What tech sovereignty actually looks like in practice. Part two of a series; part one is Technological sovereignty: a small consultancy’s journey.
February 4th 2026, Brussels.
I’m sitting at my desk, trying to log into a platform I haven’t used in months. Click. The login page appears. My fingers hover over the keyboard, waiting for the autocomplete that usually saves me from remembering anything. Nothing happens.
Right. I’m not using Chrome anymore. I’ve migrated to Vivaldi.
The password is somewhere in Google’s password manager – along with hundreds of others accumulated over years of frictionless browsing. Now I need to recover it, store it somewhere else, manually add it to Vivaldi’s system. Then multiply this moment by every single site I’ve ever created a profile on. The scope of extraction suddenly becomes visible: my digital identity isn’t just on Google’s infrastructure, it’s held by it.
I’ve spent the past few weeks methodically building new infrastructure – Proton for email, Vivaldi for browsing, testing Affinity as a more independent alternative to Adobe. I’ve documented the strategy, mapped the dependencies, made the commitments. On paper, I’ve left. In practice, I keep finding myself back in the old systems, not by choice but by the gravity of existing patterns.
Yesterday, I was trying to organize the stages of a current project. I needed to review the email thread where the client and I had worked through the initial scope. Where was it? Outlook. During my migration to Proton, the history stayed behind in Microsoft’s ecosystem. To move forward with today’s work, I had to go backwards into the infrastructure I’m trying to leave.
These aren’t failures. They’re the actual texture of migration that nobody talks about when they write clean “5 steps to digital sovereignty” guides. The reality is messier: you’re not switching from System A to System B in a decisive moment. You’re maintaining System A while building System B, discovering dependencies you didn’t know existed, getting pulled back by saved passwords and archived emails and muscle memory.
There’s a fear underneath all this that I need to name: what if I don’t actually make it?
Not in a catastrophic sense – I’m not going to wake up one day and abandon the whole project. But what if the cumulative friction is too much? What if I end up in permanent limbo, maintaining two parallel systems indefinitely because I can’t quite commit to fully leaving the old one? What if, after all this mapping and planning and documenting, the alternatives genuinely aren’t good enough for professional work?
The frustration is real. Every time I type “gmail.com” out of habit, every time a client sends me a Google Doc that forces me back into their ecosystem, every time I need information that’s trapped in the infrastructure I’m trying to escape – it feels like a small defeat.
But here’s what I’m learning: sovereignty has inertia. Google, Microsoft, Amazon – they made things frictionless on purpose. Convenience is how they capture you. Leaving means accepting more friction, at least temporarily. The question isn’t whether this friction exists, but whether I’m willing to work through it.
I am. This is going to happen. But I’m also being honest that I don’t know exactly how long it will take. Right now, I’m genuinely living in two infrastructures simultaneously. Checking Proton for new emails while occasionally diving back into Gmail or Outlook to find something I haven’t migrated. Building new workflows in Vivaldi while still relying on Chrome’s saved ecosystem when I hit a wall.
This limbo isn’t a phase I’ll pass through quickly.
It’s where I actually live right now – and probably will for months. The dual infrastructure reality is the migration. There is no clean moment of “before” and “after.” There’s only this extended present where both systems coexist, and I’m slowly, deliberately, shifting the balance of power between them.
If you’re considering a similar journey toward technological sovereignty, this is what you’re signing up for. Not a weekend project. Not a simple matter of switching services. But a genuine reconstruction of your digital infrastructure that requires sustained attention, tolerance for frustration, and acceptance that the past will keep asserting itself into your present work.
I’m determined. And it’s difficult. Both things are true simultaneously.
That’s the work.
Bea La Colmena Design, Brussels
Part one: Technological sovereignty: a small consultancy’s journey. Part three to come.
Also published on Substack.