Tomas Plantenga, CEO of used fashion resale app Vinted, takes center stage at Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Harry Murphy | Web Summit Sports File Getty Images
LISBON, Portugal — CEOs of European tech companies are taking bolder action to counter Big Tech’s dominance and dependence on the United States for key technologies such as artificial intelligence in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory. We are calling on countries in the region to take action.
The Republican politician’s victory was a hot topic among prominent technology executives at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Many attendees said they did not know what to expect from the next U.S. president, citing this unpredictability as a central challenge at this moment.
Andy Yen, CEO of Swiss VPN developer Proton, said Europe should follow the protectionism of the United States and adopt a more “Europe-first” approach to technology. This also comes as many of the most important Western countries reverse the trend of the last two decades, with technology from web browsing to smartphones dominated by a small number of large US technology companies.
A VPN, or virtual private network, is a service that encrypts your data and masks your IP address to hide your browsing activity and avoid censorship.
“It’s time for Europe to step up,” Yen told CNBC on the sidelines of the Web Summit. “It’s time to be bold. It’s time to be more aggressive. And now is the time. Just as the United States has leaders who put ‘America first,’ so do European leaders who put ‘Europe first.’ I think it should be “1.”
One of the European Union’s main initiatives over the past decade has been to take legal action and impose tough new regulations to counter the dominance of big technology companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. It was to be introduced.
As President Trump prepares to take office for a second term, there are growing concerns that Europe will waver in a tougher stance against tech giants for fear of retaliation from the new administration.
Big US tech companies say they’re being treated in a ‘grossly unfair’ way
Proton’s Yen, for example, urged the EU not to weaken efforts to rein in US tech giants.
“Europe has been thinking in a very globalist way. We need to be fair to everyone, we need to open markets to everyone, we need to act fairly,” he told CNBC. “We believe in fairness,” he said.
“Well, guess what? The Americans and Chinese didn’t get the memo. They’ve been fighting a very unfair battle for the past 20 years, and now they have a very ‘America First’ president. I have it.”
Mitchell Baker, former CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, a U.S. open internet nonprofit, said the EU’s DMA would bring meaningful changes to the Firefox browser and Google would give Android phones the ability for users to choose what they search for. He said there has been an increase in activity since implementing the “selection screen.” engine.
“The change in Firefox new users and market share on Android is significant,” Baker said. “That’s nice for us, but it’s also an indicator of how much power and centralized distribution these companies have.”
She goes on to say, “This change in usage due to a single choice screen is not the whole picture. But it is the kind of things consumers don’t have a choice in, and the way technology works that companies are not able to do very well. It shows the kind of things you can’t build,” he added. The industry is structured now. ”
Tomas Plantenga, CEO of Vinted, a Lithuanian-based second-hand clothes resale app, wants continental Europe to be able to “fend for itself” and not be “left behind.” He urged them to make the “right choice.”
“If you look at the behavior of countries very realistically, they are trying to take care of themselves, to make themselves stronger, and to become even stronger as a union,” Plantenga said in an interview with CNBC. “We are trying to form a coalition,” he said. “We have a lot of very talented and educated people.”
“We need [to] Keep yourself safe, take charge of your own energy, and make sure you continue to invest in education and innovation so you can catch up with the rest. [of the world]”If we don’t, we will be left behind,” he stressed. Every collaboration always involves a transaction. And when we don’t have much to trade, we become weaker. ”
“AI sovereignty” is now an important battleground
Another theme that generated a lot of buzz on the ground at Web Summit was the idea of “AI sovereignty.” This refers to countries and regions localizing the critical computing infrastructure behind AI services so that these systems are more reflective of local languages, cultures, and values.
As Microsoft becomes a major player in AI, concerns have surfaced that the maker of the Windows operating system and Office productivity tools suite has secured a dominant position when it comes to foundational AI tools.
The tech giant is a major backer of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and uses its technology heavily in its own products.
For some startups, Microsoft’s decision to implement AI had harmful anti-competitive effects.
Microsoft last year increased the fees it charges search engines to use the Bing Search API, which gives developers access to the tech giant’s back-end search infrastructure. This was partly due to the high cost of the AI-powered search function.
“They are slowly reducing our revenue and we are still dependent on them, so that reduces our ability to operate,” says sustainability-focused search engine Ecosia. CEO Christian Kroll told CNBC. “Microsoft is a very fierce competitor.”
CNBC has reached out to Microsoft for comment.
Ecosia recently partnered with fellow search provider Qwant to build a European search index and reduce dependence on US Big Tech to provide web browsing results.
Meanwhile, the European Union’s AI Act, a landmark artificial intelligence law with global implications, introduces new transparency requirements and restrictions for companies developing and using AI.
This law is likely to have a major impact, primarily on US technology companies. Because they are doing much of the development and investment in AI.
President Trump’s inauguration is just around the corner, but it is unclear what implications this will have on the state of AI regulation around the world.
Shelly McKinley, chief legal officer at code repository platform GitHub, said it’s impossible to predict what President Trump will do in his second term, but companies are planning for a variety of scenarios in the meantime.
“We’ll see in the next few months what President-elect Trump will say, and we’ll start to see in January what President Trump will do in this area,” McKinley said in a panel moderated by CNBC earlier this week. ” he said.
“I think it’s important that we all continue to think about different scenarios, as a society, as businesses, as people,” she added. “As with any political change or any change in the world, I think we’re still thinking about what the likely scenarios are for us to play out.”
