When my country and China had border clashes, there was a nation-wide grassroot level movement to boycott Chinese goods and services where possible. It worked to an extent but it fizzled out in few weeks/months. Some of the reasons were the impracticality of total boycott so you start from a position of compromise, difficulty to sustain a movement born out of anger and some inter-govt agreements to avoid escalations etc.

Do you have plans to overcome those sort of challenges and sustain this initiative ?

You speak about India?

Yeah, EU is super fucked too since it outsourced its energy dependence to Russia, consumer manufacturing to China, defence and tech services to US, and only just woke up in the last 3 or so years that it was all a huge mistake that's now costing us dearly since we're at the whims of all 3 belligerents who know that now is the time they can squeeze us.

Trying to undo just one dependency is a slow and painful process, but fighting all 3 at the same time is a suicide mission.

The US outsourced its manufacturing too, but unlike EU, it has a strong enough economy and military that they can just snap their fingers and the likes of Taiwan and Korea will immediately onshore manufacturing of their high end chips and ships to the US, but EU doesn't have this kind leverage.

Boycotting US tech is magnitudes easier than boycotting Chinese-made products. They're in whole different universes. Especially on a country level, let alone a EU level.

Is removing the dependence on US tech easy for the EU? No, it's tough and takes a lot of work and time. It's still a piece of cake compared to the dependence on Chinese manufacturing. They're incomparable.

The government has to mandate it on some level with purchasing power.

If the government switched away from Microsft and refused to accept MS document formats for any legal reason - then things might shift.

Most businesses just don't care, they want they easy button.

A law firm does not want to screw around, they just click 'buy' on Word, Outlook, Teams.

There's a deep psychology to it.

I remember a developer telling me that Oracle 'was the only real database'.

It's not so much propaganda, just the propagandistic power of incumbency. People who only know one thing are hard pressed to believe there could be something else.

This is more than 50% brand, narrative etc.

We techies tend to underestimate the power of perception, even when it's of our own creation etc. i.e. people fighting over Linux and it's various distros.

It is understanably hard to stay vigilant with respect to individual everyday purchases, but services and subscriptions are an easy and continuous win.

to be honest I don't expect a effective long term consumer boycott

but any companies which have their brand closely tied to the US image (e.g. Coca Cola) will most likely have bug issues

and if people have a choice between a product from a company they now is EU or better local and one where they don't know about it the choice will be influenced by it

and maybe we can finally take tear down some of the absurd misinformation companies and corruption originating from MS and similar. (E.g. systematic malicious misinformation often supplemented with non fair competition/subsidization and outright bribery (no joke, MS has (through middle mans) wide spread bribed public, research and school organizations in Germany, like actual bribes, not just things which should count as bribes but do not(1)))

(1): I knew some people which had been involved in it. But any case where legal actions where taken ended without relevant outcome because all the blame always feel to the sales middle man AFIK and supposedly MS didn't know. Also the bribes mostly ended up as additional founding for the research institute and only in small parts in personal pockets from what I have heard. At the same time politics have caused so massive issues due to incompetently made laws and regulations for many public organizations that accepting this bribes and using them as additional founds often looked as a necessary evil... :sob: (yes I know there are not emotes on HN)