Message to China: Stop Carving Up Cyberspace with Boundaries

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My fellow readers, I am sure you have been following every last little detail concerning the China-based hacker attack on Google and as many as 34 other companies, including Adobe Systems Inc., Juniper Networks and Yahoo. As a result of the cyber attack and the fact that the China government continues to force Google to neuter searches, Google has threatened to pull out of China.

This is a very critical juncture in the history of international business but it's not the first time a company has walked away from China. Levi Strauss & Co., 17 years ago did too, and returned. Funny thing, Levi's brand is currently made in China and they just opened their 501st retail store in Beijing last November. What happened in between? Take a look at this.

But this predicament is different -- far more public thanks to the Internet (go Google!) -- and will most likely bring foreign-policy implications. It will be interesting to see what happens when Google shuts off the valve in China on censoring search results and how fast China's government blocks or shuts down Google.cn, if at all.

In the course of determining what really happened, we will unveil more evidence of weird things going on.
Needless to say I admire and respect Google's bold move here (tough place to be but I always like to see people/companies take a public stand, exhibit backbone and show a strong sense of world good) and it's in line with this fine commentary, appropriately entitled, "Google Gets on the Right Side of History," written by Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow with the Open Society Institute.

My feeling is you can't be part pregnant; and when you are Google, you most certainly can't be part-search engine in China.

We'll keep you posted.

An Inside Peak at Google Chicago

©2014 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

I had the amazing opportunity to participate in an event for the Women Presidents' Organization Chicago on September 11th that was hosted by Google Chicago headquarters.  Full disclosure:  I serve as the Chicago Chapter Chair for WPO.

At the event (meeting room as shown), Google experts talked about:

•  The importance of staying connected to the consumer - anywhere, anytime and on any device.
•  How Google's many tools can help grow your business globally.
•  Why mobile is an imperative to your organization's global growth.
•  Why Google Analytics and Google Adwords should be tracked, measured and leveraged constantly to better manage your global small business.

Google most certainly abides by their unofficial slogan, "Don't be evil."

For related posts on Google, visit here.

There They Go Again: China Blocks Google

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The Chinese government blocked Google's major services late last week.

The ban shows that companies that espouse the free flow of information aren’t always welcome around the world, and they have to plan for the possibility that they might be shut down at any given moment. Google’s own stats showed a sharp decline in traffic from China, affecting everything from search to Gmail, Google’s email service. The Google Play mobile app store was also inaccessible from within China. Services returned in some parts of the country on Saturday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Cause?  You decide.

Read:  The risks of going global?  Google's web sites banned in China (again)

Read ALL related Global Small Business Blog posts here.

Related blog post from GreatFire.org:  Google.com blocked in China

Google Pay Goes Global Thanks to Colossal Success in India

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Bullish on Google Pay and its rising adoption in India, Alphabet has taken cues from the successful experience in India and would soon roll out its revamped digital payments product globally.

Two years after debuting in India, Google's digital payment platform Google Pay hit 67 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India in September last year, driving transactions worth over $110 billion on an annualized basis with hundreds of thousands of offline and online merchants.

Don't we wish we could all scale our businesses like this!

"The vast majority of India's over 60 million small businesses are still not benefiting from the growing digital economy," says Ambarish Kenghe, Director, Product Management, Google Pay.

That is about to change.  Read more about how Google Pay goes global.

What Is Google Ad Manager, and How Do You Sign Up?

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Google Ad Manager helps you grow ad revenue and protect your brand wherever people are watching, playing or engaging.

Signing up for Google Ads is painless. You can do it right on the Google Ads website, which walks you through it step by step.  The Get Started button first asks you how many page views you have on a monthly basis:  less than 1 million or more than 1 million.

Learn more about Google Ad capabilities.

Google Has Begun Beta Testing Live Caption Translations

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Starting now, Google Workspace users can beta test the new live caption translations, which takes Google's accessibility feature to the next level with auto-translation across languages.  Google Meet could improve meetings for teams that collaborate globally.

The beta is relatively limited and will only translate English meetings in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German.  It may not have the highest translation quality.  

Read on:  Google Meet tests live translated captions for more inclusive collaboration.

Watch Out World: Google Is Out To Help Small Businesses Go Global

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Google has launched two new services to help small businesses go global:

Google Global Market Finder
Go Global with Google

And I love this statement:

There are 1.9 billion Internet users worldwide. Wouldn’t you like to add them as customers?

Posted by:  Laurel Delaney for The Global Small Business Blog

How to Create Passionate Lifelong Learners Around the World

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How do you encourage students the world over to come up with an idea that is their own and belongs to no one else?  It goes like this.

So search engine giant Google had this neat idea a few years ago to allow its engineers to spend 20% of their time working on things that really interested them – the goal being to inspire creativity and indirectly increase productivity. Some significant innovations came out of Google’s 20% time. Well-publicized “20% products” have included things such as Google News, G-mail, and AdSense.

Classrooms the world over should be able to create passionate, lifelong learners the same way Google has.

It starts with empowering students to embrace their own learning. It's called a "Genius Time" concept.

Read more here.

Bing vs. Google on "I Love You"

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John Yunker at Global by Design elaborates on the difference between using Bing (owned by Microsoft) versus Google on a simple search string translation of the words: "I love you."

Read more here.

Why not just go straight to: Bing translator?
Or how about Google translator?

Full disclosure: I'm a HUGE Google fan (no affiliation whatsoever). John is a Microsoft program manager and co-founder of Byte Level Research.

Market Domination: Amazon or Google?

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Google has disrupted an area which Amazon dominates with its alternative e-commerce platform, Google Shopping.

Is this good news?  According to Kyle C. Murphy, practitioner faculty of strategy at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, who knows e-commerce inside out, it is. 

Below he offers insights as to how smaller companies can profit.

Learn more about how Google and Amazon's competition is a win for smaller e-commerce companies.

Grow Global with Google

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Google has always offered tips and tools on how to build an online presence.  But in this case, listen in on Google's President of Global Customer Solutions, Mary Ellen Coe, who shares specific tips to help your small business grow.

Grow your global small business with Google.

Google Considers Going Global with YouTube TV

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Riding a wave of success brought by NFL Sunday Ticket, Google executives have considered opening YouTube TV to a market outside the U.S. 

“It is something we are closely looking at,” said Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler. “There’s nothing specific I have to add at this moment in time on this one.” 

 “YouTube TV is doing well,” added Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. “They’ve had great consumer feedback on the experience. [NFL Sunday Ticket] has found its perfect home on YouTube.”

Learning a Language?

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Holy cow! Google has added an amazing 285 languages to its Translator Toolkit which brings the total number of languages to 345.

Google says its focusing on minority languages. This includes regional, heritage, indigenous, and threatened languages. Google wants to help preserve these lesser known languages so that these smaller cultures won't be forgotten as history constantly unfolds.

One of the minority languages is Māori. Read more here.

Google Gone Global Once Again

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Google Talk (VoIP service) is expanding its phone call service beyond the United States to more than 150 locations around the world in 38 languages.  No kidding.  No connection fees.  Pay only for talk time.

Many small businesses are turning to Skype to cut telephony costs, but with Google offering a lower-cost alternative, businesses and consumers may soon reap the benefits of increased competition.  

Learn more here.

Upskilling and Educating SMEs in Ireland

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Staying Ahead Digital Roadshow, the second in a series of events held by Google in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, aims to upskill and educate Irish SMEs in reaching new customers, expanding their businesses, and future-proofing their operations for a digital world.

Fionnuala Meehan, Head of Google Ireland, says:

“With only 17% of Irish businesses selling across borders online, we see huge opportunities for Irish SMEs to be innovative in the digital marketplace and to become exporters of goods and services. We know that companies with a strong online presence will grow twice as fast and employ twice as many people as those with a minimal or no web presence, and at a time of uncertainty – now more than ever – we believe it is important that Irish SMEs are supported in getting online to build more successful and sustainable businesses.”

Read more about how Google is on the road in Cork, Ireland to to help SMEs stay ahead.

A Crackdown by China's Web Censors; But Wait, There's More!

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Google's search sites in China abruptly stopped working earlier this week, but the explanation for the outage got a little loosey goosey as the day wore on. The Internet technology powerhouse first blamed itself, noting a technical change, but later reversed course and pointed to the heavy hand of China’s “Great Firewall" -- even as service appeared to be back to normal.

Read Google Runs Into China's "Great Firewall" over at the AllThingsD.

What do you think is really going on?

Then, I read the following and find it terribly unsettling yet fascinating at the same time:

Why Foreigners Can't Win in China

And to top that off, which I didn't think was possible, I catch this disturbing piece related not to Google-China relations but to China, the country itself, that makes me want to never ever write about China again:

China Body-Dumping Case Highlights Clash of Values (I'll say)

All of this gives us an idea of the country and the people we are negotiating with.

Posted by: The Global Small Business Blog

New Phase of Economic Recovery: Tech World Rising

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As the global economy mends, business spending on technology goods and services is returning -- at least that is what Ben Worthen and Don Clark claim in "Tech Spending Bounces Back as Profits Rise," published in the Wall Street Journal.

The tech world according to Cisco:

The economy has entered a new "phase of the recovery," said John Chambers, Cisco's chief executive, in a call with analysts, adding that he planned to hire up to 3,000 workers in coming quarters. "This is one of the most robust positive turnarounds I've seen in my career," he added.

The tech world according to Google:

Before he (Google CEO Eric Schmidt) got into the nitty-gritty of this year’s outlook, Google announced that revenue was up 17 percent in Q4 2009 ($6.7 billion) and up $23.65 billion for all of 2009 (for a net income of $6.5 billion).

The tech world according to NetSuite:

Having had a dreadful start to 2009, NetSuite announced record earning for the fourth quarter and year ended 31st December, 2009. From the release:
“Total revenue for the year was $166.5 million, a year-over-year increase of 9%. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $43.0 million. Revenue from the Americas for the fourth quarter of 2009 was $35.0 million, while revenue from international regions was $8.0 million. NetSuite added approximately 295 new customers in the fourth quarter.

The tech world according to IBM:

Moreover, IBM's full-year 2009 earnings of $10.01 per share were up 13% year over year, and net income of $13.4 billion rose 9% from fiscal year 2008. Earnings for the year were a record, despite the worldwide recession. Full-year earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $9.88 per share, as well as the company's own guidance of $9.85 per share.
The company's spectacular amount of new services contract signings and a pick up in corporate IT spending figured into the improved guidance for fiscal 2010. Historically, IBM has raised its guidance for almost every quarter in the last two years. For fiscal year 2010, the company again raised its EPS guidance to $11 per share, up from a previously expected $10-$11 per share range last month.

The tech world according to Microsoft:

Microsoft posted a bigger-than-expected 60 percent increase in quarterly profit on Thursday, helped by strong sales of Windows 7, and said it expected business technology spending to recover this year.
The company said net profit came to $6.7 billion, or 74 cents a share, up from $4.2 billion, or 47 cents a share, a year earlier.

The tech world according to Apple:

For the three-month period ending Dec. 29, 2009, Apple posted earnings of $3.4 billion, on a revenue of $15.7. Compared to the year-ago figures of $11.9 billion, that amounts to $2.3 billion in net quarterly profit.
Apple shipped 8.7 million iPhones — more than double compared to the year-ago quarter — and 3.4 million Macintosh computers, up 33% from a year earlier.

Consider it a tech revival. Are you ready?

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A Chat With Eric Schmidt on China and Censorship

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Newsweek's Fareer Zakaria has a conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt about doing business in China despite the restrictions that Beijing imposes on Internet freedom.

Excerpt here:

Why did you make this decision? It surprised many people and many companies.
Google is a different kind of company than many others. The issue of operating in China was always complex for us. We were asked to accept a system of censorship that we were very uncomfortable with. But we had come to the conclusion that operating in China was better for everyone—us, the Chinese people—than staying out of the country. We have decided that we cannot participate in censorship anymore.

Read the entire interview here.

You might also check out Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.'s commentary in the WSJ (1/22/10): China, Google and the Cloud Wars (very interesting)

Refer to our blog post 1/19/10: Message to China: Stop Carving Up Cyberspace with Boundaries

To Go Global, Improve Your Online Presence

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There is $50 billion in untapped business potential out there, which businesses could get a share of if they improved their online presence,” says Richard Flanigan, Google's head of small business marketing in Australia.

Small Business: Digital Growth, new PwC analysis commissioned by Google, found that this myth is preventing Australian small businesses from realizing their growth prospects and future economic gain. The research, which is powered by PwC’s innovative Geospatial Economic Model (GEM), discovered that embracing digital and mobile technology could help small businesses unlock an additional $49.2 billion of untapped economic potential over the next 10 years.

Learn more:  Google head of small business to speak with Darwin businesses at Skycity next week (9/3/15).

Small Businesses in the United States Are Driving Ad Spend Growth Globally

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Small businesses in the United States are driving ad spend growth globally.  How or why is that?  A lot has to do with self-serve and cost-efficient ad buying tools from the duopoly between Facebook and Google.

While small businesses haven’t yet begun advertising heavily on social media outside of the United States, Zenith [from Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith] expects the same dynamic to take off in other markets soon.

Learn more about how small business drives global ad spend growth and why the duopoly between Facebook and Google reaps the rewards.