European Cloud Companies Play Up Privacy Credentials

James Kinsella, the 55-year-old former Microsoft executive who previously ran MSNBC.com, has spent the last 15 years in Europe and is now backing Europe’s efforts to enforce its tough data privacy rules across the region — and potentially further afield.

Kinsella and Robert McNeal will unveil their latest start-up called Zettabox, a cloud computing service that will take on the likes of Google, Dropbox and Microsoft to offer people and companies the ability to access documents, video files and photos from anywhere in the world. To compete with much larger American rivals, the start-up, with 25 employees divided between London and Prague, is playing up its European roots and people’s growing appetite for greater online privacy. The company says that it will only store people’s data within Europe, where privacy laws are more stringent than those in the United States. It also will allow individuals and companies to retain information in data centers in specific European countries, so that they can comply with tough domestic rules that often restrict what type of data can be stored internationally.