Clouds Over the Netherlands: Preserving Public Interest Internet Governance in the Era of Hyperscaler Clouds

Read now in the creative commons

This report examines SIDN’s decision to move part of .nl to AWS.com and what this choice tells us about broader shifts in managing critical internet infrastructure. It is a compelling example of the potential harms when internet governance organizations—or other institutions with public interest mandates such as governments or universities—rely on ‘hyperscale’ cloud giants AWS, Google, and Microsoft. The case study of SIDN illuminates how cloud computing is changing Internet governance by undermining its foundational public interest assumptions. Internet governance requires technical resilience and institutional independence; the turn to the cloud undermines both. This report argues that cloud move means inviting AWS, and its corporate logics, into SIDN. This pattern extends beyond SIDN to numerous public institutions increasingly entangled in commercial cloud ecosystems.