France has long advocated for European independence from American technologies, but can it provide viable alternatives? I put three French platforms to the test.
France’s president Emmanuel Macron has firsthand experience of what it is like to be at the mercy of US tech platforms. When an AI-generated video claiming he had been overthrown in a coup began spreading on social media, Meta initially rejected the request to remove it.
“These people are mocking us. They don’t care about keeping public debates healthy, they mock the sovereignty of democracies and are putting us in danger,” Macron told local media, speaking of American tech companies.
Unsurprisingly, French people are among the most keen for European digital sovereignty, an idea that has gained significant traction under the Donald Trump presidency.
A recent poll found that 69% of the French support Europe replacing US servers and data storage, and 68% think it is a good idea to replace US payment systems.
The country’s tech industry also appears to be leading Europe’s quest for independence.
France is the only country on the continent with a frontier large language model (LLM), Mistral. Meanwhile, France’s OVH Cloud is among the top cloud service providers in Europe.
There’s the will, but the way to sovereignty may be long and rocky. Ditching US tech, especially social networks or office software, isn’t easy for everyone, as it requires other people to move along with it.
Here are three platforms for painless and affordable experimentation with European tech.
Qwant: an alternative to Google Search
If you thought that Google Search is irreplaceable, the French search engine Qwant begs to differ. Created in 2011 and hosted in Europe, the engine is free and doesn’t use third-party cookies, trackers, or behavioral targeting.
Qwant’s main source of revenue comes from adverts displayed on results pages. Unlike Google Search, where ads appear above the top search results, Qwant’s ads are shown on the side and are clearly marked.
Historically, Qwant relied on Microsoft’s Bing platform when it couldn’t find answers in its own library, which had 20 billion indexed web pages as of 2023.
In 2024, Qwant and the Berlin-based search engine Ecosia announced a new venture, European Search Perspective, aimed at creating an independent European web index that went live in August 2025 to cut the platforms’ reliance on Bing and Google.
Using Qwant feels like browsing Google Search back in the day, partly because AI-generated responses aren't shown by default, and the engine is less cluttered with ads.
For me, the major disadvantage of Qwant is the lack of a Google-like knowledge panel that shows a restaurant’s or other enterprises’ working hours, reviews, and contact information, without clicking on links.
The verdict: Qwant is a great privacy-focused search engine, but lacks some features to fully replace Google Search.
Le Chat: an alternative to ChatGPT
As the boycott of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT shows no signs of slowing down, and questions arise about the use of Anthropic’s Claude in the Iran war, it may be time to look for less controversial alternatives.
Mistral AI’s chatbot Le Chat, which translates to “the cat,” offers several subscription plans, but I chose the Free option, which provides access to most features at no cost.
The Free plan doesn’t require account creation to use basic functions, such as asking questions, but registration is mandatory to access its four agents dedicated to data analysis, document summarization, personal tutoring, and writing assistance.
The Pro plan costs €14.99 for an individual user, compared to the €23 ChatGPT Plus plan and the €18 Claude Pro plan. It's noteworthy that the models differ in their features and capabilities.
Le Chat positions itself as privacy-focused, as it doesn’t use chat logs to train its models by default, and all data stays within European borders.
For someone with minimal use of LLMs, mostly as advanced search and translation, Le Chat met all my expectations.
However, the chatbot lags behind ChatGPT in terms of image generation and isn’t immune to mistakes, like other models. For example, I used a personal tutor to teach me basic French and managed to catch a mistake even with my limited language knowledge.
Like US tech giants, the company behind Le Chat isn’t free of controversies either. Mistral was accused of using copyrighted work, including the Harry Potter books, to train its AI model.
The verdict: A convenient ChatGPT alternative for basic use with a strong focus on privacy.
Deezer: alternative to YouTube Music
While Sweden’s Spotify is undoubtedly the best-known European streaming platform, France’s Deezer launched its service to the public a year before Spotify, in 2007.
Deezer may serve as an alternative to multiple US and European platforms, as it enables the smooth transfer of libraries from Apple Music, YouTube, YouTube Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, and Spotify, among others.
The platform offers a free ad-supported tier and a paid Premium subscription at €11.99 per month, with a 1-month free trial often available. In comparison, YouTube Music costs €7.99 per month, and Apple Music costs €10.99.
Deezer has a vast library of over 120 million tracks, including exclusive live EP recordings and videos from artists like Tom Odell and Ed Sheeran – a feature known as Deezer Sessions.
Deezer’s weak spot may be podcasts, with its library especially lacking non-English shows and broadcasts. At the same time, it offers CD-quality sound at 16-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC files, making it hard for YouTube Music to compete.
The company has adopted an Artist-Centric Payment Model, under which royalties are paid based on fans’ organic engagement rate.
This means that independent and niche artists can earn more per stream on Deezer than on platforms that use a pro rata royalty payout system, such as Spotify and YouTube Music.
The verdict: User-friendly streaming platform with a vast library and high sound quality, which also enables a smooth transition from other platforms.
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