The odds that France will provide a competing offering is pretty high, because, in this day and age, and with AI, it's fairly straightforward to do so. The problem is adoption, do you think people in the USA or elsewhere will install it? Does that mean that only French companies and the French will be able to talk to eachother? Seems somewhat limiting and will limit business expansion.
Will the French government embed spyware in it, they can, since they'll be sponsoring this initiative, they've been intending to do with whatsapp and all the other messengers for years. Worrisome for the end user.
I'm all for competition, and I hope France succeeds in building a good product, because competition is great for everyone and creates jobs, and I hope it's going to take off soon, we'll see, bonne chance!
Meaning the US based companies would bear _some_ of the burden of making it easier to ditch them, and switch to "sovereign" solutions.
The rest of the world would have a vested interest in letting this happen, since it would also reduce _their_ dependence on the US.
The question then becomes "what happens first":
1 - European commission pressuring the Irish government to send its police to seize AWS servers in Dublin (when fines are not enough any more)
2 - US administration pressuring the tech companies to shut down service in Europe (when threats are not enough any more)