EU-first alternatives to US tech services are getting traction
Uruky, a European alternative to Kagi search, launched image search and URL rewriting features, and the HN thread is warm toward the concept even while being critical of the friction in the onboarding (requiring a top-up and a CAPTCHA just to evaluate it). The interest is real: commenters explicitly call out demand for EU-first services as genuine, not just political posturing.
This is part of a broader pattern where European founders and users are building alternatives to US-owned infrastructure specifically because of data sovereignty concerns. This has been building for years, but the acceleration in US regulatory unpredictability is making it a sharper business case in 2025 and 2026.
The API question in the thread is pointed: someone asks if Uruky has an API for agent workflows, as a drop-in for DuckDuckGo. That's the real adoption vector for search infrastructure right now, not end-user browsing.
So what?
If you are building data-sensitive products for European customers, the market for EU-first infrastructure is real and underserved. The winning move is not to just comply with GDPR but to make data residency and sovereignty a first-class feature that you sell, not a compliance checkbox you check.