I'm really surprised by the number of negative comments. Data hosted in Germany won't be accessible to Microsoft US nor the US government. So that's one problem solved. If the German government can access that data so what? Do you really expect to escape from that? Keep your data in house if you care about privacy that much. Most of German companies offering services to German customers now can say "your data is stored in your country" thanks to Microsoft. Then if the European government can snoop in, what do you expect MS to do? That's a problem that the German gov needs to address, a government elected by people. And again, no one is forcing you to be "in the cloud". Say what you want, "country clouds" are a step forward and a value some people are willing to pay for.