European Alternatives

With an erratic US-president and a few tech companies sort of ruling our everyday lives, the idea pops up to limit big tech's power by using alternatives. But there might be another reason to do so.

If you’re like me, you might be heavily relying on apps and services from the US like GMail, Google Maps, Apple Calendar, ChatGPT and so on. Lately, anti-democratic tendencies in the White House pointing in the direction of an oligarchy have raised concerns. Is Big Tech too powerful and should we limit their power by using alternatives?

I would raise another question: Are the apps and services we got accustomed to still the best ones to use? Or might some of the non-big-tech options be even better? For my first list of European Alternatives I’ve found a few that might be:

#1 Proton from Switzerland is worth more than just one look as a GMail alternative. Built around a free mail inbox with 1 GB of space, for a monthly price they add plenty of extra services you might otherwise know from Google: Calendar, Drive, Password Management, VPN and a lot of encryption services:

#2 Mailbox.org from Germany is another mighty GMail and Workspace alternative, also including calendar and office:

#3 Jottacloud from Norway might be the perfect answer to US-hosted cloud services like Google Drive, iCloud or Dropbox. Servers are in Norway, usage is handy and 5 GB are free:

#4 HereWeGo is the best-looking Google Maps alternative you’ve probably never heard of. German car heavyweights Audi, BMW and Daimler joined forces and bought the service from Nokia in 2015, obviously using HereWeGo on their on-board systems. It’s free to use on your browser and phone as well and it also offers pedestrian, bike or public transport navigation:

#5 OsmAnd, headquarted in the Netherlands with a mostly Ukrainian team, might be the true open-source alternative (OpenStreetMap-based) if you don’t trust German car “oligarchy” as well:

#6 Qwant from France is one of the few search engines that does not rely on Google or Bing to search the web but provides an own search index. Berlin-based, environmentally-friendly search engine Ecosia is joining in and builung a search index together with Qwant, aiming to start later in 2025:

#7 Mistral Le Chat from France is one of the few easy accessible European alternatives to ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Anthropic Claude. A clever chatbot based on state-of-the-art Large-Language Models:

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So much already for this week. I might cover more rest-of-the-world alternatives in future episodes if you’re interested. And as always: If you like Toolness, please spread the word and subscribe – if you haven’t already. Know a tool I’ve missed? Please write to me at cools@toolness.co. Thanks and cheers! :)