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.
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.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Cloud-Row-in-Bavaria-over-billion-euro-Microsoft-contract-without-tender-11114488.html
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.
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.