A recent global outage affecting Microsoft Outlook and Teams users, including those in Europe, has reignited concerns about the continent's heavy reliance on a few US tech giants. Tommaso Valletti, Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, highlighted the risks of depending on large American firms. The disruption, which began on Thursday afternoon European time, impacted users in 74 countries and territories, according to Downdetector. Microsoft has not yet identified the root cause but ruled out a cyber attack.
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google collectively dominate about 70% of the European cloud market, while European providers hold just 15%, down from 29% in 2017. This dependency sits uneasily with EU citizens, with the latest Eurobarometer survey showing strong support for European-controlled digital infrastructure, particularly in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.
In response, the European Commission is pushing for public authorities to buy more cloud services from European providers. The proposed Cloud and AI Development Act aims to triple the EU's data centre capacity within five to seven years. Bidding for up to seven EU-backed AI 'gigafactories' closed on Thursday. However, analysts like Synergy’s chief analyst John Dinsdale suggest that European providers will struggle to reverse their market share loss.
Europe has several contenders in different layers of the technology stack. France’s Mistral AI, valued at €21 billion after a €3 billion funding round led by Samsung, is a notable player in AI models. In cloud computing, STACKIT is building an €11 billion AI data centre in Brandenburg, Germany. Germany’s Infineon is a leading maker of power chips essential for AI data centres.