Why can’t a company in the EU make a secure video/voice chat app?
There’s are EU companies that make teams alternatives:
https://euroalternative.eu/alternatives/microsoft-teams
Even if those don’t work SAP, Dassault, etc… make massively complex software and services across multiple verticals and could trivially ship a competitor
What makes you think they can't?
Microsoft's corporate edge isn't merely the product, it's also an army of sales, entrenched corporate markets/clients, lock-in, etc.
You could have a better version of their product and still get eaten alive.
So indeed, it's not like you can just replace a software product (or service) by some EU or open alternative. And there are huge vested interests.
Formerly - skype
Matrix
There is nothing magic about Palantir, especially not about the subset of Palantir that the German police uses as we have stricter data privacy laws.
You might think that would be a strategic risk not worth taking especially with the US getting more hostile towards Europe but here we are.
Why? Honestly I don't have a good answer other than well the whole system is rotten, corruption, lobbyism, take your pick.
Microsoft then used its monopoly in office tools to push Teams to everyone
You can't compete with a trillion dollar company offering your product as a bundle your clients already pay for, even if your product is better. Even VC money runs out eventually
Zoom had COVID-19 play in it's favor, that's about it.
Remember how they installed an open web server on people's computers which could be accessed by anyone through the web?
https://infosecwriteups.com/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-...
Apple had to step in and patch it for them:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/apple-silent-update-zoom-a...
Or when they sent your chat data to Facebook?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-ios-app-sends-data-to-f...
How it was discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703000
Or when Zoom was leaking private information?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/zoom-leaking-email-addresses...
Or do you remember how those geniuses rolled their own crypto?
https://citizenlab.ca/research/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypt...
Or maybe you remember that Zoom has the ability to listen in in real-time on meetings held on their platform?
I can’t believe that software of this quality is used so widely. Market competitive forces are not able to do their thing unfortunately.
(Also most people don't know that you can still use a KMS with/for office 2024. You don't need M365.)
In the public sector it's basically a requirement: it's bananas if your country's critical infrastructure ends up dependent on some a product effectively controlled by another country (e.g. Teams) - and you obviously want to be able to communicate with other govt entities rather than being stuck in an island.
Then it's a natural extension to the private sector - although for now, it feels more folks are on the "nobody got sacked for using Teams" train.
Is it functionally comparable, discussion threads and all? Or is it much closer to something like Discord?
Element is the actual app being trialled here, which feels more like Slack and/or Signal than Zulip. The point is that you get something you can selfhost while also interoperating with other deployments… while also encrypting the data end-to-end with Signal protocol.
Someone should tell the CEO/CTO of Element
That said, 70% of our users haven't got the memo yet - we'll do a hard-upgrade when the remaining missing features in Element X (Spaces & Threads) are fully out of Labs.
Meanwhile, Element Web is lagging behind Element X - but we're now in the middle of an incremental in-place upgrade (not a big-bang rewrite, thank goodness) to use matrix-rust-sdk - see our talk from FOSDEM last Sunday for the details: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/DZJVTS-an-element-web...
Anyway, the first goal listed in this project was to move to European sovereign solutions so Zulip failed at the first hurdle.
Given the (lack of) speed of European bureaucracy, this is likely more a reaction to the US sanctioning the ICC than the more recent Greenland saber rattling, but you'll probably see more of this in the future.
Element Creations Ltd and The Matrix.org Foundation CIC are UK companies.
Other European institutions are also adopting Matrix, so federation may turn out to be an important feature.
I really hope the EU throws some serious money at them to get the bugs worked out, add some minor features, and clean up the UX enough that an "office normie" can onboard as easily as MS.
My dream is that Matrix can do for intra-org comms what Signal did for SMS.
I’ve used matrix for years, ran my own federated server for a while.
I’ve been critical of the user experience and issues with how it’s handled by the matrix team before but I acknowledge that by and large these problems can be fixed with money.
Big players need to put their big boy pants on and throw a couple coins from their farcically large coin purse and they can drive a stake through the wretched heart that is Teams.
But having worked at various startups and enterprises, it is very common for lots of money and resources to thrown at projects and for little or no progress to be made.
Money might be a necessary condition but it’s definitely not a sufficient one. See Microsoft teams.
Again I know nothing about Matrix, but I found your comment about UX concerning. UX is a problem that is almost immune to money. An extremely clear vision almost always the bottleneck. Money usually just results in more “features” being shoved in.
What else are Teams users going to get out of Microsoft chasing an ever increasing enterprise valuation and stock price target with regards to their user experience? Email just works, make teams comms that just works and is mostly stable.
My suggestion: https://threema.com/en/products/work (hosted) or https://zulip.com/ (OSS self-hosted).
As a user, I just need stuff like this to be standard, and work for every participant regardless of what client they use.
Zulip: lacks encryption, interoperability
Chat control for thee but not for me?
Zulip has client-server encryption, which is fine if you control the server.
I don't think it's a fact that Matrix is not good. For MS Teams? It's pretty close to a fact.
When they launched the "new" one they proudly showed the improved boot time...
* don’t suck (too much)
* no planned rug pulls
* not infested by US or Chinese spyware
Are there any?
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