Piers Daniell

Interesting announcement by Google that they plan to pull out of China if the government can’t curb the hacking of email accounts on it’s free service offering, Gmail. It appears that there is a lot of activity with human right activist’s email accounts specifically, being compromised.

Being in the communist state has always gone against the grain for Google but with the promise of increased advertising revenues (for a business with a motto of ‘don’t do evil’) they were very happy to restrict content for Chinese users. However as time has gone on revenues haven’t increased and many believe China is still a loss leader for Google.

So the best way to gain more market share? To publically humiliate the Chinese government and get more column inches in every paper globally than any marketing campaign could achieve. I am sure Google couldn’t give to hoots about the compromised email accounts, but by voicing it’s concern publically not only wins public support but also dramatically increases advertising revenue as people flock to the website.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating China’s way of doing business, but to suggest Google is taking a stand for human rights and not commercial gain is short sighted. I wouldn’t be surprised if more western businesses join the bandwagon as China beating becomes more popular. It is a communist state with appalling human rights abuses – what do they expect?

News last week on Britain’s abysmal performance in the global rankings on broadband speed. Apparently Britain is 25^th out of 66 countries across the world, dropping us one place over last year. It may sound dire but from my perspective we are victims of our own success. Britian, for one, has to deal with one of the oldest telecoms infrastructures in the world making substantial gains in performance difficult and expensive.

In the same way that Britain used to lead the world with the train during the industrial revolution, it can’t now due to the old and decaying infrastructure. I was told once that just to patch a road costs more than laying a new one so when you are dealing with an existing infrastructure that is being constantly used it is difficult to make big changes. The US for example was lambasted for many years with their inferior television network because they were first to the table while the Europeans waited for the more superior PAL technology.

So I would argue that being first to the table, which gave us the advantage back then, is holding us back now. Countries like Korea and China who are building this infrastructure for the first time are able to invest in the very latest technology whereas a complete overhaul of the UK’s infrastructure will cost in excess of £30bn. This cost will always be a difficult pill to swallow and even the Conservative party turned it down when BT first suggested it to Margaret Thatcher when it would cost less than £10bn.

Currently the market will make it happen with the launch of FTTC, FTTH and advances in ADSL technology but I envisage we will continue to remain low in the league tables until we have caught up with the developing nations.