<story><title>Swedes say no to Google Apps for government use</title><url>http://gigaom.com/2013/06/13/swedes-say-no-to-google-apps-for-government-use/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>T-A</author><text>The last sentence in the article, &amp;quot;shows the need for more infrastructure catering to the needs of smaller populations — say, for the European Union&amp;quot; reminds me of a common US-centric misconception. Almost 500 million people live in the European Union, 740 in Europe including non-EU states, vs 314 in the US. A loss of trust in US-centric infrastructure could be an opportunity for providers catering to the needs of &lt;i&gt;larger&lt;/i&gt; populations.</text></comment>
<story><title>Swedes say no to Google Apps for government use</title><url>http://gigaom.com/2013/06/13/swedes-say-no-to-google-apps-for-government-use/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gonvaled</author><text>We are (in most of the world) in a very unbalanced situation. Most of the state of the art technology is run by US companies. Thus the whole world (actually, those using services provided by those companies - i.e. nearly everybody) is being spied. US citizens and companies are also being spied, but here comes the unbalance:&lt;p&gt;The US government can use that information for bad or good purposes. This applies to information about US citizens and other citizens. It is easy to see why the US government would use that information for  good purposes (like say, prevent a terror attack) for US citizens. (proably bad things will happen to US citizens too, like imprisonments for political reasons)&lt;p&gt;But it is &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; difficult to see why the US would do anything good for foreign individuals &amp;#x2F; corporations (unless we accept that the US is the world government, and has the interest of all of us in its heart, which is ludicrous).&lt;p&gt;So here we are: a government taking advantage of the technology developed by (mostly, but not only) US companies, to further a political agenda.&lt;p&gt;I expect global boycott of US based cloud providers. It does not make sense anymore. This is a trust which can not regained, since we have seen the tactics involve flat lying - even legislation to force companies to lie.</text></comment>