Steve Ballmer Egged. Is Microsoft Still Evil?

Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, was egged by a student during a speech at the Hungarian University in Budapest. The student threw eggs at Mr. Ballmer and accused Microsoft of stealing 45 Billion in Hungarian taxpayer money.

Many African countries have said that the aid Microsoft provides them in the form of free software, benefits Microsoft many times more in the end. Microsoft donates free software to governments and universities and hence gets them hooked on it. Shortly after the donation, the software requires upgrades, if not it becomes unusable. By then the governments and universities have become highly dependent on the software and have no choice but to fork out millions of dollars for upgrades. These cash strapped countries have many requirements competing for their money such as buying food, medicines, and other necessities for their populations. Hence, Microsoft came to be known as the evil empire.

The Government of India, was faced with a similar situation with Microsoft and decided to launch the Linux Initiative, which had a significant negative impact on Microsoft's business. In fact, the State of Tamil Nadu has rolled out Linux and Open Source Software in all the government departments.

Is Microsoft still evil? Will the rise of web applications give rise to a new axis of evil?

China's Online Population Explosion

Hot off the research block, the Pew/Internet Research Group has published a report yesterday which indicates that China's internet population of 137 million is growing at a faster rate and is expected to outpace that of the U.S.'s of 165 to 210 million in a few years. This is not suprising considering the population of China which is at 1.3B compared to the U.S.'s at 300M.

There are many implications of this notwithstanding the impact on site globalization requirements for more and more companies wanting to do business in the lucrative Chinese market. The upside is that the "Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues..." (Source: Pew http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/218/report_display.asp). What is potentially trickier is understanding the social, political, and cultural nuances in the usage of language translation, color, metaphors, and imagery. I also recently read somewhere that China is expected to surpass India in the outsourcing arena as well.

Read the report (pdf).