Europe weighs building its own tech giant to rival the US

Europe considers creating its own tech giant to curb dependence on the US

A European operating system, its own search engine, secure email and a social network that integrates it all. That is the package a part of the economic debate is demanding for the EU, arguing that hundreds of billions flow to the United States every year in digital services. The proposal, launched with a "needed by tomorrow" urgency, collides head-on with the reality of a continent that has failed to impose even its own software on its own public administrations.

The starting point is an observation few dispute: Europe consumes American technology at almost every digital layer. From the computer's operating system to the phone's messaging app, not to mention the search engine and the cloud where tax data are hosted. The question is whether this is fixed with a state-owned mega-corporation in the style of the big tech firms, or whether the train left years ago.

The diagnosis: digital dependence and the external bill

The central thesis of the argument is that the EU is the world's largest economic power and yet has no globally relevant computing company. Those who defend the creation of a European consortium argue that the money spent on licences, digital advertising and cloud services drags down the EU's GDP. The figures circulating in the debate are estimates: some speak of a GDP increase of between 15% and 20% if Europe regained control of that market. There is no official calculation backing those percentages, but the direction of the argument —the digital external bill— is hard to refute.

The proposed model is not free software for geeks, but a large public corporation with a catchy name and a massive budget. The idea is for it to compete on equal terms with the American giants: the same usability, the same image of reliability, the same commercial rollout. "People don't want weird geeky things," one contribution sums up. They want intuitive, dominant products that inspire trust.

The alternatives that already exist and nobody uses

Against the mega-corporation plan, another strand of the analysis points out that the problem is not a lack of alternatives but their adoption. There are already European operating systems —Zorin OS, openSUSE, Ubuntu—, search engines like Ecosia or DuckDuckGo, secure email like Proton Mail or Tutanota, and even a project to build an operating system from scratch in Rust, EuroOS. The list is long and usage is marginal.

The argument of this strand is that free software exists, works and meets privacy requirements, but lacks the institutional push. If European administrations seriously adopted these tools, they would become mainstream in no time. The example cited is that of public bodies that have spent years trying to establish open source options with little success, while the average civil servant keeps using outdated versions of LibreOffice because the managers won't give up Microsoft Office.

The immediate counter-argument: entrusting the software of all Europeans to the administration would end up producing "the Grindr with the technical excellence of the Renfe website." A classic.

The bottleneck: the cloud and public data

There is one point where the debate becomes more technical and less ideological. You cannot have sovereign social networks or a software industry without a powerful cloud computing infrastructure spread across the whole territory. That is the foundation of everything else. And there, the highlighted fact is that the tax agency's data sit on Amazon servers.

The paradox is obvious: Europe legislates on data protection, yet hosts its citizens' tax data in the cloud of an American company. Any digital sovereignty plan that doesn't start there, the argument goes, is dead letter. The problem is that building that infrastructure requires massive investment and years, not an announcement.

The regulatory and fiscal obstacle

Another line of criticism points out that the European environment is hardly favourable for a tech giant to grow. Hyper-regulation, tax pressure and bureaucracy are mentioned as structural brakes. "Here only Ad-blue, carbon taxes, bans and caps tied to bottles grow," one contribution sums up. The irony about bottle caps is a forum classic, but beneath it lies a serious argument: if the framework doesn't change, no company, public or private, will compete with Silicon Valley.

It is also pointed out that the automotive industry, Europe's last great industrial sector, is being lost. And that the EU has spent billions subsidising failed projects while failing to create a globally relevant computing company.

The Chinese model and the uncomfortable comparison

The comparison with China comes up several times. China has its own operating system, its own search engine, its own social networks and its own messaging ecosystem. They don't depend on Google, Meta or Microsoft. And they're not doing badly. The question is why Europe hasn't done the same.

The answer offered is that China did it from a position of political control and with a closed domestic market, something Europe cannot replicate. But it is also acknowledged that the EU has an internal market large enough to sustain its own digital ecosystem if there were political will. The lack of that will, rather than a lack of technical capacity, is what is pointed to as the real obstacle.

The AI gap: the argument that changes everything

In the middle of the debate on operating systems and social networks, a counterpoint emerges that reshuffles the priorities. Artificial intelligence can clone Microsoft Office in an afternoon, or the Adobe suite, or the SAP of the day. If that is true, the effort should go into AI, not into replicating products that already exist and that AI can generate in a matter of hours.

It is the least romantic and probably the most pragmatic position. But it clashes with the initial thesis: what matters is not AI, but all those established things that are taken for granted and that move hundreds of billions. Having your own Google, your Windows, your WhatsApp, your YouTube. That is what keeps money at home.

The debate ends without a conclusion. Some believe Europe can and should create its own great computing bloc. Others argue it is too late, that the train has left and that the only sensible thing is not to lose what little remains. Meanwhile, the tax agency's data remain on Amazon servers.