Europe is complete with American Big Tech. Well, sort of. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s tumultuous second administration last year, governments and companies across the continent have accelerated plans to end close dependence on technology from American companies.
In addition to political declarations, the development of European technology of adults, and millions of additional funds, the WIRED analysis has documented. several public events of companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and educational institutions divesting from US technology companies in favor of open source or domestic alternatives. It’s probably the tip of the iceberg.
“The aggressive policies of the Trump administration, attacking international law, as well as the EU and democratic principles, have caused several wake-up calls,” says Marietje Schaake, a non-resident fellow at Stanford University’s Internet Policy Center and a former member of the European Parliament.
Those measures are widespread—and growing. Last week, the European Commission officially launched its long term plans rely less on American technology. The European Parliament has has been changed the default search engine on its devices from Google to the French alternative Qwant. Thousands of workers in the French government they use its open office software-called LaSuite- as officials aim to “break away” from dependence on American technology companies. Open source documents provided by more than a dozen European technology companies, called Euro-Officeit is due to launch immediately. Cities across the Netherlands, France and Germany are all moving away from Microsoft Office and Google Docs
It’s not just a productivity app, either. The Dutch government is moving its code from Microsoft-owned Github to its own own treasure. In a series of decisions, Finland is reported decided not to transfer its election data to Amazon’s cloud services, while the organization behind Belgium’s top-level domain has said it will. exit from AWS. At the same time, Eurosky designed as a collaborative alternative Bluesky on the AT Protocol which governs all social networks.
WIRED collected publicly known cases of European corporations leaving US-based Big Tech. (Click the arrows to scroll through the timeline below, or view it here Google sheet or a The Proton Paper)
Although many of the “digital freedom” initiatives were already in place before the start of Trump’s second term, what is often cited as the immediate source of change is the negative results from America. sanctions against officials associated with the International Criminal Court. (The court itself ended moving away from Microsoft technology)
A long list of other European issues include governments and companies not having control over their own data; changing international relations; technology dependence from a small number of companies; the ability to access data under the US CLOUD Act and FISA; and a closer relationship than ever between Big Tech companies and the Trump administration. “Citizens, companies, and organizations are empowered to take their digital future into their own hands,” Schaake says. “It has not been interfered with by the interests of billionaires and also by the policies of Trump.”
