in
| the spirit. Like it protects the project itself, but doesn't
| go viral like the GPL.
| 202508042147 wrote:
| One obvious thing missing from any of those lists: Visa and
| Mastercard alternatives. This is the protection money that is
| never brought up by the US officials when they say that America
| was paying for our security.
| mpol wrote:
| Wero is coming. Currently it is only available in a few
| countries.
| 202508042147 wrote:
| +1 for Wero! Unsure where I can see their timeline.
| pronik wrote:
| And within those countries in only a handful of banks. We've
| been here before, but as of right now, I'd give it a better
| chance than I'd have given just four months ago.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| No it's not.
|
| Wero is another name for iDEAL, it has been pushed by Dutch,
| but it is an engineering fiasco.
|
| There is no way Poland would adopt it. Blik is just on
| another level price- and feature-wise.
| Cwizard wrote:
| I am unfamiliar with Wero. Can you explain why it is an
| engineering fiasco?
|
| Side note: Looking at their job listings I don't see any
| engineering positions (with the exception of a security
| engineer which is a grey area in a bank IMO), only managers
| and business roles.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| You just answered your own question )
|
| Wero is a money extraction business that secured European
| Commission support.
| brugidou wrote:
| France has the CB network for example which I believe still
| dominates most credit card transactions although it's declining
| as more and more cards are not co-branded anymore.
| fainpul wrote:
| I wish GNU Taler would become more concrete.
|
| https://www.taler.net
| s_dev wrote:
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
|
| The digital Euro has not been implemented yet. Some analysts
| are skeptical but this is the EUs answer for Visa/Mastercard.
| dagurp wrote:
| For small transactions right? I haven't looked much into it
| but I thought the main purpose was to save people all the
| transaction fees.
| s_dev wrote:
| That's not the main purpose. The main purpose is tech
| independence.
| BlackFly wrote:
| It merged with Mastercard almost two decades back:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocard_%28credit_card%29
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Eh, as an American I have to pay Visa/Mastercard fees too.
|
| Why do European drug firms charge so much more for their drugs
| in the US than in Europe? That is an actual difference between
| what it is like to be in a consumer in US vs Europe. Even
| Bernie Sanders thinks it is a problem:
| https://www.npr.org/2024/09/24/nx-s1-5123689/novo-nordisk-ce...
| lava_pidgeon wrote:
| While Master Card and a Visa there is a EU regulation
| limiting the fees, health insurance is mainly national level.
| So you could ask the question why is Ozempic cheap in
| Australia? But I can't answer your question.
| ulrischa wrote:
| This is great. Since the greenland crisis I'm busy replacing all
| my us software and other products (e.g. no Heinz, no Apple...)
| Mojah wrote:
| We've been seeing a surprising amount of leads come through this
| site, clearly the demand for a EU alternative is high.
| Tachyooon wrote:
| Something I'd love to see is a Europe-hosted mirror of software
| repositories like pypi, juliahub, and the like. It feels pretty
| essential to have these be available no matter what, but I
| haven't found any such mirrors.
| roter wrote:
| Somewhat similar for Canada:
|
| https://worktree.ca/taffer/canadian-alternatives
| 202508042147 wrote:
| They should add EU membership as alternative to CUSMA. I really
| like the idea!
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Let me know when someone spots a "Rival Castle" to GCP, AWS,
| Azure, Alibaba, Oracle. These are Hamlets.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Hertzner?
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I'm a happy customer of Hetzner, but AWS revenues are 440x
| theirs. Not much of a castle.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Why do you want to be a customer of a company with extreme
| revenue? That only means you'll pay too much money.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Customers can benefit from scale too
| abc123abc123 wrote:
| Hmm, how starnge that AWS then seems to be the most
| expensive option around. I've saved loads of money by
| using Hetzner instead. I can also easily move to other
| providers should I want thanks to open standards and open
| source.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Greater chance of survival, greater chance of being a
| winner in any consolidation in the industry, generally
| revenue translates to higher share price which means
| ability to acquire useful and interesting companies,
| likely lower cost of capital for borrowing for build-
| outs. Attracts greater talent with better packages. Now
| as teeny tiny (personal) customer of these guys... I'm
| not really going to care about most of this stuff. But in
| my $70B company market cap day-job... I do.
| mlitwiniuk wrote:
| Speaking of missing categories -- there's no "Compliance Tools"
| or "GRC" category yet. I'm building humadroid.io (SOC 2 / ISO
| 27001 compliance platform, based in Poland) and as far as I can
| tell, there aren't many European alternatives in this space. Most
| of the established players (Vanta, Drata, Secureframe) are US-
| based. Would be great to see this category added.
| evaneykelen wrote:
| Interesting, do you also provide the actual audit for ISO 27001
| as part of your service? That's why I went with Oneleet, but a
| EU-based solution would be attractive.
| mlitwiniuk wrote:
| No, we don't do audits -- and that's intentional. I think
| there's a conflict of interest when the same company advises
| you on compliance and then certifies you. Incentives get
| weird.
|
| The good news: there are plenty of EU-based ISO 27001 audit
| firms. We can recommend one or two if you need a pointer --
| we just don't have a formal catalogue or marketplace for that
| yet (though it's on my list).
|
| So you'd use Humadroid for the preparation - policies,
| controls, evidence, risks, continuity plans, ISMS workbook -
| and then bring in an independent auditor for certification.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What are some non-subjective reasons to use Euro alternatives? It
| reminds me of startup founders having to choose between the big
| expensive service or their buddy's startup that intends to serve
| the same use case.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| If you're European and reading the news at any point in the
| last year+, you understand how critical a weakness being
| dependent on US companies for your IT infra is.
|
| There are some things that are difficult to avoid, like CPUs
| and GPUs, but software is much more doable.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Please don't assume I'm not up to date on the news. But is
| there a tangible risk vector to European consumers of open
| source, commercial American software. I'm genuinely asking
| about incentives for the individual or individual business.
| That's a more difficult question to answer than asking why
| shouldn't Europe as a whole pursue this.
| malauxyeux wrote:
| I answered above, but answering here as well in case it's
| buried.
|
| > But is there a tangible risk vector to European consumers
| of open source, commercial American software.
|
| Yes. If you're a European sanctioned by the US, it's
| illegal for American companies to provide you service. That
| means no Amazon, PayPal, Expedia, Visa, etc.
|
| See this case of a French judge from 2025:
|
| https://nordictimes.com/world/how-french-icc-judge-faces-
| us-...
| 202508042147 wrote:
| To me, a very non-subjective reason is that the money I'm
| paying for these services will go to people and companies that
| share the same values and the taxes on the said money will be
| used for our common defense instead of being used to attack us.
| s_dev wrote:
| European companies operate under stricter privacy laws. GDPR is
| applicable world wide but has serious teeth and enforcement
| within Europe. Small US companies with no presence in Europe
| can effectively ignore it. However if an American were to
| choose a European service this benefit is effectively passed on
| to them. They can view what data any company has on them or ask
| them to delete it.
|
| I can appreciate some don't care about their data especially in
| this world of people pouring their lives in to social media but
| some people do care.
| 202508042147 wrote:
| And a second non-subjective and very important reason is that
| at any moment the US government might decide that the data we
| entrusted their corporations with is no longer ours and we need
| to part with it. It will be used for AI training. Also, this is
| because we didn't say thank you or something like that...
| malauxyeux wrote:
| Here's one case from August 2025:
|
| ----
|
| Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the International Criminal
| Court, discusses in an interview with Le Monde the consequences
| of US sanctions imposed on him and eight other judges and
| prosecutors at the court. The sanctions were introduced after
| the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister
| Benjamin Netanyahu.
|
| The concrete consequences of the sanctions extend far beyond a
| travel ban to the US. "The sanctions affect all aspects of my
| daily life. They prohibit all US individuals or legal entities,
| all persons or companies, including their foreign subsidiaries,
| from providing me with services", Guillou explains.
|
| All his accounts with US companies such as Amazon, Airbnb,
| PayPal, and others have been closed. "For example, I booked a
| hotel in France through Expedia, and a few hours later, the
| company sent an email canceling the reservation citing the
| sanctions. In practice, you can no longer shop online because
| you don't know if the packaging your product comes in is
| American. Being under sanctions is like being sent back to the
| 1990s", he says.
|
| "Overnight, you find yourself without a bank card, and these
| companies have an almost complete monopoly, at least in Europe.
| US companies are actively involved in intimidating sanctioned
| individuals - in this case, the judges and prosecutors who
| administer justice in contemporary armed conflicts", he notes.
|
| He emphasizes that sanctions can last for more than a decade or
| even longer.
|
| https://nordictimes.com/world/how-french-icc-judge-faces-us-...
| layer8 wrote:
| > their buddy's startup
|
| That's really not a good comparison. Many of the listed
| services and companies have been well established for a long
| time, in some cases for decades, and aren't small businesses.
| dutchCourage wrote:
| Trump's attitude motivated me to finally get away from Gmail. I
| tried several of the providers mentioned on this website and
| stuck with tuta.com. After almost a year, I'm very happy, would
| recommend.
|
| Interesting to know before going in: - They encrypt the emails
| when storing them, so the only way to access emails is to use
| their own apps. I was hesitant at first but their web app,
| desktop app and android app are great
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