Who Cares?

Like everyone else, I am disappointed by Apple’s iPad announcement. I expected Steve Jobs to walk across the Mississippi while dispensing a few loaves and a couple of fish to the cheering multitudes. Instead, I got an iPhone that’s too big to put in my pocket - eh, or was that a laptop that’s too small to have a keyboard.

The frenzied reaction served to obscure a few other items of interest to the world of IT. It is, for example, clear that Apple and Google aren’t friends anymore. Apple wants to control search (and associated advertising revenue) on the iPhone.

Aside: I still cannot believe that advertising pays for the Internet while providing substantial profits to Google. I have never, ever, clicked on any advertisement at any time or in any place.

In fact, this seems to be the time for “fallings out” with Google. Not content to break up with Apple, Google has decided to take on the entire country of China.

I’m personally baffled. China (it appears to be the government) simply wanted access to a Proprietary, Valuable Intellectual Property while, at the same time, wanted to block access to non-proprietary, free web content. Google cried: “Foul!”

China is modernizing very quickly. The country is rightly proud of the progress they’ve made. In my opinion, however, while they’re proud, the government is also not confident of its own position with their citizens or of the local ability to innovate and develop. And, given the rapid growth, they see less need to care about complaints from outside. I think it will change – eventually. But I note that dealing with China is always a challenge

1994, China

We were trying to close the refinery deal. Negotiations had dragged on for months, well, years. We sent engineers, they sent professional negotiators. We didn’t realize that we’d been ‘had’ until we were halfway back to The Hague. They didn’t forget anything. But now, it was time to close the deal. We had a company managing director to make the pitch:

“We’ve been working on this for 2 years. We are ready to go. In fact, I have 25 people in The Hague sitting on their asses doing nothing. We need to close. Time is money.

“I have 100,000,000 people sitting on their asses. So what?