This is European tech CEOs plan to take on ‘America First’ Donald Trump – Times of India

European tech CEOs are reportedly calling for regional countries to take stronger action against Big Tech’s dominance and reduce reliance on the U.S. for critical technologies like artificial intelligence, following Donald Trump’s electoral victory.
According to a report in CNBC, Trump’s win was a major topic among tech leaders at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Many attendees expressed uncertainty about what to expect from the U.S. president-elect, citing unpredictability as a significant challenge.
Andy Yen, CEO of Swiss VPN developer Proton, urged Europe to adopt a more “Europe-first” approach to technology, mirroring American protectionism. He emphasized the need to reverse the trend of the past two decades, during which key technologies like web browsing and smartphones have been dominated by a few large U.S. tech firms.
VPNs, or virtual private networks, encrypt data and mask a user’s IP address to hide browsing activity and bypass censorship.
“It’s time for Europe to step up,” Yen told CNBC at Web Summit. “It’s time to be bold. It’s time to be more aggressive. And the time is now, because we now have a leader in the U.S. that is ‘America-first,’ so I think our European leaders should be ‘Europe-first.’”
Over the past decade, the European Union has taken legal action and introduced tough regulations to tackle the dominance of large tech players like Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. However, with Trump preparing for a second term, there are concerns that Europe might soften its approach to avoid retaliation from the new administration.

Americans and Chinese didn’t don’t get ‘play fair’ message

Yen urged the EU not to dilute its efforts to rein in American tech giants. “Europe has been thinking in a very globalist mindset. They’re thinking we need to be fair to everybody, we need to open our market to everybody, we need to play fair, because we believe in fairness,” he told CNBC. “Well, guess what? The Americans and the Chinese didn’t get the memo. They have been playing extremely unfairly for the last 20 years. And now they have a president that is extremely ‘America-first.’”
Mitchell Baker, former CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, noted that the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has led to meaningful changes for the Firefox browser, with increased activity since Google implemented a “choice screen” on Android phones that allows users to select their search engine. “The change in Firefox new users and market share on Android is noticeable,” Baker said. “That’s nice for us — but it’s also an indicator of how much power and centralized distribution these companies have.”
She added, “This change in usage because of one choice screen isn’t the full picture. But it is an indicator of the kind of things that consumers can’t choose and that businesses can’t build successfully because of the way the tech industry is structured right now.”