They laughed at us Germans for sticking to our fax machines and now look!
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Probably because of SAP
I thought it was Japan that was keeping fax machines and floppy disks.
Yes, and those same companies in the US would have massive budget shortfalls should trump interfere in private business and cut them off from customers. Europe would recover and permanently move away from US services and the US would take a big economic hit.
More “winning” by fucking his own country over. Maybe he’ll short the stocks and make another billion on the back of the economy he’s ruining.
More “winning” by fucking his own country over.
Thank God he would never do that.
Spoiler
This is so obviously satire that I didn't need this tag, right?
How the fuck would you determine this?
We researched publicly listed companies for each country in Europe, then used DNS lookups to identify the mail exchange records for each company’s domain. This let us determine what company they use as their email service or email security service providers. And as email is the foundation of most business tech suites, we expect most companies that use US-based email providers also use other their services, like cloud storage, for example.
I don't think this proofs anything. Would it be painfull?... yes... would they go dark?...no
Exactly. For as long as you still control the DNS records then you could switch to a european provider within mere hours. It would likely cost 10%-20% more but that's it. The real kicker is Windows and Office licenses but likely companies would be greenlighted by their local governments to just pirate in these circumstances. And in the follow-up many would migrate to Linux so even a cut-off from security updates would mean an increased risk for a month or two until the move is complete. That's it.
Well, hard to "just pirate" office365, teams or sharepoint. European institutions sold their asses and the public sector is in the deepest pond
I mean there are frictions but web office and sharepoint could be changed for nextcloud+collabora and that is ready and commercially available, same for other services. Likely just a bit more expensive.
Piracy is how sanctioned countries like russia do it. I guess sanctions and killing all trade is painful, but I don't feel like software licenses are the decisive and most hurtful thing.
This isn't just about Emails though. Companies that went to outlook and teams most likely pivoted to the MS cloud options like SharePoint and azure.
Sure there are alternatives available, but all data on there would be lost. Even with backups, it would take months to get another system running and properly migrate everything.
It's doable but sure it would cost. Our company last year migrated from AWS to Azure and it does take time to set everything up again for sure. But that is pretty much only relevant for tech companies. And while it might hinder and delay their development teams, for administration and management I feel it is indeed only emails and document storage. And some custom tools to fulfil local laws. But in europe that part anyway runs on SAP and european tools.
So basically you throw off your development schedule by some months and that's it. It's not for free but it likely wont tank the company or even the project.
So this is just a Proton ad.
If US email providers were forced to stop serving European users then AWS, Microsoft, Google and so on too, which I think has a lot more impact than your mail not working.
I feel it’s very important to point out that specifically email is one of the most common things to outsource. Hosting your own email is simply one of the harder things to run on your own, having to deal with anti-spam measures, IP reputation tracking and the risk of other providers blocking you if one of your users are compromised and used to send spam.
My point being that yes, you are somewhat likely to use other Cloud products but it’s not a good indicator for how dependent the core business is on cloud providers.
Tracking specifically email is probably the best thing if your goal is to create an infographic where the dependence numbers are as high as possible though.
This is my personal experience as well with small companies: mail servers are usually in the cloud, company servers are usually on premise, cloud backups are usually with smaller regional companies. Assuming that the mail server is indicative of every other digital activity, is a flawed methodology.
Indeed and the only thing I have ever seen a larger company running is Microsoft Exchange, but MS is actively pushing to cloud here. I also know a few people who work with Exchange and they kind of hate it.
The option has the traditional open source stack I guess with Postfix, Dovecot, Spamassassin, some Webmail client, and then you have to make sure that SPF, DMARC, and DKIM signing works... It becomes a lot so I understand why none willingly wants to deal with this. That said there are some more modern alternatives like Stalwart mail server that combines the first three services into one and something I'm considering to try out.
I've been running stalwart for close to 2 years. It's really good and easy to manage. I can definitely recommend it!
So "larger companies" are using jitsi for meetings? My experience is that they've never heard of it. To them zoom is the only alternative to teams. The most enlightened ones use google meet to the awe of others.
"Who is using gmail internally?"
I am surprised that so many do not, actually.
And it would not "go dark" for more than 24 hours. It would however crash the NASDAQ pretty hard as the talking point in all EU companies as soon as email is restored would be "ok, what else do we need to bring back? Give me the list of EU and Chinese alternative to everything US we currently use."
Banking is actually probably the biggest dependency, with EU working hard at making it possible to operate in the case VISA and Mastercard stop serving local businesses, like they did to the ICC
So probably, Bulgaria is exposed to Russia and Yandex instead.
Goddamn. Buy some servers for fuck sake. Data centers are hard but not rocket science. Employ some devops folks and some codebros and knock off this American shit.
Including fucking DHL. I hate these companies.
DHL:
DHL and Deutsche Bahn also use Adobe for whatever they use it for. The ARD Mediathek uses Google for the account system, which is incredibly ironic (and the reason why I dont have an account)
Ah, you mean that the ARD Mediathek uses Google Firebase, I guess?
At least, I found this in their privacy policy:
Für das ARD-Konto verwenden wir den Authentifikationsservice Firebase Auth. Dieser Service wird von Google auf Servern außerhalb der EU betrieben und durch die europäischen Standardvertragsklauseln geschützt.
On the plus-side, the ARD Mediathek supports RSS feeds for now, unlike seemingly all the other web portals of our state-funded media.
They don't accept normal EC cards? LOL
I never paid anything online using an EC card. Does that even work?
But "Vorkasse" (bank transaction in advance) should be available. And Wero, even though my not-very-shitty bank does not support it
Either through SEPA (for repeating business) or good ol' Vorkasse, that worked several times for me. But yeah, most online transactions are still being done through PayPal as it is easier
No, because it is not provided. Flix also doesnt provide Vorkasse, as well as a ton of other providers.
I bought something from the official "Thermal Grizzly" Shop and even they supported Vorkasse and the process took only a minute or so!
The DNS root zone is coordinated by IANA, operated by ICANN in California.
Just start memorizing your IPs now!
What's the assumption here? If there's anything that the US tech broligarchs want and anything that the US elite has pushed for decades now it's unhindered access to markets for their digital service companies. Trump would trash decades of work invested in achieving the dominant position they have now.
So if a "Trump pulling the plug" were ever going to happen... honestly it'd be great news as this would be the final wakeup call these companies need. Nothing to be scared about.
Trump would trash decades of work invested in achieving the dominant position they have now.
Gestures broadly at science, health and education...the US dollar, itself
"When Trump is gone everything will go back to normal. We don't have to change anything. Nothing to worry about." Many European (definitely German) politicians probably
Time to polish OpenOffice with a few billion in support donations?
Isn't that run by Apache now?
Oh sorry, Libre office. Not sure where apache is based but by the name its probably here in the States.
~~It was apache originally and bought up by Oracle~~ Sun -> Oracle -> Apache
Nope. OpenOffice was Sun Microsystems originally. Then Oracle bought Sun Microsystems. Then the OpenOffice devs decided to continue developing under the LibreOffice name. And then Oracle donated the practically-dead OpenOffice project to the Apache Foundation.
Thx
Lol please add some funding for CDE (Common desktop environment) and Slackware too
As with finance portfolios, always check your exposure. Unlike finance portfolios, we can't change overnight. This risk management must be built in.
Why the FUCK would this be sorted alphabetically?
Because it was made by advertisers for Proton.
That explains it.
How come Bulgaria scores so low?
(also RIP Scandinavia)
But digitalization!!1!!
The same tech companies that dragged their feet or haven't even left Russia? Those ones would give up on profitable market, risk getting assets in Netherlands and Ireland seized or whichever other jurisdictions that are overseas territories of European countries. One can only hope...
I think people fundamentally misunderstand it's US companies' code running in Europe. Yes, We'd have a bad week, and then just keep calm and carry on. The fallout for US business from that though, would be a sight to behold.