Japan Follows France In Thinking That Gov't Bureaucracy Can Beat Google
from the how's-that-working-in-France? dept
We've written in the past about the French boondoggle of a plan to create a government-subsidized search engine to compete with Google. Marc Andreessen points out that Japan is the latest country to try to compete with Google using government subsidies. Apparently, a consortium of large Japanese companies will divide up the task of developing a Google-killer, with the whole project overseen by government bureaucrats. Somehow, it's unlikely that Google is worried. One thing that did catch our eye, though, is that as we've discussed before, Japan's overly-restrictive copyright laws seem to be holding back innovation. According to the Financial Times, copyright law doesn't permit companies to hold copies of others' websites on their servers. That makes it awfully hard to build a functional search engine. Perhaps instead of spending money building a government-subsidized search engine, the Japanese government should focus on making its copyright policies more hospitable to high-tech innovation.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: bureaucracy, foreign competition, gov't subsidies, search engines
Companies: google, miti
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Information want to be free!!!
Information is not knowledge.
"The tighter your grip, the more star systems will slip thru your fingers." Princess Leia of Alderaan.
Japan will learn that a very tight grip on information will only result in choking off innovation. Innovation will move elsewhere. Japan will become a has been.
Information want to be free!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just remember
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mighty fine.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
++
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
When Freedom Doesn't Help
However, this pattern doesn't hold in Asia. "Freedom" is understood to mean that people can lie about whatever they want, a free pass to behave unethically. Critical thinking is not emphasized in Asian education systems; the emphasis is all on obeying authority. If people are told they are "free to say what they want", it is taken to mean that they can make up lies about other people and e.g. say that Mike has a small dick, here is a picture of his mother who has breast cancer, hahaha.
In American culture, we have Judeo-Christian morals that say it is wrong to make false witness against others, to beat up on the weak or poor. In Asia with its Confucian-Buddhist values, there are no such morals -- "freedom" is interpreted as a power vacuum that should be filled by whoever is the bigger bully.
Forums where people can say whatever they want do exist in Japan and Korea, and they are quite popular. They are places where people compete to be the bigger racist, the bigger maker of personal attacks against whoever they don't like. The real purpose of a government-made Google is to foster the blind chauvinism and direct it against foreigners, instead of questioning the country's social problems.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: When Freedom Doesn't Help
As a result of a business relationship I am involved in I am becoming very concerned over just how wide a gap there is between the views of WASPs (like me) and the views of South Asians (Hindus and Sikhs) on the importance of honesty; what it means to be "honest"; what is true and what is not true; what is real and what is not real. This is not an abstract epistimological concern but a real, immediate, practical concern involving several million dollars.
Are there any good books or articles out there that would help me understand the South Asian approach to "truth".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Can't Beat the Free Market
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
twenty years
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I think however where they might have succeeded in cars for example, is where the American 3 were riddled with government interference ... perhaps Japans way is not wise, however its not interference in an industry - its interference in an otherwise nonexistant company.
What do I know though? In Europe, we love Ford so ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]