Google Warns EU Risks Undermining Own Competitiveness With Tech Sovereignty Push
10 81Europe risks undermining its own competitiveness drive by restricting access to foreign technology, Google's president of global affairs and chief legal officer Kent Walker told the Financial Times, as Brussels accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants. Walker said the EU faces a "competitive paradox" as it seeks to spur growth while restricting the technologies needed to achieve that goal.
He warned against erecting walls that make it harder to use some of the best technology in the world, especially as it advances quickly. EU leaders gathered Thursday for a summit in Belgium focused on increasing European competitiveness in a more volatile global economy. Europe's digital sovereignty push gained momentum in recent months, driven by fears that President Donald Trump's foreign policy could force a tech decoupling.
10 comments
We're not restricting the technologies... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Charlotte ( 16886 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @03:36PM (#65987322)
... we're going to buy them from European companies
Re:We're not restricting the technologies... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @03:52PM (#65987366)
Also, Google is about the last company I would think of as offering any outstanding technology that could not be replaced by something built domestically. It's not like their "annoy people with ads"-business would add any substantial value for the people. Nothing of value would be lost if their services became unavailable in the EU.
Re:We're not restricting the technologies... (Score: 5, Informative)
by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @06:46PM (#65987738)
There's literally countless providers of products and services that you've never heard of providing alternatives. The problem is American companies keep buying them. Heck Slashdot's favourite office suite (LibreOffice) is German, and open source to boot. It integrates with a self hosting cloud system that is also developed in Germany (ownCloud). The biggest competitor to Office 365 and whatever Google's online groupware is called is from Collabora (UK based). If you don't want to use NextCloud Talk as a Teams alternative, you can grab some open source program like Rocket.Chat and host it in a European cloud provider like OVHCloud.
Re:What competitivness? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Charlotte ( 16886 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @03:58PM (#65987380)
How difficult is it to put up a website with an LLM?
And European companies already have their own search engines and cloud providers, they're just not as big as the Amazons of the world.
I don't think you realize the magnitude of the stupidity of Trump's shenanigans. Europe is just coming out of a millennium of savage, brutal wars. The EU started as a treaty organization for coal and steal. It was a peace project to intertwine European economies. We enjoyed an unprecedentedly high standard of living while the US could go off and be exceptional all they wanted. Everything that happened after WWII was a win-win, with the quiet understanding that the US wouldn't go and make a mess on our side of the Atlantic with all its exceptionalizing.
But now the US has exceptionalized all over our faces for purely internal political reasons and broken the status quo.
We are fucking livid. We could stand by and keep our cool until one single thing happened. You threatened our borders.
Welcome to the decline of the US as a world power, you motherfuckers.
Re:What competitivness? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @05:25PM (#65987580)
Can you cite any sources?
Re:What competitivness? (Score: 5, Informative)
by Computershack ( 1143409 ) on Saturday February 14, 2026 @08:51AM (#65988612)
Because Americans were paying to defend you so you could afford to follow crazy policies and fund bloated welfare states.
European here. Wow you MAGAs will believe any bullshit. The vast majority of the $900Bn of US military spending is on US defence and most of that actually spent within the USA on things like soldier's pay, running bases in the US, carrying out training exercises etc.
The does not fund the majority of NATO. The US spends $33Bn a year on NATO the same as Germany does, it accounts for 16% of the total NATO budget. And most of that spending is on US bases in Europe that it uses to launch operations in the Middle East and North Africa so actually isn't spent on NATO operations. If the US attacks Iran and ends up in a war with it many operations will be launched from it's bases in Europe and just like in Iraq and Afghanistan seriously injured troops will be sent to Randheim for treatment. The US economy also benefits massively financially for being the major party in NATO. $100 billions spent by NATO allies with US defence sector companies buying US military equipment. Lockheed Martin has made a fortune from the US being the the leading nation in NATO.
Tech bros so pathetically desperate... (Score: 5, Interesting)
by ZombieCatInABox ( 5665338 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @03:59PM (#65987384)
Don't want to lose business outside the U.S. ? The solution is simple: Stop supporting psycopathic child-rapists who threaten with military action the sovereignty of allied nations.
And to the republicans out there: Choose your presidential candidates better. The rest of the world don't give a fuck if your president is a democrat or a republican. They do care, however, if he's an authoritarian bully and wannabe dictator. Haven't you noticed yet that no previous U.S. president, democrat or republican, has ever caused such an international uproar before ? It's no longer a R vs D thing, it's a "at least seemingly decent, competent human being taking his job seriously" vs "one of the most narcissic, sociopathic, childish, disgusting american public figure" thing.
Put the money toward using/developing Open Source (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @04:08PM (#65987418)
Then everyone benefits, at lower overall costs (because there won't be the inevitable rent-seeking from greedy corporations, U.S. or otherwise).
Isolationism does that (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) on <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Friday February 13, 2026 @04:26PM (#65987446)
Isolationism cuts off the ability to benefit from others advances, but what choice do you have but to become self sufficient when your greatest ally and largest trading partner becomes hostile?
Re:Isolationism does that (Score: 5, Insightful)
by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Friday February 13, 2026 @05:37PM (#65987596)
The thing is, we're not trying to be self-sufficient. There's a whole world out there willing tohave healthy trade and strategic relations with Europe. We just struck deals with Australia, India and Mercosur. We're just cutting off the US since it's behaving like a hostile power, the rest of the world is welcome.