Why just one news of this type and we start anticipating as if we can be the king now? Huh…
The article from ET really made me upset about the mindset of author, and how his thinking reflects the thinking of a typical Indian- We don’t fight to win things but anticipate that our competitor loses out to something, so that we can gain!
O.K. So the story goes like this- Google faces multiple cyber attacks from (alleged) Chinese Govt officials in order to restrict human rights activists and limit free speech on Web. Google also seems to be getting frustrated of the multiple censoring which Chinese Govt imposes on their search results. Yesterday Google started showing some banned search results related to Human rights activists and they said they are not going to put any censorship on such results from now onwards. Reasons for Google quitting (or at least threatening to quit) from China may be multiple- not being No.1 in China, financial issues or moral issues. But in real terms Google quitting China may not be a big shocker for China as we are seeing it.
China is a very very confident country in today’s date. They are very strong- both economically and technology/military wise, they have their own rules and they care a darn what other countries think about them. Their local market is larger than a that of several big markets combined- For e.g. China’s total internet market is 330 Million while that of US is 200 Million and India has a mere 50 million. So even in this case China may look as a loser to many but the real loser is none other than Google. If Google quits China, Chinese internet will not shut down, on the other hand it will give other Internet startups a chance to create their own space. China anyways is building a very strong entrepreneurship ecosystem in their country. They have around 800 business Incubators as compared to India’s 50 and they are focusing on building more.
It reminds me of their fight at last time’s Beijing Olympics- how they topped the Gold medal’s list and almost stunned US by trailing them just by 10 medals in overall tally. Their governance may be questioned but there are some areas where their focus is very strong- manufacturing, sports, startups, technology, hacking etc.
Last year I read one article at HT which said that China can handicap India just by launching an e-war, they have hackers of such caliber.
But why we become so optimistic hearing news like this. We have been able to beat China in just one thing- BPO’s and software outsourcing, to which they give a darn. They don’t try to compete India in this field and we are happy that we are the software outsourcing leaders. See I’m not complaining of my country here, but this news that Google’s decision to quit China may help India sounds ridiculous. In India we solely depend on foreign technologies to get our daily tech dose- from searching on Google to checking Gmail to using WordPress. Here more than 95% of web businesses rely on Google and yes I don’t need to put a source link here :). Best thing with China is that they are self reliant and we are totally dependent on western technologies- which is not always a good thing.
More than 60% of users don’t know about Indian search engines like Guruji or about local search engines like burrp or asklaila. For them Internet is off if Google is off. So let’s start making efforts to support Indian startups (both web and other technologies) so as to become more self reliant. This world is still accessible- thanks to WTO but no one knows till when :).
- What you as an Indian think about this? Both sides of view are a welcome.