French opinion on sufficient European means for alternatives to GAFAM companies 2021

As the usage of services proposed by the GAFAM companies, a selection of elite American companies in the digital sector, composed of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft has become inevitable around the world, the source has asked French people if they though that the lack of European alternatives to these companies was due to insufficient means (in terms of companies, services and legislation). Thus, the opinion of the French was quite unanimous that Europe did not lack the means to promote local actors.

Issues with personal data

As much as 73 percent of French respondents consider the security of personal data as important in the telecommunication sector and about 64 percent in e-commerce. With Facebook having the most users among the American monopoles, the collection of personal data has been a growing issue following the Cambridge Analytica affair, which revealed that Facebook did not fully protect the personal data of its members in 2018: around 36 percent of Facebook users were ready to delete their social media profile. Nevertheless, 60 percent did not want to, despite the scandal. It becomes apparent that, even though French people do not trust companies such as Facebook and Google to protect their personal data, they still use them and their popularity is growing continuously.

Strong position and growth of the "GAFAM"

About 70 percent of French internet users expressed a felt pressure to use GAFAM company services because of a lack of subsitute from other countries. Recording the highest monthly visits 22 years after its “official” foundation by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google is no longer the small company it was when it started. It has now almost become synonymous with the Internet, and has not left the pole position of the most visited sites in the world and in France for a long time, with 1.113 million visits in December 2019 alone. But, the GAFAM muse is Jeff Bezos, scoring more than 74 thousand Google searches that same month and year as Amazon itself, which is the preferred e-commerce platform of the French.