Always better to have non-American offerings, especially these days.

I’m cautious because the bar in America is so low that companies here can trumpet themselves for doing the bare minimum.

The pros of EU companies like this are that they’re subject to GDPR, data sovereignty under Gaia-X and European cloud codes of conduct, EU Cybersecurity Cert scheme and stricter procurement rules.

The gaps that we as consumers need to keep in our awareness are: We need laws with teeth and enforcement, rights over algorithms (not just data), open standards over proprietary, interoperability and portability standards, legal protections against foreign data demands, third party audits and transparency of all this that is accessible to citizens.

So let’s breathe a sigh of relief that we’re in a slightly better position than the U(K)SA, but not allow companies to use them as a reference. The reference is all the stuff they’re not doing yet and we need to remind them when we can 💪🏽