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The end of January means it’s time for the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos where various government and business luminaries get together and swap purple prose. Microsoft’s Bill Gates took some ribbing in the press this week for his claim at Davos in 2004 that “spam would be solved” within two years. Microsoft says it has, sort of:
To “solve” the problem for consumers in the short run doesn’t require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees the company’s anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor.
In that way, Hamlin said, Gates’ prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology. Microsoft’s MSN Hotmail says it stops more than 95 percent of the spam that enters its system from reaching in-boxes.
Based on my Hotmail account, the remaining 5 percent is more than half of the mail that reaches me, but I digress.
Since the spam prediction has “expired,” it was only fitting that Mr. Gates offer up a new prediction this year at Davos and he did not disappoint - Gates: beating Asia piracy to take 10 yrs:
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said on Friday that beating software piracy in China and India and getting compliance up to U.S. and European levels would take 10 years.
“In India and China it will be a decade before we get that level,” Gates told business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“But as long as there is year-by-year progress, it holds a great opportunity for us in terms of scale, which helps us do more, and it’s a great place where we have people working for us.”
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Industry analysts have long dubbed China the world’s de facto capital of piracy. Illicit copying is a plague for software vendors and other manufacturers of hi-tech products, such as pharmaceuticals.In the long term, Gates said, both China and India would respect intellectual property as they shifted from simply being low-cost manufacturing centers to developing their own technologically advanced products.
Apparently offshoring to India and China is a hot topic in Davos this year and Gates also said it was inevitable that Microsoft would move more work over there although he expected that in 10 years, Microsoft would still do most of its research and development work in the United States.
Zhu Shenshen at the Shanghai Daily:
Microsoft Corp will invest more than US$100 million annually in the next three to five years in China to strengthen research and development, facing mounting pressure from expansion in the country by Internet giants Google and Yahoo!.
The software giant established a new research group yesterday in Beijing to integrate the Microsoft Research Asia Advanced Technology Center (ATC), the China Technology Center (CTC) and the MSN Technologies (China) into the new unit.
The investment will mainly be channeled into mobile communications, Internet and digital entertainment sectors. But a major portion of the funds will be used to recruit more talents, according to Yaqin Zhang, Microsoft’s vice president and the center’s president.
Microsoft planned to hire a total of 3,000 people in Microsoft China R&D Group Center by the end of 2008 compared with the current 800 employed.
The AFP rendition of this story mentions the ongoing criticism of Microsoft for helping the Chinese government stifle dissent. Microsoft continues to draw continued unfavorable press in that regard. Some recent examples are Business Week’s How China Controls the Internet and The Great Firewall of China and the Washington Post’s Business, and Repression, as Usual. There will undoubtedly be more when the planned Congressional hearings get started.
Update: Microsoft has issued a clarification:
Microsoft Corp said annual spending in China on research and development remained at 100 million dollars and no additional investment would be made as state press indicated earlier.
“Microsoft’s investment in all China related R and D activities currently stands at 100 million dollars per year,” Microsoft spokesman Mathieu Collette said in a statement.
Microsoft, TCS and Chinese firms cook up software deal:
The negotiations for the creation of a mega-software outsourcing company by Chinese companies, India’s software giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Microsoft are expected to be concluded in one month, giving China’s ambition to develop its software industry a big boost.
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Grabbing the Chinese domestic market has been an ambition for TCS, so in order to get easier market access, it decided to form a joint venture with companies backed by the State.“The biggest benefit for us is to get a bigger access into the Chinese market,” said V. Rajanna, general manager of Tata Information Technology (Shanghai) Co Ltd.
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According to a report by the Beijing-based Economic Observer newspaper published on Monday, TCS is expected to take a 65 per cent stake in the proposed venture, with Microsoft and three Chinese firms designated by the National Development and Reform Commission sharing the remaining amount.
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The joint venture aims to have 8,000 developers in five years, which will further expand to 10,000 in seven years.The biggest Chinese software outsourcing company today has about 2,000 people.
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The Economic Observer reported 90 per cent of the work of the proposed firm will be export-oriented, but that was denied by Rajanna, who said the focus will be both on the domestic and overseas markets.
Microsoft invests $13 mln in IT company in software:
The American Microsoft corporation has injected 13 million U.S. dollars in a Chinese IT company to develop softwares, according to sources of the Chinese company.
In August of 2005, Microsoft and the Jinan-based Langchao Groupin east China’s Shandong Province struck a 25-million-U.S.-dollars agreement to produce softwares for Chinese customers.
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The remaining investment of 12 million U.S. dollars will be in place by June 2006, said sources with Langchao Group.
Of course, there’s always another side to the ledger in dealing with the Chinese government. Rebecca Mackinnon, a Research Fellow at the Havard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, reports that Microsoft’s MSN apparently took down the blog of Zhao Jing who was doing more investigative reporting than was appreciated by the government. Microsoft’s Robert Scoble looks into the case, offers him blog space, and has an followup.
Bill Gates was only expected to announce a $1 billion Microsoft investment in India during his visit this week, but it turned out to be $1.7 billion and 3,000 new jobs. Rajesh Mahapatra at the AP:
Microsoft Corp. plans to invest $1.7 billion in India and add 3,000 jobs in the country over the next four years, nearly doubling the world’s largest software company’s work force here, Chairman Bill Gates said Wednesday.
Microsoft Corp. has long viewed India, a country of 1 billion people with a robust economy, as a potentially huge market, and the investment would be one of the single largest by an information technology company in India.
Much of the money would go toward improving the software giant’s research and development capabilities, including the creation of a new facility in the southern city of Bangalore, India’s technology hub, Microsoft said in a statement.
It’s not clear exactly how the pot will be divided between offshoring, outsourcing, sales, and marketing. Besides the above article’s “much of the money” going to R&D, there were other opinions:
John Ribeiro at InfoWorld:
The funds will be spent on Microsoft’s development operations in India and other areas in line with the company’s strategic vision for India, Gates told reporters in Delhi.
Ribeiro in a separate article:
Microsoft currently has 4,000 staff in India, and plans to increase that figure to 7,000 over the next three to four years, Gates said. It is not, however, clear whether the staff will be all employed by Microsoft or will also include staff at outsourcing companies in India that do work for Microsoft.
Shailendra Bhatnagar at Reuters:
About half of the money would be spent on its existing research and development centre, its global software delivery unit and expanding to 33 more cities by opening retail outlets.
Chris Noon at Forbes riffs on Bill Gates’ rock star status in India and echoes the first Ribeiro article above:
Gates said the $1.7 billion investment “would be deployed across select focus areas over the next four years in line with Microsoft’s strategic vision for India”.
And the last is probably as clear as it is really going to get.
