DIGITAL* SOVEREIGNITY DIGGERS : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

AT market stall in Berlin run by charity Topio, volunteers help people who want to purge their phones of the influence of US tech firms. Since Donald Trump's inauguration, the queue for their services has grown.

Interest in European-based digital services has jumped in recent months, data from digital market intelligence company. Similarweb shows. More people are looking for e-mail, messaging and even search providers outside the United States.

The first months of Trump's second presidency  have shaken some European's confidence in their long-term ally, after he signalled his country would step back from its role in Europe's security and then launched a trade war.

'' It's about the concentration of powers in US firms,'' said Topio's founder Michael Wirths, as his colleague installed on a customer's phone a version of the Android operating system without hooks into the Google ecosystem.

Wirths said the type of people coming to the mall had changed. ''Before, it was people who knew a lot about data privacy.  Now it's people who are politically aware and feel exposed.''

Tesla chief Elon Musk, who also owns social media company X, was a leading adviser to the US president before the two fell out, while the bosses of Amazon, Meta and Google-owner Alphabet, took prominent spots in Trump's inauguration in January.

Days before Trump took office, outgoing president Joe Biden had warned of an oligarchic '' tech industrial complex '' threatening democracy.

Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it has benefited from some customers desire to avoid US counterparts like Microsoft's Bing or Google,  which dominates web searches and also the world's biggest email provider.

'' The worse it gets, the better it is for us,'' founder Christian Kroll said of Ecosia, whose sales pitch is that it spends its profits on environmental projects.

Similarweb data shows the number of queries directed to Ecosia, from the European Union has risen 27% year-on-year and the company says it has 1% of the German search engine market.

But its 122 million visits from the 27 EU countries in February were dwarfed by 10.3 billion visits to Google, whose parent Alphabet made revenues of about $100 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2024.  nearly a third of its US 350 billion global turnover.

Non-profit Ecosia earned 3.2 million euros [ $3.65 million] in April, of which 770,000 euros was spent on planting 1.1 million trees.

Google declined to comment for this story.

Reuters could not determine whether major US tech companies have lost any market share to local rivals in Europe.

THIS Master Essay Publishing, continues. The World Students Society thanks Reuters.