US Tech Giants Lose Money from NSA Spying

American corporations are losing billions of dollars, because foreign firms look closer to home in order to avoid NSA snooping. Today companies and politicians consider an opportunity to take business from the United States in the wake of Snowden’s allegations about NSA spying.

For example, 3 of Germany’s largest email providers, including partly state-owned Deutsche Telekom, decided to join their efforts and offer a new service, Email Made in Germany. The matter is that by encrypting email via national servers and using German strict privacy legislation, American authorities won’t be able to snoop that easily.

Email Made in Germany is currently reporting over 100,000 people have already signed up. Media reports say that foreign governments were seeking to use data-privacy legislation as a competitive advantage to boost domestic companies against such international giants as Google and Microsoft. However, it would be much more expensive for the Germans to use such a service and requires ignorance about the way the worldwide web works.

The industry experts admit that the situation can cause development of something like a “Euro cloud”, where consumer data could be shared only within Europe. Actually, not just Europe is concerned about its privacy. Brazil is also about to insist that information about its citizens be stored on local servers, while India is planning to stop government employees from using email services provided by Google and Yahoo.

According to estimations of Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the fallout from revelations about NSA activities might cost Silicon Valley around $35 billion in annual revenue, major part coming from lost overseas business. In the meantime, the Cloud Security Alliance revealed that 56% of non-US members believed security concerns had made it less likely that they would use American cloud services, with 10% having decided to scrap a contract.

Tech giants admitted that the NSA spying could erode the trust of customers all over the world, while they can’t undo any damage, especially with the extent of surveillance activities being secret and other nations being critical of the United States. On the other hand, small businesses that have been battling tech giant for ages, see the NSA surveillance program as a true cherry-pie. They claim that it is a great opportunity to strike back and protect the home market.