AVOIDING AMERICA AND AMERICAN SOFTWARE
There are two main reasons that someone might want to avoid American computing. The long standing issue is that the EU has privacy laws whereas the US does not. Spying on you is just fine in America. The more recent development is that the US is marching towards dictatorship and existing laws are, at times, ignored.
Eurostack is a project to publicly fund a European stack of technology that is independent from American Big Tech.
September 26, 2025: This European military just ditched Microsoft for open-source LibreOffice - here's why by Steven Vaughan-Nichols for ZDNet. Austria's military replaced Microsoft Office with LibreOffice on their 16,000 desktop PCs. A Microsoft 365 E3 subscription for 16,000 workstations costs approximately $6,480,000 per year. LibreOffice is free. But, the real motivation is digital sovereignty and control over critical data. Quoting: "Recently, digital sovereignty has become a contentious issue for countries outside the US that have been relying on American companies. Many European governments no longer trust their data or software to US-based companies under President Donald Trump. They fear their data could be read or that Microsoft could kill their services on Trump's behalf."
September 24, 2025: India's IT minister moves to Zoho’s spreadsheet and word processor, urges 1.4 billion people to do likewise by Simon Sharwood for The Register. Quoting: "India's minister for information technology yesterday said he's dumping his current word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics packages, will adopt the locally made alternatives from Zoho instead . . . The minister's post also saw him 'urge all to join' prime minister Narendra Modi’s recent call for Indians to adopt indigenous products and services."
July 18, 2025: Getting off US tech: a guide by Paris Marx. A techie, in the process of dropping US tech services explains how he did it, and suggests options/alternatives for others. Some of the suggestions (there are many): the Proton suite of software, mailbox.org for email (of course) but also for cloud storage, productivity software, and video conferencing. For search engines: the best non-US alternatives are Ecosia, Qwant and Startpage. For podcasts on Android, there is AntennaPod; on iOS there is the Anytime Podcast Player.
June 23, 2025: The French city of Lyon will replace Windows with Linux, Microsoft Office with an open-source version named OnlyOffice, and Microsoft databases with PostgreSQL. Lyon is the third-largest city in France by population. From: The City of Lyon strengthens its digital sovereignty which starts with "In order to no longer be dependent on US software solutions and to acquire real digital sovereignty, the City of Lyon has embarked on a major transformation of its digital tools."
June 16, 2025: DNS is a critical base infrastructure for everything we do on the Internet. There is a lot of DNS information on my RouterSecurity.org site. For people in the European Union, there are two free DNS services: dns0.eu and DNS4EU. The latter just went live this month. Both provide assorted filtering options and freedom from US-based tech companies.
June 11, 2025: Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux by Steven Vaughan-Nichols for ZDNet. EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe's dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States. A combination of security, economic, political, and societal imperatives are driving the EU's digital sovereignty moves. They are concerned about who controls European data, who sets the rules, and who can, potentially, cut off access to essential services. Greenland, which Trump has said that he wants to take over, is a Danish territory. The article cites this example
April 19, 2025: This un-American life: can you really divest yourself of everything from the US? by Jeremy Ettinghausen for The Guardian. The article is on much more than just technology. For example, he points out that in Football/Soccer, ten Premier League clubs are American-owned. As for tech:
March 19, 2025: Privacy-Respecting European Tech Alternatives by Jonah Aragon of Privacy Guides. Quoting: "There is a growing sentiment that the US shouldn't be relied upon for the technologies that many people and businesses use every day ... the United States certainly does not have a monopoly on the best technologies, and many of our favorite recommended tools come from Europe and all over the world. Tools from the European Union also generally benefit from much stronger data protection laws, thanks to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)." Some of the recommendations in the article: Tuta and Proton for email, LibreOffice of offline Office apps, CryptPad for online office apps and Nextcloud as an alternative to Google Drive or OneDrive. For Instant Messaging the recommendations are SimpleX, Element and Briar.
March 16, 2025: European tech industry coalition calls for 'radical action' on digital sovereignty - starting with buying local by Natasha Lomas for TechCrunch. Quoting: "A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe’s tech industry is calling for 'radical action' from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure and services to bolster the bloc's economic prospects, resilience, and security ... The plan pushes for reducing reliance on foreign-owned Big Tech ... The rallying call to put European tech first ... follows the shock of the Munich security conference, where U.S. Vice President JD Vance tore into Europe like an attack dog, leaving delegates in no doubt that the post-war international order is in tatters and all bets are off when it comes to what the U.S. might do under President Donald Trump."
March 6, 2025: Handpicked list of privacy-focused European alternatives to big tech products for your business by Hricha Shandily at Plausible.io. Sixteen recommendations. Among them: Element rather than Slack or Microsoft Teams, Mistral AI rather than ChatGPT, Mullvad VPN, Passbolt for passwords, ProtonMail rather than Gmail or Outlook, Tally Forms rather than Google Forms and Whereby rather than Zoom.
February 27, 2025: How I’m Building a Trump-Proof Tech Stack Without Big Tech by Joan Westenberg at JoanWestenberg.com.
As to why write this article, she says: "If you care about your rights, if you care about your data, if you're paying attention to U.S. decline, it's time to start looking for alternatives to American tech domination. ... The world can no longer trust American tech ... The United States is a nation in the thrall of authoritarianism, owned and operated almost completely by a far-right doomsday cult intent on betraying every alliance, every contract, every promise it has ever made ... its decision-making is either erratic and illogical or dictated by interests that cannot and will not align with any reasonable principles of freedom, social progress, or ethical governance. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and other tech companies operating on American soil can talk a big game about their sovereignty, independence, and encryption. But talk may be all it is; there can be no guarantee that an authoritarian U.S. government will not compel American cloud, email, productivity, and messaging providers to open their databases and records to partisan law enforcement."
This is a long article with many recommendations. She seems to be a macOS user, and personally uses ToDoIst for task management, iA Writer for writing, the Proton suite and Joplin for note taking. Othere non-US software she cites are the web browsers LibreWolf, Vivaldi, Mullvad and Iridium. For cloud storage and file synch there is Nextcloud and Cozy Cloud. For messaging, there is Element and BigBlueButton for video conferencing. For password managers there is KeePass and KeePassXC. For searching SearxNG and Qwant. Again, long article worth reading.
February 23, 2025: It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds by Bert Hubert. Quoting: "... it is madness to continue transferring the running of European societies and governments to American clouds. Not only is it a terrible idea given the kind of things the "King of America" keeps saying, the legal sophistry used to justify such transfers ... has now been invalidated by Trump himself. And why are we doing this? Convenience. But it is very scary to make yourself 100% dependent on the goodwill of the American government merely because it is convenient. So let's not."
The European alternatives for digital products website lists European alternatives for digital services and products.
STORAGE TOO
March 24, 2025: Trump's Aggression Sours Europe on US Cloud Giants by Matt Burgess for Wired. Quoting: "Companies in the EU are starting to look for ways to ditch Amazon, Google, and Microsoft cloud services amid fears of rising security risks from the US ... more than 100 organizations signed an open letter to European officials calling for the continent to become 'more technologically independent' and saying the status quo creates 'security and reliability risks.' Two European-based cloud service companies, Exoscale and Elastx, tell WIRED they have seen an uptick in potential customers looking to abandon US cloud providers over the last two weeks ... the CEO of Swiss-based hosting provider Exoscale [said] '... customers from Denmark being very explicit that they want to move away from US hyperscalers because of the US administration and what they said about Greenland.' "
March 19, 2025: MPs urge government to stop using 'unsafe' US cloud services in DutchNews.nl. Quoting: "MPs have urged the government to stop migrating confidential information about tax returns, contracts, and medical records to US cloud services, saying they are a threat to Dutch cyber security. In addition, the government should work on developing its own cloud for keeping digital records, MPs said during a debate on Tuesday ... Under the US Cloud Act, cloud service providers can be required by law to make information available to government authorities, even if the storage is in Europe."
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