Prime minister Brown backs Google
19 May 2008 | 20:44 BST
Belittles Microsoft
PRIME MINISTER Gordon Brown today hailed Google as an example for the world in its struggles with recession, oppressive dictators, and poverty.
In a speech that read like a tacit disapproval of convicted monopolist Microsoft, Brown banged on before an audience of business bigwigs about the stupidity of protectionism.
He said the model of openness integral to the internet and enshrined by the likes of Google was an example to be replicated on the international stage, in politics and economics.
"You stand for an open and non-protectionist economy," he said. "The only way the net and the new technology can work is if there is openness and we are not protectionist".
To illustrate his point he spoke of the convergence of telephone, television and computer technologies. This was the fruit of an open, non-protectionist economy.
He omitted to mention the fertilizer that makes these fruits, the dirty business of the open standards that paved the way for convergence and formed the foundations of t'internet. Offences to that same principle of openness is what landed Microsoft with a $2.5billion fine from the European Commission, as well as an ongoing battle with those who claim it continues to use the protectionist tactic of proprietary standards to maintain its global dominance of the software industry.
People of Brown's class would think it improper of him to mention Microsoft directly, even though the British government, via its education technology quango, has taken its fight against Microsoft's protectionist practices to the competition regulators.
And Brown's vision of openness concerned matters too grandiose to acknowledge the nitty-gritty that underpins them. But his message was clear, and it traced a direct correlation from open standards, to open technologies, to open economies, societies and politics.
He touted a "vision of globalisation" that drew its defining characteristics from the internet industry: openness, flexibility, inclusiveness, and empowerment. His ideal world was one in which the barriers between peoples were broken with open communication, with the unencumbered trade of ideas and goods.
"The lessons we learn from the success of this industry are the lessons we are all to learn if we are going to make globalisation work for the future," he said.
Brown subscribes to an economic theory that believes that the economic protectionism behind which people hunker down in times of recession just prolongues their recovery. So he appealed to the universal, inclusive interests that he thought should unite all people in times of hardship, instead of merely those with vested interests, like those in the protectionist oil and food industries that have been having so many problems.
But Brown hedged his bets and stopped short of criticising Microsoft. Instead he made a cheap swipe at anti-globalisation protesters, who he snubbed as " losers not winners" in defiance of his own call for inclusiveness, and in illustration of his own sort of protectionism, that of the interests of big business. µ
© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007