Comment by _the_inflator

We will see how it works out.

I have a recent background as a member of the Senior Management of one of the largest banks in Europe (8 years stint).

I worked in IT - and build the only successful platform for financial services done in-house and to ever make it as a standard not because management tried to force people, no because it solved customer's problem (external and internal customers aka employees).

I don't buy any of these EU is going fully independently. EU's IT isn't capable of doing this. No way ever ever.

I will 100% of the time bet against it. I saw so many things, experienced so many things - and no way is there anyone out there in Europe who to this day simply can acknowledge and appreciate the marvelous work and evolution that for example Google took or any other startup to leading global business like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and so on.

Even IBM's mainframe: if you do not understand the very problem they solve - don't talk about "independence from X".

There is no successful startup from Europe, that has any results like the mentioned. All have to do with IT, all went from idea to what they are now.

And Europe now wants to do what?

All my fellow European's here boasting around: I feel sorry for you. All the "Let's build our own Google" (Google search) folks that predated the other independence stories like this here simply disqualify themselves the moment the say out loud such sentences.

Read 5 books about Engineering at Google, read the HTML5 spec by searching for Ian Hickson, go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - and tell me that EU is going well in IT independence in taking a totally different approach, ignoring every and any circumstance and context the mentioned companies had, using design by committee, state dictated orders, establishing standards by enforcing them by law instead of evolution and being the best there is.

Good luck, we will see how it went.

And no, building something that looks somewhat okish from the outside, but is utterly crap inside - we talk about, excuse me my corporate language I was penetrated with, "best in class world leading number one" apps that leave any comparable solutions in the dust - just as Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. did.

If you cannot win in free markets - you declare victory by misusing regulation. That's cheap and well, socialism.

All of you will beg that all the systems and providers will still do business with you after years of trashing them.

Are Mastercard etc. awesome? Are they objectionable? Of course - but trashing them, boasting you will easily beat them while having the double standard on relying on them freely is disgusting.

All EU patriots: Throw away your iPhones, deinstall all the US apps - use at least existing Open Source alternatives. Cancel your Netflix, Microsoft Office subscription - do it.

Good luck anyway. After all, you are doing a live experiment on the head of the people forced to live with a minorities decision.