From our earliest days, Google has been committed to Europe. Over the past decade, we’ve invested billions in Europe’s digital infrastructure to reinforce its resilience, security and efficiency: we have built 7 state-of-the-art data centers here, developed 13 cloud regions, and launched 6 subsea cables connecting Europe to the world. We’re doing vital engineering tasks in the EU that contribute to Google’s global products — and we have brought those products to help European citizens and businesses connect to the world.
At the same time, we have worked to ensure that Europeans have the skills to deploy these tools and take advantage of digital transformation. Since 2015, Google has trained 13 million people across Europe and we continue investing in talent by supporting 17 universities across 12 European countries, through our pledge at the European Commission’s Cyberskills Academy.
Finally, we partner with European companies like Schwarz Group, T-Systems, Telecom Italia, Thales (S3NS) to provide AI solutions and sovereign cloud offerings that align with European values and data residency requirements. This ensures customers have control over their data and aren’t locked into any single vendor, promoting true digital sovereignty.
All of this — our investments in infrastructure, people, partners in Europe — is grounded in a longstanding conviction that Google’s mission, to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful, contributes to Europe. And that conviction hasn’t changed.
A generational opportunity for Europe
We’re more confident than ever in the relevance to Europe of our mission with the recent breakthroughs in AI, the most significant technological development of our lifetimes. AI is key to achieving the bold ambitions that are outlined in the EU Competitiveness Compass, from boosting innovation and economic growth, to promoting clean energy and increasing security in Europe.
President Draghi compellingly observed that 70% of the EU-US GDP per capita gap can be explained by lower productivity, and linked this to ongoing challenges around innovation and the technology investment climate in Europe.
The urgent path forward for AI adoption
While Europe stands to benefit enormously from AI, it currently trails in AI adoption compared to the US, China and other leading global economies.
What actions need to be taken?
First, European governments need to lead by example, actively embracing AI in their own processes, and adopt all-of-government, AI-first approaches.
They also need to adopt a simplified regulatory structure governing AI and tech. Realizing the EU’s digital potential requires simplification, scalability and harmonization of tech regulations. That means prioritizing the implementation of existing legislation before adding new rules, aligning reporting requirements and eliminating multiple layers of contradictory or obsolete regulations. And the new regulations adopted, like the AI Act, should not become a barrier to Europeans being able to access the most cutting edge AI models.
Lastly, AI adoption requires Europe to embrace partnership. No country can lead on AI alone. The inputs for AI success are global.
The countries winning in AI will capture these global components, find their place in the supply chain and enable their companies and citizens to leverage them.
