How IO+ is becoming independent from American Big Tech
How European tech is giving us back a piece of our freedom, and what still isn’t working
Published on March 2, 2026
Frans is fascinated by everything related to technical progress, innovation, sustainability, and industrial design. He became co-owner of Media52 in 2018 and ensures everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. He designed our new website, helped develop Laio, and likes to keep us on our toes.
Dutch and European companies need to become less dependent on American tech companies. That’s something we at IO have been saying for quite some time. Not out of any kind of anti-American sentiment, but because it’s simply healthier not to place your entire digital infrastructure in the hands of a handful of external parties. We’ve been carefully listing European alternatives, but are we actually doing what we ask of others ourselves? And how far can and do we really want to go? In this story, IO+’s Frans van Beveren explains the newsroom’s plans to become less dependent on big tech.
The European Alternative
The European Alternative is a series about European tech solutions that prioritize privacy, digital sovereignty, and sustainability. Instead of relying on major American platforms, we highlight the alternatives Europe itself has to offer—transparent, secure, and aligned with European values.
Our MacBooks and Windows laptops aren’t going anywhere for now, but where possible, we’re taking steps. For example, we stopped using Google Analytics a few years ago and now use Plausible to track our visitor numbers. It’s a company that doesn’t profit from harvesting data, but simply earns money from paying customers. Last year, we also said goodbye to our American hosting provider and moved our website to a Danish company. It was a relatively easy change, and immediately brought a large portion of our data back under European jurisdiction.
For internal communication and project management, we replaced major platforms like Monday.com and Slack with the German solution Nextcloud, which runs on our own servers. That adjustment took some getting used to, and transitions like this are never completely seamless, but the experience has been positive. Google is more difficult. Ironically, it’s also the company that brings us a large share of our visitors. Still, we’ve started making changes there as well. Nextcloud now largely replaces Google Meet, Calendar, and Drive. Email is still under consideration: we’re weighing the option of running our own mail servers versus choosing a ready-made European solution. Once that decision is made, it can also be integrated into Nextcloud.
We’re also planning to replace Cloudflare, the tech giant most people only notice when something breaks, with a European alternative this year. And for our newsletters, we’re moving away from Substack toward our own solution. If all goes according to plan, the vast majority of our data will once again be under our own control this year, or at least no longer entrusted to American tech giants.
Full digital independence still far away
And yet the question remains: is it enough? It’s a noble goal to use European alternatives and to practice what you preach, but I don’t see our newsroom switching to European-made Linux laptops anytime soon. European hardware alternatives do exist, but the practical advantages of a complete migration are limited. Moreover, the underlying technology often still depends on American chip designs, software, and standards, even when the machines producing those chips come from our neighbor ASML. Full digital independence for Europe remains a distant prospect, but every step we take brings us closer to regaining control over our own data. And that, at least, is a start.