• 6 Posts
  • 262 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: February 17th, 2026

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  • You could always just use PDF

    No, I can’t. You’re obviously not familiar with such processes. The format is enforced, nobody cares about some dude asking for money and then also asking to use a different format. Won’t happen.

    Vivaldi is from Norway

    Uses chrome under the hood

    Ecosia is German

    Uses Google/Bing under the hood

    Mullvad

    Uses Firefox under the hood

    Kagi

    Is American

    Technically we’re on social media

    Yes, and there are dozens of us!! Dozens!





  • No, not out of convenience. I don’t know what your image of American diplomacy is like, but they have always been willing to force other countries to go their way. In some cases they had to kill political leaders, in the EU for example politicians "understand’ without getting killed.

    But I think we’re generally on the same boat. It’s weird how all relevant tech companies are in the US. The difference is, I don’t think this is because of"convenience". That doesn’t scale that much. This is enforced.


  • Yes, but nobody cares about Spotify. It’s not an essential app in any sense. It’s also owned by the music industry, btw:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5z_KKeFqE

    But I can use my own cd collection instead if I want to or play my own music or none at all. Nobody cares.

    What I can’t do is write a funding proposal in libreoffice, because docx is the standard form and if your proposal looks odd they are happy to desk reject it. I also can’t just use my own search engine, browser, social media. Well, I can, but I’ll have to be tech savvy and will be isolated. This is by design.

    The actual counterexample is SAP, which for some reason managed to cling itself into core business infrastructure. I don’t know of another example, but let me know if you have one.

    Many other startups were founded abroad and eventually bought by big tech or moved over for tax reasons. This is part of the “standard path” now, and people discuss when the strategic point in time is right to move over. American diplomacy made sure there is no competing environment anywhere else, except in China where they couldn’t enforce it.


  • what exactly is the rest of the world’s excuse for not creating viable local or collaborative alternatives to American corporate services and products?

    Decades of American diplomacy and big tech market domination hindering them from doing exactly that. It’s not a coincidence all relevant tech companies are in the US. For the most time, if you started a company elsewhere and it became reasonably relevant, you had to eventually move to the US or go down.

    Of course, you could start a non profit, but it would also stay irrelevant because it’s incompatible with big tech. Microsoft’s docx, android and iOS locks etc.

    That said, there is now a political opportunity to move away from this system, but it takes a few years.