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.
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.