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Despite the U.S. State Department essentially saying that the Google chairman’s North Korean jaunt would be a horrible idea of which they want absolutely no part, yesterday morning, Eric Schmidt landed in North Korea with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in tow.
Presumably, Schmidt hopes to meet with the leaders of the impoverished, communist dictatorship (with notoriously restrictive online policies) and enter into what he terms “one of the last frontiers of cyberspace.”
Richardson has his own business to take care of while he’s in town, although his involves ending the detainment of a U.S. citizen jailed in Pyongyang. Still, he does seem supportive of Schmidt’s efforts. Despite the Google chairman having no stated motive, Richardson called the trip a private, “humanitarian mission” and went on to say that he’s “sure [Schmidt] is interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect.” What that social media aspect is remains a mystery, sort of like how the existence of the Internet itself remains a mystery to some North Koreans.
Although, the North Korean countryside is supposed to be beautiful this time of year—maybe he’ll have some luck with Instagram. Just, you know, avoid the labour camps. [Huffington Post]
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has been the foremost champion of the luny “open” movement in technology, which believes that everybody should get products and services for free. Google has been campaigning hard for a false-economy utopia in which all software is “open source” and we have “open data” etc. Google has used the cash from search to finance a decade-long hate campaign against more capitalist tech corporations such as Microsoft.
However, while there is a healthy balance to be found between “open” and “closed” ideologies, Google’s fanatical “open” philosophy and neo-Communist doctrines are intrinsically flawed.
In reality, rival companies like Microsoft and Apple have defined the technology that we use each day, and the tech we take for granted today was conceived thanks to the motivations of commercial gain. E.g. It’s easy to call for free “open source” software which seeks to imitate MS Office, but we would not have MS Office on the first place without a very different approach — and it’s noteworthy that no alternatives come close to being as good as MS Office and the “Open Office” / “Libra Office” fiasco served only to prove the inherent dangers of relying on “open” projects.
North Korea, as a Communist state, would love to have free and “open source” software. Why pay money to the US corporations who did all the hard work and innovation? North Korea is a natural ally in Google’s sinister ideological war with Microsoft and more recently Apple. And Google means business — they spend more on political lobbying (a euphemism for the subversion of democracy) than Microsoft, Apple and Facebook COMBINED!
Meanwhile, Google does all it can to avoid paying taxes — especially in capitalist countries like the US and UK where it has major operations.
He must be looking for Bane then?
Installing Google maps for next batch of satellites, so they won’t get lost using Apple maps.
Maybe sell them a firewall with logging software
Probably looking for low cost tech workers, just like the south korean animation companies who work for hollywood studios…