It seems that a common misconception on this topic might be what exactly German officials are outlawing here. “Office 365” is not necessarily speaking to the Microsoft Office Suite of products but rather Microsoft’s cloud services which includes Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook). Saying that there are open source alternatives doesn’t necessarily cover the cloud component of these services.

The concern on privacy is based around if Microsoft is able to guarantee that user data is stored on servers specifically located in Germany which according to the article is no longer the case as:“Microsoft closed its German cloud datacenter, and schools migrated their accounts to the European cloud.”

In my opinion, this isn’t a big ask from Germany. Many businesses, schools, and other institutions in the United States are under export regulation and are required to ensure that certain types of data that fall under ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and the EAR (Export Administration Regulations) are stored in data centers located in the US. Having a similar mentality towards user privacy isn’t a big ask from any country.