At a bustling market stall in Berlin, volunteers from the charity Topio are helping residents reclaim digital privacy by removing the influence of major U.S. tech companies from their smartphones. What began as a niche service has seen a surge in demand since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with growing numbers of people queuing for a digital detox amid rising concerns over data privacy and foreign surveillance.
The early months of Trump’s second term have unsettled some Europeans, eroding trust in a long-standing ally after he signaled a retreat from America’s traditional role in European security and ignited a trade war. “It’s about the concentration of power in U.S. firms,” said Topio founder Michael Wirths, as a colleague installed a Google-free version of the Android operating system on a customer’s phone.
Wirths noted a shift in the crowd visiting the stall: “Previously, it was mostly people well-versed in data privacy. Now, we’re seeing politically aware individuals who feel vulnerable.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk who also owns social media platform X was once a key adviser to President Trump before their relationship soured. Meanwhile, the heads of Amazon, Meta, and Google’s parent company Alphabet held high-profile roles at Trump’s January inauguration, highlighting Big Tech’s continued proximity to power.
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 U.S. counterparts like Microsoft’s (MSFT.O), opens new tab Bing or Google, which dominates web searches and is 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, opens new tab 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 $350 billion global turnover.