Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and other U.S. tech giants are pushing to streamline Europe's privacy rules in order to offer more remote computing and data-storage services.
These companies, which are investing billions of dollars to build big data centers in Europe, are seeking a single set of rules across the 27-nation bloc for so-called cloud-computing services. They want to sell computer capacity to businesses and governments—as well as storage space for everything from pictures of grandma to the medical records of diabetics, to 500 million consumers.
The EU's fractured rules may prove "real hurdles or speed bumps to sales" said Mike Hintze, Microsoft's associate general counsel. "That's the case for us, as well as other cloud-services providers."
Some European governments are wary of private companies, particularly U.S. ones, controlling so much information about their citizens and are resisting plans to harmonize the rules. Germany has been at the forefront in this respect, insisting on its right to impose tough national standards.
"For Europeans, there's no price to put on the importance of privacy," said Olivier Midière, president of the Association for a Digital Economy in France, a coalition of small and midsized French tech companies lobbying Paris to require storage of computer data in the country where it's being sold.
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Source: online.wsj.com
By: John W. Miller
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