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Comment by msh | Hacker News Reader

But the sad thing is that the european alternatives to the sectors they mention like gmail is either bad or expensive euro hosted american software (hosted exchange) which is not priced to reach the average customer. I would prefer a EU alternative to gmail but none exist (by gmail I think of the whole suite with email, contact and calendar that all have a good webinterface and at the same time provide good sync to mobile devices).

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I completely agree, but the answer as to why not is in the question. People simply won't pay for it, especially given Gmail etc. is "good enough" and "free". People here would (understandably) probably not trust anything which isn't completely open source. Thus the incentives to do it just aren't there.

I've wondered if there is a case that Silicon Valley is guilty of product dumping when giving services away. Euphemistically this is moat building, but the reality looks very similar.

This is all why we need an easy to use in the cloud OS that end users can deploy services on. Detach the app development organisation from the hosting again. While that link remains the whole thing will remain a mess.

I would pay for a non-american webmail, provided the UI is merely as good as Gmail, which we're too dumb to create.

I would think it's perfectly legitimate if government administrations refused to communicate sensitive personal information on american email addresses.

Why not go back to a client hosted MUA (thunderbird etc) like we used to do before gmail.

For my part, because I need continuous access to all my mail/contacts/calendar from several mobile devices (phone+tablet) plus several computers.

Before gmail and good mobile devices I used mutt on a shell account to get access constant access but that was only mail + contacts.

CalDav, CardDav and IMAP should have these all sync together, no?

Yes but no eu company offers it as a inexpensive package.

I haven't seen a mobile device that doesn't do IMAP/CalDav and/or Exchange. Why do you need to go to a website on a mobile device to read your email?

No, but most webmail providers dont offer calDAV + cardDav or exchange on any inexpensive account.

The problem is not the device but the providers.

If you absolutely cannot find what you're looking for then nothing stops you from just firing up your own email server and putting whatever UI you like on it.

That's what I did a while ago and I haven't looked back, using Gmail/Yahoo/whatever is a miserable experience in comparison.

Plus there's no reason to assume a EU company doesn't spy on you. Europe has secret services too.

But this (the article) is not necessarily about spying. It's about (1) large US companies gaining too much power over crucial infrastructure used by EU citizens; and (2) tax evasion schemes.

The EU wants to regulate the tech sector more, treating companies that provide critical infrastructure as utility companies. Given that internet has become as important in many companies (and even households) as electricity and water, something's to be said for that.

IMO it would for example be better if lock-in was reduced through requiring that large tech companies adhere to standards. Choice is good, and it would be awful if you couldn't move e-mail from Google Mail to another service because Google removed IMAP support (which is a future possibility).

Got it, good old protectionism. I noticed Springer in the article, no surprise there.

Just looking out for my best interests and giving me choice by restricting what products companies can offer.

Well the EU do not consider for example creating the GSM standard to be "protectionist" but a great success in setting standards that created a reasonably non fragmented industry that was world class.

GSM was not created by European governments though. It was created by ETSI which is independent. And newer standards are international collaborations: as is so often the case as technology gets more complicated, it ends up being a creation of humanity rather than one geographical region vs another.

ETSI is part of the EU mechansims, as the telecom standards body, and the EU decided to mandate a shared standard.

The only person who caught on to protectionism, and yet, so many down votes. My one insignificant upvote to you sir or madam.

To be fair, I'm partially being downvoted for my sharp tone.

Internet providers in Europe often also provide webmail. Zarafa, MyColab,and OpenXChange are European providers of large deployment webmail software. Sadly there is a lot of GMail and Microsoft exchange in use even in local and national governments.

I wanted to recommend ZOHO as India-based company.

But Zoho is still US-based, apparently ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZOHO_Corporation ).

There is probably something by Yandex (Moscow-based company, that is officially registered in Netherland).

I have never used it, but some people are very happy with Kolab/MyKolab (although MyKolab is hosted in Switzerland, not the EU).

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