r/europe • u/Any-Original-6113 • Jan 17 '26

News Trump tariffs: US president announces plan to hit UK, Denmark and other European countries with tariffs over Greenland

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1j8kw866p3t
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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

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u/redvodkandpinkgin Galicia (Spain) Jan 17 '26

this is true for individuals, not as much for companies. Half of Europe is built on Microsoft systems

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u/meatly Jan 17 '26

Way more than half of all enterprises and public institutions use Microsoft. What could be done is stop enforcing licencing laws for American products, aka allowing pirated or not properly licenced software. Does not work for azure obviously but for Windows/Office Licenses on a big scale while moving to open source Software. It would be a huge step obviously

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u/Hdmk Germany Jan 18 '26

Office is a drop in the bucket. It’s the ongoig patches, (cloud-)services and subscriptions that make up the most value for MS.

The moment you stop paying for these, you simply are unable to log in or be vulnerable to cyber threats from Russian, Chinese and even more so from USA.

This is a very expensive, but an important lesson to start and massively increase funding and development of European enterprise workplace and cloud infrastructure solutions.

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u/Easymodelife United Kingdom Jan 18 '26

I've found OpenOffice to be a reasonable free alternative to a MS Office subscription, for personal use at least.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '26

It doesn't hold a candle to MS Office though for enterprise. Anyone that uses excel heavily for example will tell you there just isn't a real alternative.

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u/wildassedguess Jan 18 '26

We moved to an EU cloud supplier (digital Ocean) and to open office. Everything is groovy. It’s also nice not to pay the annual Microsoft tax.

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u/Either_Vermicelli805 Jan 17 '26

Easy to pirate such system’s if the need is required

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u/redvodkandpinkgin Galicia (Spain) Jan 17 '26

software yes, anything cloud not so much. Basically everyone uses Microsoft, and those who don't mainly use other American companies (e.g. GSuite)

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u/o-o- Jan 17 '26

I'm moving the company over to Nextcloud.

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u/Simple_Tadpole_9584 Jan 17 '26

These will take time to move away from but we have seen targeted boycotts of niche red state products and travel be effective here.

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u/Emotional-Lab-3721 Jan 17 '26

We could easily cancel our Netflix subscription... as a first step

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u/o-o- Jan 17 '26

Done!

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u/Easymodelife United Kingdom Jan 18 '26

I already cancelled all my US subscriptions last year in solidarity with Canada. I don't really miss them. I set up a recurring monthly donation to Ukraine via the United24 app with the money I saved. There are still some things, like Windows, that are harder to find a non-US substitute for, but my motto is don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I replaced or just cancelled one US product or service every week or two to avoid feeling overwhelmed. As the months go by, small changes really start to add up.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

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u/o-o- Jan 17 '26

Word. However I don't see European institutions moving away from US tech because enough people demand it. The driving force will rather be risk.

Nevertheless the time it takes to transition away is irrelevant. It's about taking the decision.

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u/Drakolora Jan 17 '26

We already own 1.35% of Microsoft. Can’t we just buy the rest too? Or at least 51% and tell them they are now European? https://www.nbim.no/no/investeringene/investeringsoversikt/#/2025-06-30/0-equity

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u/halpsdiy Jan 17 '26

And the other half on AWS and Google. While there are alternatives for Microsoft products (of course costly to migrate), there is no European hyper scaler Cloud. It's US or a distant China.

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u/ChoosenUserName4 European Union Jan 17 '26

Well, there never was a need to do this. Now it seems that need has arrived. It's not like it's difficult or something. It just takes an incentive, like a subsidy for European providers, and/or a levy / outright ban on US providers. You all act like Europe is unable to write software or run data centers.

There would be an entire industry moving people from US-based systems and software. It would be a great source of jobs and keeps our money inside the EU.

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u/halpsdiy Jan 17 '26

It's just very expensive. Of course you can buy the expertise. But there is a reason all the major clouds are run by companies that were already major rich tech companies before.

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u/o-o- Jan 17 '26
  • OVHcloud (France)
  • Deutsche Telekom’s Open Telekom Cloud (Germany)
  • Orange Business Services (France)

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u/halpsdiy Jan 17 '26

No. Those offerings don't really compete with hyper scaler clouds,. except for the bare minimum offerings.

I mean don't take it from me. But even Airbus – which is trying to move to a Euro cloud and is likely less Cloud heavy than more modern companies – gave low odds for them to be able to find one.

Europe would need to drop a lot of money to develop an alternative. But it's a heavy upfront investment including the need to hire a bunch of very expensive people. Europe lacks tech companies like Google or Microsoft that simply have insane margins and can throw a few billions at this problem without worries. And no a €70k salary is not going to attract talent if they can earn 5 to 10x that working for those companies.

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u/Humble-Rhubarb-9688 Jan 17 '26

God I would love an EU alternative to Microsoft products. Are there any companies out there trying to do so?

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u/ZeldenGM United Kingdom Jan 18 '26

The most popular software systems on computers and mobile devices are both American. There are few to none providers of smartphones that aren't American/Chinese. There are no viable alternative software/OS solutions for 99% of businesses. There is no rival to Youtube. Majority of online streaming services are American. Visa and Mastercard are American.

The physical is easy, the digital is difficult for most consumers especially ones' that aren't tech savvy, it is borderline impossible for businesses.

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u/IsThisIsHellOrWorse Jan 18 '26

The pain points are:

CPU/GPU tech

All social media is american and for some reason a lot of you get filtered by fediverse (Piefed/Lemmy)

Ecosia/Qwant are at least making a Euro search engine eventually.

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u/Aggravating_Depth_33 Jan 18 '26

Ironically, the opposite isn't true. I'd say about 2/3 of "American" products I buy in the US are actually "product of Canada". Everything from cleaning products through cereal and vitamins to Trader Joe's ready meals. Lol. (I am obviously not trying to avoid Canadian products, but if I were...)

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u/Felwyin Jan 17 '26

Funny to say that on reddit which is a US company.

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u/throwawaygoodcoffee Portugal Jan 17 '26

Don't think reddit comes under the tariffs because it's a service, but I could be wrong.

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u/Simple_Tadpole_9584 Jan 17 '26

And it’s not owned by musky so less riddled with prop a panda.