Google and Charm
May 17, 2011
I read in my hard copy edition of the New York Times about Google’s relying on an attorney to be a diplomat. You may be able to locate the story “Google Turns On Charm to Win Over Europeans” online at http://goo.gl/6pLFs but don’t email me if the link goes dead. (Traditional media outfits are great at being “real” journalists. Keeping information findable and making money, well, those functions are still up in the air in my opinion.)
What struck me as interesting about the story was that the killer prose walked a narrow path through the information mine field:
- What’s up with Google’s contentious situation in Switzerland?
- Is this diplomacy going to ameliorate Google’s legal hassles with nation states on every continent except Antarctica?
- Will the diplomacy method fix up Google’s situation in China, the world’s largest market?
- Will the Google charm help stabilize Google’s situation in the US on a number of issues, including the handling of certain types of advertisements.
The story did mention Germany. One question that occurred to me was, “Is it too late for rapprochement?” US diplomacy often settles on money and other fungible methods. Another was, “Is Google acting like a company or is the company still wearing its nation-state T shirt?”
Stephen E Arnold, May 17, 2011
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