Google, Meta, and Microsoft offered powerful tools at almost no cost. Billions of people stored their files, emails, photos, and calendars on American platforms without thinking twice. The services worked well, the price was low, and the risks felt abstract. The tools work exactly the same as they did five years ago. It’s not the technology that has changed, the world around it has. The danger has become more concrete. And it doesn’t just come from hackers.
When Donald Trump returned to the US presidency in 2025, a risk that lawyers had been flagging for years suddenly became urgent for everyone. The CLOUD Act (a US law passed in 2018) compels American tech companies to hand over data to the US government, regardless of where that data is stored. Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Dublin: it doesn’t matter. If the company is American, Washington can demand access.
And this isn’t something that might happen someday. It’s already happening.
Consider what happened to the International Criminal Court. The ICC is based in The Hague: European soil, under international law, with 125 member nations. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on ICC judges and prosecutors, freezing their assets and banning them from travelling to the US. Their crime: doing their job. If the US sanctions judges in The Hague, the idea that your files at an American cloud provider are somehow out of reach is, let’s say — optimistic at best.
In 2025, the Dutch Social and Economic Council warned that the Netherlands is becoming dangerously dependent on foreign tech providers and recommended actively building European alternatives. Finland even ran a scenario study on what would happen if the United States suddenly cut off access to critical digital services in Europe.
In such a scenario, many government systems would stop working almost immediately. In some cases, employees wouldn’t even be able to log into their systems, or open the digital doors of their own government buildings.
Some countries are already moving. Germany and France are investing heavily in European cloud infrastructure and open-source alternatives to reduce reliance on American platforms. At the same time, the dependency is still very real.
In the Netherlands, the debate about digital sovereignty is growing louder in parliament, yet, major public institutions continue to sign contracts with companies like Microsoft.
But it’s slow. 74% of listed European companies still run on American cloud services ( ProtonUS tech rules the European market | Proton). Entire ecosystems are built around these platforms, legacy systems depend on them, and switching often means years of procurement processes, migrations, and internal change.
As an individual, you’re in a better position. Yes, switching has some friction: your files have been in the same place for ages, your habits are set. But you don’t need a procurement committee, a migration taskforce, or three years of budget planning. You just need to make the switch.
Not every European alternative is what it claims to be. Major American tech companies now launch “sovereign European versions” of their services — with servers in Frankfurt or Amsterdam. But as long as the parent company is based in the US, the CLOUD Act applies. An American court can compel them to hand over your data, regardless of where the server is located.
A genuine alternative is:
People want a different kind of relationship with technology. One where you’re the customer, not the product. One where your data stays yours, and doesn’t become theirs. One where privacy is a foundation, not a marketing slogan.
For many people, that change starts with the tools they use every day.
Moving away from Big Tech doesn’t have to happen all at once. Many people start small: from WhatsApp to Signal, from Gmail to a privacy-respecting mail provider, from Google Drive to a European cloud solution. Here’s a practical overview of the most commonly used American tools and their European counterparts.
| Big Tech | European alternative | Why switch? |
| Google Drive | The Good Cloud | Build on open source, no ads or tracking, EU-based & hosted, no vendor lockin |
| Gmail | Soverin | Dutch-based, no ads, no tracking, custom domain support |
| Google Docs | The Good Cloud | Built-in collaboration via Nextcloud + Collabora: edit documents without Google |
| Signal | Open source, no metadata retention, non-profit organisation | |
| Slack | Element | Decentralised, encrypted, self-hostable, EU option available |
The question to ask is simple: who can access my data, and am I in full control? If the answer is unclear, you already have your answer.
European alternatives exist.
They’re good.
And they’re getting better every day because more people are choosing them.
