Key takeaways:
Microsoft and its leadership refrained from endorsing Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign, unlike some other major tech companies.
However, European governments and enterprises are increasingly breaking ties with Microsoft products in favor of open-source alternatives.
Experts say such a transition can be largely attributed to Trump’s hostile policy towards Europe, which sparked digital sovereignty efforts.
Microsoft has reiterated its digital commitments, but it is yet to be seen if that’s enough to assuage concerns over dependency on US tech.
Microsoft are paying the price for being Microsoft and being big American intrusive greedy tech. Nothing to do with Trump.
As soon as Microsoft saw how Google and Android were doing it, they copied it. Windows 11 is effectively spyware.
This is a bit about Microsoft being Microsoft, but it is also about USA government having control and access of EU data.
Which the big tech were doing long before the US government decided to use it themselves.
Microsoft aren’t casualties of Trump here… Their own greed and data harvesting pushed that as much, if not more.
I’ve worked my whole career in European tech and I’ve never heard the term sovereignty as much as since 2025. There was an undercurrent certainly, and people were keenly aware that technically the US government could look at their data whenever they felt like it, but it was still natural to plop your infrastructure on AWS or azure and not think too much about it.
Things have really accelerated since he took office, first in the public sector then in the private sector. The burden of proof has kind of reversed, I’ve started hearing a lot of “what specific service do you need on AWS that you can’t have on a European server” whereas it used to be “why don’t we just take AWS”.
Who had “Trump will accidentally be the light that forces all the tech companies’ shitty practices into the open like a flood of shiny roaches after kicking a dresser at the hard rock resort in cancun” on their bingo card?
I’ve stopped buying and paying for American products because I want Trump lead country to take financial hit. Fuck billionaires too, but fuck Trump and people who don’t do enough to stop the bastard.
i can’t help believe that Trump has done amazing work for anyone who doesn’t agree with democracy and capitalism, especially in their current form and especially when they are intertwined.
He has made millions of people who would otherwise be unaware or indifferent, very much aware and awake to what goes on.
Hopefully it will lead to a lot of changes in laws all the way down.
I think the governments are moving because of Trump mostly. Europeans are moving because of Americans. On top of that everyone is moving because of Microsoft.
Except it does have to do with Trump. He showed everyone how unreliable the US is, both Germany and France decided that all government hardware shall run Linux because of this.
I forsee a huge boom in Linux software development. Wage systems, inventory software, business software. Once those things are in place, companies will start to make the switch too
France yes, but Germany? Sadly no.
Fuck the CSU and Blackrock Merz can go lick some eggs.
Digital sovereignity has it’s roots in GDPR (2017-18) which itself came out of people’s concerns for privacy because of big tech and all of the data that was exchanging hands. Digital sovereignity itself as a government thing is where it is now, but that wouldn’t have happened to begin with if the big techs had not been investing so heavily in data mining and harvesting. They now actively lobby the EU constantly to strip us of our privacy and in some instances it may work.
Trump is a user of it and likes it, but they were doing it long before he first came on the scene, and all he did was agree with them that it was good to have all this documented information on people. Long before Trump I have no doubt that the US government liked it too.
But they are all just playing by big tech rules, making them Billionaires. None of them are casualties of Trump. They are running this themselves.
Seems like the anti-Trump PR is already starting. These greedy sacks of crap are going to blame him for their pro-fascist support, their greed and their low quality products.
It’s not just about Trump though. EU has long been in talks with American companies about EU citizen data not being allowed to leave EU and asking if the companies can guarantee that US isn’t allowed to access the data, which companies have not been able tp guarantee.
Yes but those conversations have in most ways not been too serious until now. I think it’s obvious, but if not, Microsoft has enough money to buy political favor most of the time. And now the price is too high.
Good, it’s time this parasitic company hit its comeuppance and countries started taking responsibility for themselves.
On that note, it’s also time open source does a v2 on office software.
LibreOffice is frankly not a good piece of software. I tried it this week. The interface is laggy on an incredibly beefy machine, it’s confusing (e.g. with the first thing you see is a pop of with 5 different UI configuration options to choose from), and doesn’t scale well to high DPI displays.
Just like how GIMP took a decade before the community acknowledged it was not a viable UI despite being packed with good features, LibreOffice needs a refresh for modern and low power computing
It’s refreshing to see a more critical take on open source software. The ideals of it are admirable but many projects suffer from a lack of direction due to many slightly differently aligned contributors.
I’m coming from almost 20 years of macOS, where I’ve seen Cocoa thrive and be slaughtered like a fattened pig and the death of human interface guidelines.
I’m loving Linux, but spend 90% of time in my terminal and Firefox.
the alternatives to gimp aren’t great either… I tried krita and went back to gimp
Krita and Gimp have very different uses.
“boohoo people don’t trust our spyware anymore” shame on you
It couldn’t possibly be because of Micro$lop’s hostility toward end users, privacy, and resistance to rent extraction. 🙄
I mean even if Europe and the US had a utopian relationship, having government systems run on a foreign country’s black box gives them so much power over you.
MS is paying the price for Windows sucking.
Microsoft sucks more than Trump because of how long they have been at it. Everybody, including americans, should be moving away from them.
Let’s fucking go!
I never understood this expression. Go where? Is it from French “allez!!”?
Go straight to heck.
Yes.
If you are still using Bill Gates to represent Microsoft, I think your article is disingenuous and in bad faith.
Oh lets not forget microsoft’s actions here.
Microslop didn’t need the help, they would’ve done it all on their own.
can be largely attributed to Trump’s hostile policy towards Europe,
Kicking American corporations in the wallet is the only way to get their attention.
If it happens enough, maybe they’ll redirect some of their bribe money towards fixing the source of the problem.
Its much broader than that.
Whether or not there is a coordinated cabal that is raking up wealth or if it is just a bunch of like minded ghouls, their scale tipping will come to an unfortunate end. The early stages from a tech perspective is open source, which coincidentally has just been talked about perhaps coming to an end because of whatever complaints from the community. Interesting that media would be promoting this split. Curious what others think as to the real threat and dissatisfaction.
Outside of tech the biggest problem is an ill informed populous. If they understood their true power, and more importantly the reasons they need to exercise it, things could really be different.
Now you may wonder why anyone would be stupid enough to mess with the economic balance that keeps the system working. My take is that they’ve bought into the “end of world” scenario, inevitable through climate change but seemingly accelerating due to their understanding that they need a way to cull the population to avoid being a casualty of their own greed. Now how much this relates to central control and whether or not there’s alien involvement is immaterial, and espousing such “conspiracy” only hurts the message.
