This has nothing to do with Hetzner. It's because of the US tariffs.
"I’ve been a big fan of Hetzner. Unfortunately they’ve made a feeble attempt to dress this change up in the name of “fairness”."
Hetzner is a company know for it's precise pricing structure. An increase in prices would be correlated to an increase in costs, and in fact the next paragraph Hetzner writes:
"With the new tariff structure, we want to make conditions for our customers around the world as fair as possible "
Bottom line, the US imposes tariffs, this increases the prices of imported products, of which Hertzner is one, (Servers from Europe)
How can you write an entire article to complain about a price increase and not see that it was actually your country that increased the price.
They're not importing the VMs from Europe. And there are no new tariffs yet, inauguration is in January so there are only various announcements so far.
They're using tariff to mean price, which is an unusual choice and likely because it was written by someone from Germany. This would not necessarily sound out of place to a German speaker as "Tarife" is a common way to describe differently priced plans for any kind of service.
It's British English. Tariff is used to mean import duties, business prices (e.g. "phone tariff") and also prison sentences (e.g. "whole life tariff").
Though given the political context, it would probably have made sense to use a different word.
Not only do they share an etymology (the word "tariff" in English and "tarif" in German both come from the same Arabic word), they also mean the exact same thing. It's also used in a bunch of other European languages in essentially the same way, with either a similar or identical spelling.
It's only US English where some of the meanings that are still common elsewhere are no longer used. It's actually kind of amusing that Americans would struggle to understand the meaning of an English word, but a French or Italian speaker would understand it. I wonder if there are any other words like this.
Having the same etymology and even having the exact same spelling in two languages does not disqualify a word from being a false friend at all!
Take "gift", for example: "Gift" means "poison" in German, despite both the English and German word deriving from the same Proto-Germanic root, meaning "to give".
> (the word "tariff" in English and "tarif" in German both come from the same Arabic word), they also mean the exact same thing
In this very thread you can find a pretty good counterexample to that proposition, at least in American English.
I said same etymology AND same meaning. They are the same word, not false friends.
US English may have dropped that meaning, but British English still uses it in this way, as do many Europeans when they speak English. It’s a correct translation.
"I’ve been a big fan of Hetzner. Unfortunately they’ve made a feeble attempt to dress this change up in the name of “fairness”."
Hetzner is a company know for it's precise pricing structure. An increase in prices would be correlated to an increase in costs, and in fact the next paragraph Hetzner writes:
"With the new tariff structure, we want to make conditions for our customers around the world as fair as possible "
Bottom line, the US imposes tariffs, this increases the prices of imported products, of which Hertzner is one, (Servers from Europe)
How can you write an entire article to complain about a price increase and not see that it was actually your country that increased the price.