Google's Eric Schmidt Lands In India;Tells Govt To Stop Internet Control
Bangalore: Google’s Executive chairman Eric Schmidt was in Bangalore, on his maiden trip to India, spending four hours at the Google Office in the city.
Besides his interaction with the employees, Schmidt has made a move forward calling the government to limit internet control and also focus on technology that can help the population and local business in his open article to the TOI. He has also appealed to the government to change its focus towards the positive side about the internet. Schmidt is however already in India preparing to speak at The Guardian’s Big Tent Activate India Event in New Delhi on March 21.
For the past eighteen months, India has invested heavily trying to police the web. It has forced companies to open their networks to in a bid to stifle its growing problem with terrorism and other serious crimes.
However, Schmidt has focused his editorial on choice between open and closed web. He emphasizes on the internet being the answer to the needs of different people. In the next ten years, almost one billion of the world’s new Internet users will come online in India he points out.
With regards to free and open web, the past ten years have seen that information can be accessed easily, with economic, social and political openness. Schmidt has also cited the benefits of distance learning, video communication and more with Google programs in India – The Google+ Hangout with the country’s finance minister and Women Entrepreneurs on the Web. He has also argued that the internet can enable local businesses and startups and if India plays its card right, engineers and businesses will soon tackle the country’s local problems.
The chairman has clearly stated a point here that India’s situation would improve and that the country would earn dividends with internet growth. With regards to the China’s policies on internet censorship, he said that not all parts of the internet are good but in seeking to control it, Indians could be stopped from doing great things.
