A proposal to build a national federation of interconnected computing clouds in France, funded in part by government in order to protect the country’s sovereignty, data privacy and local jobs, is gaining favor. Some fear that the idea, which is in part a backlash against American companies like Google, will spread to other parts of the Continent, potentially undermining the promised benefits to Europeans of cloud computing, which is being billed as the biggest shift in computing since personal computers were introduced in the 1970s. French tech companies and businesses are calling on local governments in France to partner with private companies to build a network of data centers and shared cloud platforms and services that would respond to the computing needs of French businesses, organizations, governments and citizens, giving them an alternative to handing their data to American companies. The group called for local cloud infrastructure to be built with the help of funds set aside for France’s “grand emprunt national,” a ¬4.5 billion economic stimulus package that will start to kick-in at the end of next year.