Germany opposes French push to tax US big tech in tariff war

While I have no expectations of progressive policies from Merz, it has to be pointed out that the statement in this article came from the old government.

>Our new chancellor is a Blackrock board member

"used to be" not "is"!

Sure, it'd be great if he'd never been on that board but otoh, at least he does not have an outright conflict of interest right now.

Well... my apprentice and me, we are rolling the show! And how we manage this contraption? 90s style sneaker-admin!

So you're rolling without Support for the OS?

And how do you manage them?

Well, its not overly complicated:

On most of the clients we are now running OpenSUSE Leap, but for now we still need to run a few Windows boxes for our ERP system. Luckily, the next update of this system will make it browser based, so the clock for those system is ticking. Another thing that will keep two machines on Windows is the goddamn Datev...

For other tools we are now settled in on this solutions:

• Paperless-NGX as document management solution

• Seafile as cloud storage

• Libreoffice as office suite

• Thunderbird + Firefox as email / browser combo

• Etherpad-lite and Ethercalc for collaborative editing needs

Everything is locally hosted.

Can you please explain which tools you have replaced with which alternatives? I would also like to bring this to my company.

The traffic coalition was awesome.

It just was thrashed 24/7 in the News, but it was the best government in decades in Germany

Over all the complaining going on about the old traffic coalition, I forgot how bad CDU-led governments are :(

I was trying to find a rationale. Not saying it's a good rationale. Or the most likely one. Or the only one.

Or, they fuck off leaving space for competitors to develop. Isn't that the essence of capitalism? I guess the US keeps living in the "rules for thee but not for me" philosophy.

German politicians don't plan. 50% of the voted ones can think to their next hitler salute, and not past that.

The way i see it, if Amazon want's to close down its data centers, they either have to pay a lot to get the infrastructure out and ship it to a different region. Then a building predestined as a data center is available for a european company. Or they sell the building and infrastructure and a european company can get a fully equipped data center for cheap. Or Amazon just pays proper taxes as it doesn't want to lose access to the EU market.

Yes, you would. Some of the best alternatives are German (like Hetzner) and they don't take off because of US government influence stopping local businesses from accruing profitable contracts both in the private and public sector.

I'd love to see tariffs on US tech Invaders and a moratorium forbidding US companies from buying EU direct competitors for 20y. A cursory look over the meta anti-trust suit should tell you why. Meanwhile MS has killed Nokia, Skype, still owns (and continuously enshitifies) Mojang, just to name a few.

They will threaten Germany and the EU and they will complain, moan and cry about it. But when the decision is made they will pay their taxes and keep access to the enormous market that the EU is.

Who cares, OVH also has Data Centers in Germany.

The demand for those services won't disappear. These people will just be employed elsewhere

Just a theory: Frankfurt has big AWS data centers, Munich has big Google and MS development locations, I'm sure there's more. You wouldn't want to endanger those locations and jobs, right?

There absolutely are. And many pay out of their nose for crap they don’t need and is overpriced just because everyone is doing it.

The problem is moving to them. The lock in effects of AWS and the like are very real. However it is not going to get easier.

The "no-alternative" BS is really tiresome. Of course there are alternatives and plenty of them 🤦‍♂️

As a german, working in the IT sector for a bit over 25 years I say: The alternatives are there, but the pain isn't hurting enough to finally force us out of the walled gardens.

It took me years to convince the company I work for to ditch big tech, and we are just a small (<50 employees) company.

I'm rooting for France. You'll never stand up to the USA if you don't stand up to its corporations.

As a german: fuck germany. corrupt pieces of shit.

Some of you may remember Merz‘ passionate speech that opposed the USA in late February and wonder what happened since then. Well, not much happened. Our new chancellor is a Blackrock board member and compulsive liar. His party is deeply corrupt and half of them still dislike him. Do not take any announcement too seriously coming from German diplomats in the next couple years. Our government is a sad joke.

Kukies is a Goldman Sachs Men. He and Mr BlackRock Merz are pro Oligarchy and partly copying Trumps style.

Embarrassing

We're all talking big about speaking with one voice when Hungary or Poland go against the grain. How about we set a good example for once? Fucking idiots ...

There's alternatives, and taxes don't prevent use in the first place.