The fears stem from Europe’s complete dependence on American cloud service providers.
“The idea that Trump could order an internet shutdown or do anything else to seriously damage Europe’s economic interests is no longer as implausible as it might have seemed six months ago,” said Zach Myers, head of the Center for European Regulation think tank.
Alexander Windbichler, head of Austrian cloud provider Anexia, said IT companies needed to draw attention to the “unhealthy dependence” on U.S. services earlier. The cloud sector in the European Union has neglected to promote its interests for too long, focusing on technological competitiveness.
“The risk of disconnection is the new paradigm,” said Benjamin Revkolevski, head of France’s OVHcloud. – The cloud is like a water faucet. What if at some point the faucet closes?”.
With the dominant share of the European cloud computing market (over 66%) controlled by US corporations such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google, there is growing concern in Europe that these companies may be colluding with the Trump administration to the detriment of European interests.
In 2021, Google promised to shut down its search engine in Australia if lawmakers passed a new code for media market players. The bill boiled down to the fact that Google would have to pay individual media outlets for links to their news in the search engine and in its aggregators.
In December 2020, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a class action lawsuit against Google on behalf of ten U.S. states, accusing it of antitrust violations. “Texas led a coalition of several states in a lawsuit against Google for numerous violations of federal antitrust and consumer protection laws,” the report said.
The claims were related to the activities of the IT giant, which, according to the plaintiffs, illegally monopolized Internet advertising. In particular, the company was accused of anti-competitive agreements with Facebook and misleading users.
