Yes, I’m one of those oldies who used to fiddle around with one of the first Commodore computers, the ones without a hard disk. I grew up with Windows, Gates, Jobs, and Mac. Google wasn’t a search engine, it was the replacement for the word “search.” That felt like technological progress for all of civilization.
Who hasn’t wrestled with Microsoft just to produce a halfway acceptable document? Who hasn’t nearly given up the fight over which operating system to choose — Windows, Apple, or Linux? Well, all of us financed these companies into becoming gigantic tech corporations.
The tech krakens are now, at least in Europe, running into real trouble. The dominance has developed cracks, and the crumbling is impossible to ignore.
Let’s start with the search engine called Google.
This monster of diligent data-hoarding is no longer the default application for 720 MPs and thousands of assistants. No — the French alternative, called Qwant, is being installed as the default search engine on Parliament computers.
Goops!
So what happened that forced the European Parliament to reach for such drastic measures?
Well, a parliament works with data that has a sensitive side: government information. On June 4th, the EU Commission published its “Technological Sovereignty” package — a name that sounds like bureaucracy but carries a solid threat: US cloud providers will no longer be allowed to process sensitive European data. US cloud providers are barred from processing sensitive European data. Reads logically, reads acceptably. On top of that, European providers of these digital services are to be given preference.
But it gets thicker still.
The EU isn’t just setting its sights on Google. With the open-source suite EuroOffice, Microsoft gets catapulted to second string. This suite can read and process all existing Microsoft Office files, but does so the European way. And above all, the data stays in Europe, instead of being stored in a US cloud.
Is there anything else American on the IT front the EU wants to replace?
What, Windows? Seriously? Oh yes, Linux is the new operating system of choice in the EU. In France, even the online conferencing platforms Microsoft Teams and Zoom are being replaced by the homegrown platform Visio.
The Swiss have already actively switched their government from Microsoft to Swiss alternatives. Who thought of it first?
The wave against Non-American-Products is picking up speed. America is losing ground on every front, after decades of being the norm. The current American government, with its tech-bro allies, has managed to make the label “Made in America” suddenly seem bitter and suspect.
The great American dream has turned into a nightmare.
We Canucks (an affectionate term by and for Canadians) are practising, voluntarily and without government prodding, what the alternative looks like. US products sit untouched on grocery store shelves, whisky from Kentucky and other states has vanished from most provinces. And Canadian tourists heading to the US have become a rarity.
Dominance means unchecked power. And after the honeymoon joys of new products wear off, that rarely sits well with anyone.
Yes, the trend is pulling back from offerings Made in the USA. And the one current president of the United Plagues of America keeps hurling fresh outrages into the world, day after day.
But the world can’t be distracted forever. Sooner or later, reason wakes up from its Sleeping Beauty slumber — this time in Brussels.
“Qwant it: EuroOffice!”
