Africa NOT Online: Will ‘Open’ Google ‘Put Up or Shut Up’?
“It takes more than just ideas and rhetoric if you want to help bring the Internet to everyone,” Google’s head of “special initiatives,” Chris Sacca declares.
REALLY? Then where is Google’s special initiative in support of Rwanda’s search to become a “hub of Internet activity”?
‘You go Google,” is a typical self-interested tech response to Google’s corporate self-interested $4.6 billion “open” Internet game underway at the ultimate expense of U.S. consumers. The number one search engine, leading Internet advertising company AND $162 billion market cap company is under FTC and Congressional scrutiny on anti-trust and consumer privacy grounds. Nevertheless, techies are calling Google’s brazen attempt to dictate U.S. wirelsss policy to its own distinct Internet advertising business model advantage a righteous crusade and are even heralding “Google’s cause is yours.”
Are the multi billions in wireless advertising dollars Google stands to gain as the end-game of its self-serving “open” Internet crusade “ours” as well?
Google’s Sacca waxes poetic that:
It strikes us as unfair that some people should enjoy such abundant access to this rich resource while billions of others aren’t so lucky. Though the technology exists today to provide access on a global scale, often we have learned technology isn’t the problem. In this context, we have worked hard to advance a set of principles that will make Internet access for all a priority.
Sacca claims that Google is putting its money where its mouth is. Google’s open Internet access mouth aparently isn’t in Africa, despite YouTube king Chad Hurley’s incredulous claim to U.S. Congressman Ed Markey last May that YouTube “helps children in Africa.”
WOW! WOW! WOW!
Is how Congressman Markey acclaimed the “historic debut” before the United States Congress of Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder and Google stockholder:
You are an historic figure, that is why so many members of Congress came today, an unprecedented high number of members, they came to see you.
King Hurley was received by Congressman Markey as a world hero, not a Congressional witness AND Mountain View’s search for “corporate (wireless) welfare for Google” is being welcomed as standing up against the man!
BUT, Google stands up for Google. Period.
“Google should put up or shut up, they can bid and enter the wireless market with any business model they prefer, then let consumers decide which model they like best,” Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President, External and Legislative Affairs, retorts to Google’s disingenuous efforts to game the impending wireless spectrum auctions.
Indeed. Chad Hurley should “put up or shut up” as well, in terms of “helping children in Africa.”
Hurley apparently had to find something to say to Congressman Markey in order to justify the U.S. representative’s unseemly embrace of a corporate executive. Markey:
What you have done is truly revolutionary, that is something that very few people who have ever lived in the history of the planet can say about something that they have invented.
It was an honor for us to have you here today. We are going to look back at this as a big, big moment. We had Tim Berners-Lee in two months ago, but no one has quite figured out how to take it to another level the way you have.
RIGHT. Hurley demeured “children in Africa now have a chance to watch videos on YouTube.” YAY?
Are YouTube snack-sized clip culture videos the stuff that education is made of? In any event, many “children in Africa” are hard-pressed to access anything on the Internet.
“Africa Offline, Waiting for the Web,” the New York Times:
Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa.
A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times.
Africa remains the least connected region in the world, and the digital gap between it and the developed world is widening rapidly. “Unless you can offer Internet access that is the same as the rest of the world, Africa can’t be part of the global economy or academic environment,” said Lawrence H. Landweber, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisonsin in Madison, who was also part of an early effort to bring the Web to Africa in the mid-1990s. “The benefits of the Internet age will bypass the continent.”
What is Google doing to make sure that the Internet age does not bypass Africa, so that “children in Africa” can watch YouTube videos?
SEE: Google Wants Openness? Start With NYC Googleplex!
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