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These people keep acting like they're so clever for figuring this out, yet in reality all they're doing is giving death sentences to European companies by making them unable to use industry standard products.



Let me fix that for you: "industry standard products" -> "monopolist's products".

Microsoft spent decades aggressively lobbying European governments and companies to use their stuff. Even if this finding has any short term impact (see the other comments about this point), I find it hard to believe Microsoft wouldn't swallow the pill and simply become compliant. If not - yeah, companies who are entrenched in Microsoft products have to find alternatives, which is gonna cost them significant efforts, but also open the door to more competition. Sounds like a short term problem for European businesses even in the worst case scenario.


The main problem for them is that it's not in Microsoft's power to be compliant here, as the problems are created by the US CLOUD act, not Microsoft's own policies.

The only way for Microsoft to become compliant is to carve out its European business into a separate organization (not even a subsidiary -- it could be that even a joint venture would not be enough to escape the reach of the CLOUD act).


If they can do a double Irish with a Dutch sandwich to pay fewer taxes in Europe, I doubt they couldn't find a creative way to deal with this. They only have to be compliant enough for the fines and repercussions to be lower than their profits.


It's not just about swallowing the pill: MS has a close relationship with the US government, and NSA having a backdoor to workings to all other countries is a part of US keeping its power, so it's national security critical for US (just like for EU).


Or it will force the European market to innovate instead of directly sending cash to US Megacorps.


I totally agree with you. I think the EU should innovate more, than just relying on the usual tech giants.


Everyone in Europe would like Europe to innovate more. Unfortunately every time European governments add more regulation they usually also make it harder to do that.

You need to find the sweet spot. Too little regulation is harmful. Too much regulation is also harmful. The EU and US are near opposite ends of the spectrum at the moment and neither is an ideal place to be. The US produces many more financially successful big tech businesses but those businesses do a lot of things we don't like. The EU doesn't produce many successful big tech businesses in the first place.


I don't agree with everyone in Europe wanting to innovate more. I'm a Bulgarian citizen and from my PoV a small group of people only want to innovate. One good thing that I've noticed is that the snowball here is slowly spinning up - we have a good university trying to be on a IVY league level as much as it can (for Bulgarian levels it's good, for EU maybe just about average) which teaches people tech or whatever they want to learn. Some part of them have really sharp skills. But a big portion of them don't really care about innovation, they still have the mindset of their parents/grandparents which is: I get my bachelors, I maybe get a masters, I work one job for the rest of my life and that's it.

I'm more a fan of the EU because I think these sorts of regulations are good. The thing they do wrong here is that they do it slow. E.g. they introduce the universal USB-C port, companies won't be motivated to innovate on that tech since they know it'll take ages for the EU to update the law. So after all yeah finding a sweet spot of course is the best, the thing is that we don't know how to find it.


> I work one job for the rest of my life and that's it.

Fight tooth and nail to preserve this. We're living in the future here in USA, trust me on this, gig economy and corporate churn sucks. You don't want to get on this ride.


Is it bad that companies don't innovate on the power outlets any more ?

(BTW, USB standards are up to 240W already, it would be a decent power cable itself alone if not for the fire / power loss / safety / cable size issues that DC causes...)


I don't think that creating a web based word processor, cloud storage and an email hosting service is something that is impossible for a whole continent to do. Especially considering that o365 isn't exactly the gold standard when it comes to software quality.


And yet the developers on one continent have done so with commercial success while those on another have not.

Obviously there are plenty of skilled software developers in Europe so the question we have to ask is what else is different.


If you think Microsoft is a "US Megacorp" you are tuly underestimating their global reach and ownership.


They mean in the sense that its an american company first and foremost. Having worked there a few years I can certainly attest to that, even if they do put a nice enough veneer of local adjustment for their non us orgs.


In many ways multinationals are worse. In order to avoid even lose a penny they will do any number of things that violate national sovereignty.


Its harder as Europeans are scared of debt, its just a system based on misery and poverty where the rich are richer and the poor just produce cheap migrant workforce for northern europeans


Works very well for Cuba and North Korea


Both China and Russia eschewed US tech and they have much, much healthier tech industries than Europe.

The US also doesn't really believe in foreign competition ("Buy American", recent huge industrial subsidies as part of the IRA), so I don't really know if Europe should kowtow to the US here. If the US gave up on the CLOUD act none of this would be a problem anyway.


Monopoly is not the same as "industry standard". And specifically in the case of Microsoft Office / O365 there is very little actually benefit of using it over any of the more open (and even free) alternatives... rather than being an "industry standard" it's really just an "industry default", i.e. what most companies use because no IT manager ever got fired for deploying it.


You're a SRE, I'd argue that you have absolutely no idea about what is the industry standard when it comes to office productivity suites.

Having this discussion on HackerNews is useless, because people here are at best very light users of Office and at worst don't use it at all.

How many hours per week does your work involve Office software? Because for a lot of people it's 40, but those people are not on HN.


MS Excel is much better than the open and free alternatives (I say that as someone who uses both Excel and LibreOffice fairly regularly).


Businesses operated just fine before O365 came along and they will operate just fine after O365, this is a pretty moot point. "But they can't use what they're using right now!" Yes, that's the point, because what they're using right now is breaking the law.


Businesses used Microsft office before 365 for decades now. In many industries all software integrates with office applications and with Microsoft pushing everything to 365 subs moving back to standalone office will be difficult enough.


Not being able to use Office is a death sentence?


Microsoft 365 is extremely widespread in companies in the EU. Not because they love Microsoft but because this is a relatively simple setup.

Like Google (US) or Zoho (Indian).

I do not know European companies providing a cloud solution easy to deploy (I wild truly be glad to know one).


You could look into NextCloud and their NextCloud Office if you haven't heard of it yet. If you have are there any point that speak against it in your opinion?

It's open source so you can even self host. Should be more than enough for most comapnies.

Not sure how difficult the set-up process for an enterprise environment is, I only used the docker version before. But should be viable and if a company has Money for Microsoft365 they should have money to pay to someone to set it up manage for them.

https://nextcloud.com/office/


I know NextCloud, for having self-hosted it for years, alongside many other similar software and having reviewed its code. I am a strong proponent of open source, both as a user and a developper - and managed IT for very large companies (thi si to bring some context to my comments).

While something like NextCloud or Seafile it is fine for personal use or for small teams it is no way close to something like Microsoft 365 with the extensive backend it provides out of the box. Not to mention email integration.

Again, this is from the perspective of someone who uses and develops open source software and hots a lot of services for personal/family ise, but also from someone who knows the complexity and shitbat crazy wrchitectures you find in large, distributed companies.

If we managed to have in Europe something similar to Zoho, driven by European laws, that would be fantastic. We do not, and this is a real shame.

> But should be viable and if a company has Money for Microsoft365 they should have money to pay to someone to set it up manage for them.

Microsoft 365 is expensive, but the expense of running a home-made solution for a large company is not only the pure management, but also the ability to have hope if there is a problem. I have raised issues for Nextcloud (some of them quite impacting from a security monitoring perspective) and the community replies were horrible. If NextCloud does not monitor the community forum when someone raises such issues then I cannot have any trust that they will fix it for a paying user.


I think you underestimate how many industries have software that integrates with office and cannot be easily replaced, if at all.


Well, an entire country outlawing some software has a tendency to change this.


> industries have software that integrates with office and cannot be easily replaced, if at all.

It's just a question of money.

Having the US spy on Europeans is also very costly.


With Office or Office 365?


It's not great for Microsoft...

I have to admit though that O365 is handy for collaboration. I hope we can do something like a LibreOffice-based similar thing that companies can star using as a platform for online collaboration.

Where I work we already have lots of regulations on what we can and what we can't store on SharePoint or work on O365. My job is mostly safe from those inconveniences, but one of my first jobs was to build an asset delivery system that would comply with a number of US and EU regulations on what asset can be delivered to whom from where. Took lots of meetings with legal.


If your business processes are based on that: yes. You may argue "adapt your processes" but that's not something that you do within a week. Besides that it's also about exchanging information. Excel is a quasi-standard in some cases. Again you may argue "change that, its ridiculous". Still it's not something that you "just do".


People think this will hurt MS, but in reality it will also make doing business in Europe more expensive. Almost all big companies use M365.

It will keep these already slow organizations busy trying to find and implement alternatives. Instead they could focus on growing their businesses.

Good luck Europe.


I don't disagree that finding alternatives will be expensive, but I think this is the same harmful thinking we have in the US where people disagree with regulation that adds necessary protection at the cost of business. So we have a "regulation is bad" mindset. Most prominently I wish we could convince companies here to believe handling/retaining unnecessary data is like handling something radioactive. Until we convince these companies it's a danger to themself, we won't see change. Sure, in the near future US companies will have an advantage continuing to use Microsoft 365, but harm to our privacy and beyond that is demonstrable. I haven't used a computer like its my own private space to think in decades because of what I know is collected with telemetry. My creativity and passion for computing is harmed by what Microsoft engineers its products to do, and glean from my daily use. If Microsoft wants access to a large customer base in Europe, they should make changes to their products that respect consumer privacy laws in that area. I hope we benefit tangentially.

Something-something auto makers conform to California emission laws, same argument.


Absolutes are often bad (i.e., zero tolerance). And many regulations are absolutes. It isn't enough to comply with the law as written, you have to comply with the strictest interpretation that a judge may come up with. And that may not be enough, because some court may be even more creative in their interpretation.

Also often times business like regulation, as it forces all their competitors to play on the same playing field. Which may be easy enough for established players, but is a difficult mote to cross for smaller up-and-coming organizations (regulatory capture).

Then there is the the frequent enough occurrence of conflicting regulations. For example, the EPA may require that an oil change shop store used oil above ground (underground storage can have undetected leaks). But the fire department requires below ground storage (above ground is a fire hazard). So which regulation do you violate? The one that fines you less, and the fine is a cost of doing business.


Yes. Without careful stewardship, the compliance becomes a very weird dance, where regulators might focus on things that actually undermine the original intent of the law. For different example, lets look at the BSA front in US banking system, where SARs as a system was developed primarily to assist LEOs, but due to overzealous enforcement by various regulators, banks effectively threw their hands in the air and collectively said "Fine, we will report everything." ( look up defensive SAR filing if you are curious about the details). And now we are in a weird situation where LEOs have to sometimes say things like "If you file it, make it stand out and tell us why it matters so that we can use it"(paraphrased).

Unintended consequences of good intentions.


I am not even sure where to start. What are we afraid of? What can happen with the data? In Sweden all tax filings are public. No one cares.


So let me ask, are you OK sharing all your work documents with China or Russia?

The US commonly uses corporate data in geopolitical moves. Buy using Microsoft cloud products you're sharing all your data with us.gov


Have you been paying attention to all the TikTok scare in the US? Lot of people care.


[flagged]


I wish you luck in your new life in Somalia.


> Almost all big companies use M365.

I think that's a bit more nuanced. There's definitely a lot of "nobody gets fired for MS", and lots of big companies use O365 because of existing licenses. At the same time, there's lots of small companies using Google suite. There are companies relying on specialised software. There's lots of those that don't use anything beyond a simple text editor where switching is trivial.

And yeah, huge companies rely on O365, but those will get fixes that get them to compliance very soon.


Google suite is the absolute worst thing you can use for privacy. Every keystroke that comes near Google is data mined.


We'll wait and see when the next MS security appears.

How many data was copied because of the MS chain of Windows->Exchange->Office?


Well Im european and I can tell you from the inside, it's not the same mindset at all. We dont want to grow companies, in fact we barely give a fuck at all. It s hard to understand for capitalists, and I disliked this mindset so much I moved to Hong Kong, but that s what the people vote for: they d rather have no growth and no Microsoft 365 than put their data there.

People in most of Europe are truly convinced finance, money and growth are mirages made to enslave them in eternal pursuit of an unreachable state, and instead prefer to cool it down. It's not a pragmatic strategy because it ignores we re not alone.


I’m also European. Thanks for the insight.

I don’t agree with you. So think about that next time you say “most Europeans”.


What's funny is that many Europeans I have spoken with from across the continent have the attitude that you come to the US when you are young to make money then retire to Europe to take advantage of the social safety net.

Perhaps not yoir personal opinion, but definitely one that is anecdotally common among white collar workers.


@tomrod is completely right. Here in Bulgaria people have this exact mindset. Some also might just never return.


Indeed. I've heard it from Serbians, Bulgarians, Irish, Scottish, Swedish, German, Italian, Romanian, and Belgian folks that I can recall offhand, maybe more that I'm not completely recalling.


I'm actually surprised of this since I've always though of Sweeden, Germany, Italy, Belgium as very good countries. I can only speak for bulgarians as I know how the mass thinks here.


Maybe they’re good precisely because of this mindset?


That’s very unsustainable for Europe and great for the US since the latter gets the most productive years.


Right? European policy makers should look to determine what incentives they encourage that generates this fairly common attitude.


Maybe they just cater to their electorate. Democracy etc.


Did the electorate vote on gdpr directly?

If so, I stand corrected.

If not, it was performed by representatives whose incentives are not aligned to the electorate (see Arrows impossibility theorem).


More direct democracy would be nice.

However, as a citizen of EU member, I’d say GDPR pretty well aligns with the general notion of the people.

Sometimes people ain’t happy when government uses GDPR as a scapegoat to keep iffy data private. E.g. hiding final beneficiaries of companies. But I don’t see people unhappy that GDPR prevents crappy software practices.

Same deal as credit cards. Here in Europe cards processing fees are capped. Thus we don’t have US-style kickbacks or points programmes. Which probably limits credit card issuers innovations and business models. But I don’t see people complaining about that.


I am an European, too, and I do agree with xwolfi. Therefore "most European" is an accurate statement.


Yeah. It’s called the European way of doing stats.


It's a vast place, maybe you're german. They're pragmatic and care about work, efficiency, building stuff, growing companies.

I'm French, the motherland is a constant source of sad despair for me.


Just because you disagree doesn't contradict "most Europeans".

Or how many are you?


That was exactly my point.


> It's not a pragmatic strategy because it ignores we re not alone.

It's worse than that, it's delusional and hypocritical. Here in Sweden people will proudly write "We are not like the Americans" on their iPhones, drive Teslas and generally base their whole lifestyles on the foundation created by the American capitalism and possible thanks to the protection of US military.



Amen.


You think all eu companies will die because microsoft will have to update their product? That’s a bit rash and random.


Maybe the companies and the US government should respect European laws and people's privacy.

Instead MS brought back productivity-tracking.

That's a No-Go and MS only gets away with it because of their desktop monopoly in the industry.


I don't think Microsoft products are "industry standard", an email is

I think they'll do just fine without Microsoft harvesting your precious data

I think they'll do just fine without being forced to use Microsoft products

I think they'll do just fine without having Microsoft as only choice

I think it's important to fight lobbies and monopolies

I think it's sad that many European companies died because they couldn't compete with Microsoft lobbies

Europe is the home of many big open source projects and open standards

Maybe this will result in a proper open alternative to Microsoft 365


You mean MS Office?

Yeah, right. Plenty of companies will fail if they are forced to use some of the almost perfectly equal alternatives.


One other way to see this is that this will stop MS360 from being the "industry standard", it doesn't take that much effort nowadays to make an alternative that is good enough, we are past the days where collaborative editing is considered "cool".

People from the US tend to underestimate the EU, the EU could easily give a bit of cash to a competitor along with some juicy contracts, the US is not the only bloc that can throw millions at a problem.


Yeah, for example some China company :D




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