alt Hacker News> France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.
The odds that France will provide a competing offering is pretty high, because, in this day and age, and with AI, it's fairly straightforward to do so. The problem is adoption, do you think people in the USA or elsewhere will install it? Does that mean that only French companies and the French will be able to talk to eachother? Seems somewhat limiting and will limit business expansion.
Will the French government embed spyware in it, they can, since they'll be sponsoring this initiative, they've been intending to do with whatsapp and all the other messengers for years. Worrisome for the end user.
I'm all for competition, and I hope France succeeds in building a good product, because competition is great for everyone and creates jobs, and I hope it's going to take off soon, we'll see, bonne chance!
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So I've opened their AWS replacement website (Outscale), Computing page.
No dedicated servers (VM only). Ok let's check VM price https://en.outscale.com/customized-virtual-machines/
Press the "Do you have a Cloud Project?" which is the only button? Oops! Something went wrong here.
Is this supposed to be an AWS replacement?
For all these there are protocols that could allow interoperability in-between offers, EU policy makers seem to be aware of the issue given what was mandated to Whatsapp. Let's hope for the best outcome!
France’s govt can probably mandate adoption in the guise of national security (which would be true tbh) and with the current rhetoric their people will be welcoming of it. It’ll probably suck but the tradeoffs could be worth it, not too unlike rationing during WW2 times. And I’m sure there are a lot of engineers and companies looking forward to getting that sweet govt contracts.
The EU commission would be in an interesting position to mandate American platforms (AWS, Google Cloud, etc...) to support interoperability in order to avoid "market distortion".
Meaning the US based companies would bear _some_ of the burden of making it easier to ditch them, and switch to "sovereign" solutions.
The rest of the world would have a vested interest in letting this happen, since it would also reduce _their_ dependence on the US.
The question then becomes "what happens first":
1 - European commission pressuring the Irish government to send its police to seize AWS servers in Dublin (when fines are not enough any more)
2 - US administration pressuring the tech companies to shut down service in Europe (when threats are not enough any more)