A mobile Internet bust on the cards ?

Most venture capitalists will tell you that mobile data, accessed by consumers using mobile handsets, is the next big market worldwide. People will use their mobiles to access their mail, do search, social networking, instant messaging, and even blog from their mobile phones. So venture capital has flowed into companies that develop all kinds of mobile applications that will improve the “mobile Internet experience”.

Yahoo’s co-founder David Filo took the hype a little further earlier this year when he said he expected that most people in emerging economies like India would have their first experience of the Internet using mobile phones. The logic, I guess, is that India has been adding between 5 to 7 million new mobile phone users each month, but far fewer new PCs.

But most of the new phones have not been added for Internet connectivity, but plain telephony, and I often wonder how thousands of Indians, whose literacy doesn’t go beyond the ability of dialing a telephone number, are going to find any use for goodies from the Internet.

For those who would like to access the Internet on the move, the better option is a laptop which is not a lot expensive if you need the Internet badly, and you can afford the full-featured PDAs that offer Internet access and other bells and whistles with a mobile phone. Why would an user struggle to enter mail on a PDA when he has the full-blown laptop option, or he can go a cyber café ?

To be sure the mobility is important, but frankly is there any fun in squinting into a miniature browser to read the daily news, or a research report, or a sales report, while at the same time worrying how much that download could be costing you. The moment you decide on mobile Internet, you are talking of costs by the kilobyte, not megabytes, because that is the way the service provider charges you. So browsing for fun on your mobile is an absolute no-no, unless you have a corporate account, and the accounts folks are looking the other way.

I picked up a PDA a few days ago, and I do not use the browser on my mobile to go to my favorite web sites, or download my mail, because it is a lot more expensive than when I am at my laptop, and it is far slower too.

As I would be paying big bucks for a lousy experience, I use the Internet capability on my PDA mainly for emergencies. That certainly doesn’t make me the darling of my service provider. Lots of folks like me can cripple the business plans of those who swear by the mobile Internet.

My friends scoff at me for picking up a PDA and Internet data plan from my mobile provider. Just what is it that I do that requires me to have instant access to my mail or to the Internet ? Can’t it wait say 30 minutes to an hour ? Does it give me a competitive edge ? Or will it only ensure that I lose my eyesight earlier than usual, squinting into the small screen of the mobile phone ?

The data seems to bear my friends out. Yankee Group, a Boston research firm, show that only 13 percent of cell phone users in North America use their phones to surf the Web more than once a month, while 70 percent of computer users view Web sites every day, according to this report in the New York Times.

Data is clearly not a hot application yet on the mobile. The New York Times quotes in the same report an analyst from Rethink Research, who said data would make up only 12 percent of average revenue per user in 2007, far below the expected 50 percent. The 12 percent figure does not include text messaging.

For users of mobile phones to use mobile Internet for one its prices have to hit basement levels, and bandwidth has to improve. That would require service providers to increase their capital outlays even as they have to cut on unit charges. But that is not all. For new users of the Internet there has to be a compelling application on the mobile that will make them embrace the Internet on a mobile phone rather than on the desktop or laptop. For traditional Internet users like me, who use the Internet for work, the Internet on the mobile phone can only be a tool for an emergency.

For now the mobile Internet seems to be the stuff mainly of marketing spiels, and big dreams that may go awry.

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Yahoo’s settlement with families of Chinese dissidents may not change its ways in China

Internet company Yahoo Inc. has settled a lawsuit brought by the families of a Chinese dissident and a journalist, who claim they were jailed after the company cooperated with Chinese authorities, according to a report in CNN.

Yahoo's decision to settle comes a week after the company was criticized in Congress, with one congressman accusing the company of being moral pygmies. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, said at a hearing.

Yahoo and other Internet companies have maintained that to operate in countries like China they have to play by local rules. This stand has however come in for criticism that when it comes to business interests, Internet companies like Yahoo and Google give democratic norms the go by.

In this instance, the Chinese government demanded from Yahoo the name of the account holder who was using a Yahoo account to send out pro-democracy documents, and Yahoo complied.

Tom Lantos called on Internet companies to "resist any attempts by authoritarian regimes to make them complicit in cracking down on free speech, otherwise they simply should not do business in those markets", according to this report by the Associated Press.

In interviews, Yahoo executives have said that their refusal to comply could land their local employees in China in trouble. They add that the technologies for online community and sharing that they offer will in the final analysis promote democracy in countries run by repressive regimes.

There may be some merit to this argument. During the violent repression in Myanmar earlier this year, the Internet has proven to be an useful conduit to the world for people to communicate the atrocities to the rest of the world. Even as Pakistan places curbs on traditional media and television in Pakistan, the Internet has emerged as a key alternative.

Yahoo and other Internet companies have argued that it is not for one company to challenge the system in China. It requires an inter-governmental resolution between the US and Chinese governments.

It is not clear at this point whether the settlement by Yahoo reflects a change in the company’s position on how it operates in China. At this point it seems that the company settled to avoid further embarrassment and scrutiny in the US.

The company may now be in a better position legally in the US after it handed over the management of its Chinese operations to Alibaba.com in which Yahoo has a 40 percent stake. It is now more likely to argue that it has no control over Alibaba.com in which it holds a minority stake.

AOL: business is fine, but sorry you are sacked

The pink slips are flying at AOL as the company tries to make a transition from a subscription-based ISP (Internet Service Provider) to an advertisement supported portal company.

Over the next couple of months, AOL will lay off 2,000 people out of a worldwide workforce of 10,000, according to a letter to company employees sent by CEO Randy Falco today, said a report in The Washington Post. These staff reductions begin Tuesday.

In a mail to AOL employees, Falco said, “Importantly, we're taking the business global. We're extending AOL's reach into seven new countries this year while globalizing our product development efforts. By the end of next year, AOL will have a presence in 30 countries. That's a remarkable achievement in a relatively short period of time”.

For all his self congratulation, Falco by expanding into other markets may be over-committing AOL, taking it further down the tube. Outside the US, AOL does not have a strong brand or the stickiness that a portal requires. In the US, a lot of users still swear by AIM, AOL’s Instant Messenger, and some use its email service too.

But in most other countries, instant messengers and email services from Yahoo Inc., MSN, and Google Inc. already have a head start. These are the applications that generally bring users to a portal.

Unless AOL comes up with a new killer application, there isn’t a way they can dislodge the current players in each market. Many countries have their own very strong local players.

AOL.com has a traffic rank of 51 to Yahoo.com’s first place, according to traffic rankings from Alexa Internet Inc.

That is our child on the advertisement !

At the risk of sounding immodest, I have a cute toddler, and often at malls or other public places, folks pull out their mobile phones, with built-in cameras, and take a snap of the child. Sometimes, they ask permission, which we have never given. But most often they just take snaps surreptitiously.

My concern throughout is what happens if the snap is used for commercial purposes. When are my wife and I going to spot a picture of our child advertising something or the other on the side of a bus or on a bill board or a newspaper ad ? I am sure this is a nightmare for many other parents around the world.

So what would be the legal recourse in this situation ? If we sue the advertiser, he will most probably turn around and say that he has got permission to use the snap because he has bought the copyright from the person who took the snap.

The gray area, on which there is still considerable debate, is whether for a shot taken at a public place, does the advertiser need to take permission from my daughter, or her parents since she is a minor, to use the snap ? Let me emphasize that this is no longer about copyright, but about a person's right to privacy, and the law does not appear to be uniform across all countries.

I think under current rules, the copyright of the photographer is protected but not the privacy of the people who appear in snaps of public places. That is why TV crews can have cameras in Times Square on New Year's Eve, or at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and beam the footage worldwide, without so much as a by your leave.

There are those who would argue, and I tend to agree with them, that there would never be any photojournalism if the TV crews or photographers had to take permission of all the folks snapped at every public event they cover, including a visit by the Pope, the swearing-in of the US President, an accident, or on the war front.

But I do believe that, even where the law does not prescribe it, advertisers should take permission from a person that figures prominently, or is featured, in the snap. Even if the person is smiling into the camera, which could imply tacit permission to having a snap taken, it may not mean that the person has agreed to the snap being taken for commercial use.

I am not discussing here misuse of snaps by pedophiles and other underworld types because there are separate laws to deal with that. My concern is about the commercial use of snaps taken in public places, that could offend one or more of the people who are in the snap.

In this connection there seems to be a gray area as is evident from this report in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia’s Virgin Mobile phone company has been sued by a Texas family, after Virgin put up photos of their teenage daughter on billboards and website advertisements without her consent.

The snap, according to the family, was taken from Yahoo Inc.’s Flickr photo-sharing web-site. It had been put up there by the photographer, the girl’s youth counsellor, using a Creative Commons that allows others to reuse work such as photos without violating copyright laws, if they credit the photographer and say where the photo was taken, according to the SMH report. A link to the counsellor’s Flickr page appears at the bottom of the ad.

It may be argued that the Creative Commons license allowed Virgin Mobile to use the snap. Virgin also provided a link to its source on the Flickr page, which could be construed as giving the photographer credit. But did it do the right thing by the girl in the picture ? Was it correct to use the snap out of its context ? Should the girl sue Virgin or the photographer, who incidentally is a friend ? Who violated her privacy ? To find out how this discussion unfolds, check out this Flickr forum.

Google Reader now multilingual

Google Inc. is offering multi-lingual support on its Google Reader, its web-based news feed reader.

Google Reader, which was only available in English, from Sept 18 supports French, Italian, German, Spanish, English (UK), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, and Korean.

The multi-lingual support for Google Reader is in line with the strategy of Google and other Internet companies like Yahoo Inc. to offer multi-lingual support for most of their services and tools, to make their services relevant in non-English speaking markets.

Blogs have also become an international phenomenon, and they are not constrained by language or nationality, wrote Google’s Product Marketing Manager Kevin Systrom on Google’s blog. In fact, blogs have become an important way to bring rise to independent reporters and writers, and there are more and more people who wish to read blogs in other languages, Systrom said.