An entrance to Google’s headquarters in Zurich is decorated with a Swiss hiking signpost; photo taken in 2014.
Keystone / Ennio Leanza
Almost everyone in Switzerland considers the big tech companies to be purely profit-orientated, according to a survey by gfs.bern. At the same time, most people expect the state, business and users to take responsibility to ensure that digitalisation doesn’t harm democracy and society.
Big tech companies are not winning a popularity contest in Switzerland: 94% of people want more protection for children and young people on social networks; 90% have the impression that big tech companies are only interested in profit.
Some 84% fear “too much political influence from the countries of origin of these companies” and 82% are concerned that Switzerland is becoming too dependent on the international big tech companies from the US and China.
Overall, 21% of respondents see the big tech companies as very positive or somewhat positive; 40% have a mixed view of these companies and 38% see them as very or somewhat negative. These are the results of a representative survey conducted by gfs.bern on behalf of the Mercator Foundation Switzerland.
“I was surprised by how clear the tenor is: the platforms are profit-orientated and too close to politics,” says Tobias Keller from gfs.bern.
The survey was conducted online and by telephone in December 2025. It has a margin of error of +/-3.2 percentage points.
Comparison with EU countries
The Swiss survey is an indication that the Swiss population is just as concerned as those in European Union countries.
For example, a YouGov 2025 survey found that a majority of people in France (63%) and Germany (59%) believe that the – comparatively strict – EU laws on the regulation of big tech are still too lax. In Spain, 49% felt the same way – but even there, only 9% thought the laws were too strict.
A user survey published in February by the Swiss technology company Proton points in a similar direction.
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The role of the state in digitalisation
According to the new gfs.bern study, 58% of people in Switzerland see digitalisation as positive or even very positive overall. A smaller majority of 53% believe that digitalisation brings them personal benefits.
At the same time, however, the forecasts for society are somewhat less rosy: 48% feel that digitalisation brings benefits to society as a whole.
Some 46% see the impact of digitalisation on democratic processes in Switzerland as somewhat or very negative; 30% have a neutral and 19% a rather or very positive impression.
For a majority of respondents, the state, companies and users have a duty to ensure that digitalisation benefits society more than it harms it.
Many respondents believe that the state has a particular responsibility when it comes to dealing with artificial intelligence (AI): 88% believe that the state must ensure that the decisions made by AI and algorithms are comprehensible in every case.
In important situations, 86% of respondents would like the state to stipulate that a human must always check AI results. As many as 80% want the state to subsidise resource-saving digital infrastructure.
As the majority of respondents envisage the state taking on more responsibility, it is hardly surprising that they have a relatively high level of social trust: 75% of respondents trust Swiss authorities very much, 22% said they did not trust them very much and 3% declined to say.
“The issue of digital sovereignty has reached the Swiss population,” is how Tobias Keller from gfs.bern interprets his study, called “The state has a role to play in digitalisation”. Despite a series of IT failures on the part of the authorities, this is widely supported by the population.
Edited by Veronica DeVore. Translated from German by AI/ts
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