by julianpye on 2/22/25, 2:24 PM with 296 comments
by Daril on 2/22/25, 2:56 PM
by silverquiet on 2/22/25, 3:05 PM
I believe that US firms see European tech companies as slow/lazy and think that good engineers only seek high compensation which is available to them in the US. Certainly there are some who are motivated by that, but I have known some great engineers in Europe which was one of my reasons for cautioning my American peers about pushing too hard for WFH; if they can do the job from home, then so can others in countries with lower costs of living.
by madspindel on 2/22/25, 3:02 PM
In Sweden, Russia has always been the enemy.
My prediction is that France and Germany will soon join the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and it will be the end of NATO. UK will probably join the Maximator intelligence alliance.
The death of Five Eyes and NATO in 2025 was not on my bingo card. Good luck with your new alliance with the Russians, Americans!
by byyll on 2/22/25, 4:48 PM
by browningstreet on 2/22/25, 3:04 PM
To some degree I think it’s being treated as yet another line item in the long list of things that need to be managed in global companies of a certain size. I presume that the threat of retaliation (see story about X advertisers) is keeping voices quiet too.
It’s different this time… it’s going to get weird. And possibly dangerous. Talk of third term, crashing the economy as a pretense for parting out the assets of the federal government, finding a reason to cancel the next election, and being the war machine for our enemies may not feel like the purview of technology companies even as they angle for federal contracts to “support” some of these things.
We need more bodies at protests. Not everything announced has gone into effect, but they’re testing all the things they want to make happen. And they’re persistent.
The public haven’t yet seen the spark that may light the next resistance fire. It may not feel like we have moves available to us, but public boycotts, protests/ marches, calls to our politicians, honking for peace, supporting our neighbors — these are all reps in the resistance. They are recruitment and rallying measures. They are all little tiny sparks, from which something may alight. Look for something happening today and show up.
by lukashoff on 2/22/25, 3:17 PM
In terms of pensions - I think 99.9% of us have a huge chunk the S&P, so even though we're upset I doubt there will be any movement on that front at all. Money will win in this battle.
Personally I do feel betrayed as well and for the first time in my life I've started looking for where the product I consume come from. About a third is from the US. Stopped buying them, found a European alternative.
To all the Europeans out here - let them live how they want over the pond, let's use this opportunity to promote our industries and products as well as become as independent as we possibly can given our current financial and political constraints.
No hard feelings at all, live and let live.
by sudonanohome on 2/22/25, 8:01 PM
by rvnx on 2/22/25, 2:51 PM
In addition, tariffs will be put on cars coming from the US.
Plus, US is now recognized as a very unreliable partner in terms of defense, that Europe regrets buying their systems.
by Sammi on 2/23/25, 10:49 AM
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/dutch-pension-fund-ab...
by weatherlight on 2/22/25, 3:02 PM
by djkivi on 2/22/25, 3:21 PM
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fewer-canadi...
by whynotminot on 2/22/25, 2:58 PM
America's image is toxic to everyone right now (including its own citizens). But I don't really see that many valid alternatives. It's not like Europe has done much to cultivate any kind of relevant software industry.
by ThrowawayR2 on 2/22/25, 3:05 PM
by thesuavefactor on 2/22/25, 4:49 PM
I fortunately also got rid of Facebook a while ago. This gave me a lot more time back. It's difficult at first, because there's a little fomo, but now I am very happy.
I never started with all the other social media. No Instagram, no Twitter. So that makes it easy.
My computers have always run Linux, very happy with that.
Streaming services are next. At least the US ones.
Replacing whatsapp with signal also. I noticed a lot of my contacts are already in there, just not actively using it. It's a question of just starting communications and groups there.
It's quite doable, but you have to really want to "vote with your wallet" so to speak. I think it's a worthwhile sacrifice. In fact, it rids you of psychological warfare, reduces anxiety, costs less money and gives you your time back.
If you think about it that way, it's a no brainer.
by seanmcdirmid on 2/22/25, 3:05 PM
by misja111 on 2/22/25, 3:01 PM
by mistermaestro on 2/22/25, 2:57 PM
That is just the business part of things, the removal of DEI at all cost in conjunction with the Russian dealings and the statements from JD Vance are also a bit hard to be positive about.
We like the companies but the noise increases risk as opposed to European partners.
by unosama on 2/22/25, 2:59 PM
by phl on 2/22/25, 3:06 PM
by globalnode on 2/22/25, 2:56 PM
by aman-pro on 2/22/25, 2:53 PM
by seydor on 2/22/25, 2:54 PM
Suppose the war ends. Will the Europeans keep boycotting the cheap russian gas?
Tarriffs are a nuisance to the US - the US doesn't export much.
by bbor on 2/22/25, 2:57 PM
by xg15 on 2/22/25, 3:02 PM
(Same goes for the other side of the geopolitical aisle: European politicians would have liked a much faster and much more comprehensive economic decoupling from China since at least the start of the Ukraine war. But feedback from the private sector was pretty clear that this would have been economic suicide. Hence the official stance is now "de-risking" instead of "decoupling")
by aluminussoma on 2/22/25, 8:05 PM
America itself has its own problems. America is spending too much money. America has an inflation problem that led to one of the most unpopular presidents ever getting elected again. Many Americans think it’s time to solve America’s problems instead of being feted in European capitals. If that means the rest of world won’t use Gmail, YouTube, or Facebook, so be it. Those companies can take care of themselves.
by urup2l8 on 2/22/25, 4:42 PM
by kryptiskt on 2/22/25, 3:03 PM
They are all sitting ducks for black swan events, but I don't think getting roasted in Europe will be enough to trouble them.
by abraxas on 2/22/25, 2:57 PM
You yanks might think this is some display of your upper hand. Just wait until the civilized world turns its back on the greenback as the reserve currency. You will be so fucked.
by legitster on 2/22/25, 3:02 PM
EMEA has always been a soft market for tech. And it's always been a cost center for regionalization and compliance.
A move away from US tech is not necessarily new or surprising. But it's also not as damning to the bottom line as one would expect.
I will say that the tech sector in Europe is not nearly as robust. While alternatives exist for some products, they are not likely going to find international markets of their own. (Overgeneralization, obv).
by sangeeth96 on 2/22/25, 3:14 PM
by jimmar on 2/22/25, 3:13 PM
Soft power sounds like manipulation to me. So if we destroyed our manipulation, great. The United States has put its fingers on too many scales rather than respecting the rights of individuals in other countries to manage their affairs the way they see fit.
I welcome tech competition from Europe. Let the best products and services win.
by postcert on 2/22/25, 3:17 PM
by toss1 on 2/22/25, 3:01 PM
The first question is how broad is this shift; is it really everywhere on the street or just in the "early adopters"?
The next question is how durable is the trend?
The things I've noticed here are reports of AfD rapidly losing 5% in the polls after Vance spoke in Munich, and a French right-wing leader cancelling his planned speech at CPAC after Bannon did a Nazi salute in his talk. When the US wannabe-Nazis are too toxic for European pro-fascists, that is saying something...
by sylware on 2/22/25, 3:18 PM
The issue in EU is Big Tech has many "minions" in public administrations and local critical online services (many dominant online services are theirs anyway). They manage to make hard dependent the "web" on their cartel of whatng web rendering engines (and their SDK).
by vvpan on 2/22/25, 2:58 PM
by Revanche1367 on 2/23/25, 1:28 AM
Also, look at social media like reddit even outside of politics, Europeans constantly laugh at Americans for bringing up European heritage but when Europe is in trouble, it’s all “think of Europe!!!” Why? America is in its own safe bubble, Russia is not really a threat to us and personally I’m not even of European heritage so telling me to care so much more about Europe unlike Asia or Africa just falls on deaf ears. I get along with Russians just as much as I get along with the English or French, and this is true for many of us, we’re a country of immigrants but much of that isn’t European in origin and even those of European origin aren’t necessarily thinking of Europe in any regard except as a potential vacation destination.
The EU simply isn’t that important to many of us.
by LaserMoai on 2/23/25, 5:51 PM
by jimmydoe on 2/22/25, 3:05 PM
by voidr on 2/24/25, 8:44 AM
I also find this very strange, that people did not talk about doing the mass exodus after we found out the US is conducting mass surveillance on us, but just because they don't like the politics of the current president, they start talking about how bad the US is.
> The expectation is that especially US tech will be weaponized
That should always have been the expectation, that's why the basic idea of GDPR was a good one, too bad they have botched it in the end.
> I know people in the US are focused on DOGE, but over here in Europe, the impression is that the US completely destroyed its soft power this week.
It's just some politicians who are unhappy because things didn't go their way, a lot of ordinary people are just happy to see hope that the economic suicide might be coming to an end, maybe next year my energy bills won't be 3x of what they used to be 3 years ago, one can dream.
Keep in mind that most people don't even understand what current events are about, the vocal minority can be very vocal.
> so people are switching search engines
> Are people talking about this - do they take it seriously or believe there is no alternative to US tech?
Switching search engines is easy, try switching your whole office from Windows to Linux.
> What does it mean for US startups, California and global tech?
It will mean nothing, if I need to build a product that requires US tech and there is no alternative, I'm going to use the US tech, end of story.
by ineedasername on 2/22/25, 9:47 PM
As for the US dollar, floats against the euro and yen are still roughly in historic high territory, though not at peak, and recently edge up. If the US actually tries to default maybe there’d be significant flight to other currencies. Otherwise any large institution is probably going to wait out 4 years, possibly find the next bubble to pump up during likely deregulation of markets, and probably have it pop in time for the political right to blame it on progressives if/when the public pendulum swings the other way and they hold office again. The other way the dollar fails is if there is general wide spread world chaos in & out of financial markets, but in that case I’d expect little in the way of an alternative world reserve and more in the way of regional reserves, more insular and isolated.
by ctrlp on 2/22/25, 3:20 PM
by 827a on 2/22/25, 3:02 PM
There isn't, broadly speaking. Oh yeah, gonna use OpenEuroLLM? Have y'all made the ePhone yet or is that still stuck in committee?
Other countries will moan for a bit, no one likes having their free money and handouts taken away, then realize that US technology is still broadly the only option, and its actually quite good and even other US companies cant compete with US big tech with all of the free money here, let alone the tech-backward eurozone. Right now its the UK forcing Apple to remove Advanced Data Protection for UK citizens (not the eurozone, to be clear, but adjacent and culturally aligned)
The "boycotts" are great for headlines though (don't worry, Apple's revenue this year will be larger than ever, as always). If y'all don't want to buy Teslas though, I get that; I feel the same way.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 2/22/25, 4:11 PM
by rmrf100 on 2/22/25, 3:03 PM
by welzel on 2/23/25, 5:45 PM
People don´t care, never did.
Example: after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, people still suck up to MbS. Money rules the world.
After what we learned about Guantanamo Bay, nobody should be allowed to call the US a democratic country. But we all decided to ignore the facts, as watching Netflix is way to nice.
by le-mark on 2/22/25, 3:00 PM
by deadbabe on 2/22/25, 3:03 PM
by olalonde on 2/22/25, 2:59 PM
by fullstick on 2/22/25, 2:51 PM
by awaythrow999 on 2/22/25, 10:42 PM
by shermand89 on 2/22/25, 3:02 PM
It doesn't matter lol
by theLegionWithin on 2/23/25, 12:04 AM