Countries under different political systems express the opposite rhetoric on the Internet and its social influence. Autocratic state leaders launch a crackdown on anti-government web resources, whereas liberal countries adopt a flexible approach. In essence, all of them pursue the same goal as the independent Internet. Like other countries, Germany depends on US-based cloud services run by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Berlin promotes the idea of the EU “digital sovereignty”. Instead of tightening regulations on Internet providers, Germany welcomes fair competition and invites both German and European companies to join the Gaia-X project which is “a competitive, safe and trustworthy data infrastructure for Europe”. Angela Merkel insists that the EU has to develop its own digital services to store and process data outside the US cloud computing giants. Germany’s Chancellor is astonished that “so many companies have just outsourced all their data to US companies.” Besides, at the request of Berlin, EU commissioner on competition Margrethe Vestager is going to keep close tabs on IT companies from Silicon Valley, especially Google and Facebook. “In the light of current developments in the global data and digital economy, we require tougher oversight of abusive practices in order to maintain competition,” the directive from Germany reads.
