Old friendships have been feeling unstable lately, and this is forcing the EU to reconsider its reliance on non-European tech infrastructure. To get things moving, over 80 signatories representing around 100 organizations have signed an open letter to the president of the European Commission, urging the EU to increase support for local alternatives to big tech products, services, and infrastructure.
So, what will happen if Europe decides to go self-sufficient on the tech front and create its own “Euro Stack“? How will it affect both Europeans and other people around the world? Well, they say competition is good for everyone, and I’m inclined to agree. More European tech would mean more competition for American tech, and more competition means better products for consumers.
You might think there are more tech products out there than we could possibly need, but the reality is a little more complicated. Take search engines, for example — we all know that Google and Bing are the most popular choices, but there are plenty of alternatives, right? Well, not really. Right now, just about every alternative search engine, from DuckDuckGo to Qwant, uses the search indexes from Google or Bing. This means that, if Google and Bing decided to stop sharing their search indexes, all of these alternative products would stop working.
Initiatives to build new, independent search indexes have started — such as Brave Search or the new partnership between Qwant and Ecosia — but building a search index is a big project and it will take a lot of time to get the quality of these new products to where Google and Bing are now.
There are plenty of other examples, too. All of the biggest map software apps are owned by big tech companies, as are most big AI models and LLM services, instant messaging apps, operating systems, browsers, social media platforms — and a lot more. When buying a new PC, most consumers have to choose between Windows devices or macOS devices — in other words, Microsoft or Apple.
For phones, it’s Android or iOS — so Google or Apple. The main problems with current alternatives are that firstly, they’re too small. In most cases, you have to sacrifice functionality, features, and support to try out something new. Secondly, many are built on existing infrastructure from companies like Microsoft and Google.
The point is — we don’t have enough choices. Availability, affordability, and convenience are always pushing us into the hands of American big tech companies. If the EU decides that its people and its organizations need to have access to homegrown alternatives — you can bet those alternatives will be available worldwide. That means more tech for everyone, and with the strict data laws in the EU, we would finally have a choice between selling our data and not selling it (instead of the choice we have now, which is just deciding who to sell it to).
