Google and The Economist

... what sort of a twerp would agree?

Google Reader is a service that was offered by Google which has now been discontinued. Or as the Economist put it on 21 March 2013:

GOOGLE is killing Google Reader ... Google Reader has been mourned over, angrily at times, ...

"Killing"? "Mourned"? "Angrily"? A bit melodramatic, surely. But not as melodramatic as one Google Reader murder report quoted in the Economist article:

Google is in the process of abandoning its mission. Google's stated mission is to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. RSS is a way that a small number of us organize our information. Google no longer cares. It seems what they care about is mass-markets...

"Abandoning its mission"? "Google no longer cares"? Any minute now, you sense, someone is going to accuse Google of not understanding them, before stamping their foot, walking out and slamming the door behind them, their lip quivering with helpless indignation at the unfairness of Google's behaviour.

There is no justification for this indignation, as the writer acknowledges:

[Google] hasn't done this because we're its customers, it's worth remembering. We aren't; we're the products Google sells to its customers, the advertisers.

But that doesn't stop him or her from moaning ...

Google has asked us to build our lives around it: to use its e-mail system (which, for many of us, is truly indispensible), its search engines, its maps, its calendars, its cloud-based apps and storage services, its video- and photo-hosting services, and on and on and on.

... and impotently threatening Google ...

Yanking away services beloved by early adopters almost guarantees that critical masses can't be obtained: not, at any rate, without the provision of an incentive or commitment mechanism to protect the would-be users from the risk of losing a vital service ... in the long run that's a problem for Google.

... before finally turning back to Nanny:

Once they [network externalities which have been ignored] concern large swathes of economic output and the cognitive activity of millions of people, it is difficult to keep the government out ... I find myself thinking again of the brave new world of the industrial city ... the history of modern urbanisation is littered with examples of privately provided goods and services that became the domain of the government once everyone realised that this new life and new us couldn't work without them.

The Economist used once to be rational to the point of ruthlessness. It is the duty of a company to discontinue services that don't make a profit, the Economist would then have said, that's the only way to keep the business honest.

It's not Google's duty to "protect the would-be users from the risk of losing a vital service", Google Reader isn't a vital service, what on earth is the writer doing describing it as "beloved", Google hasn't asked anyone to build their lives around its services and, even if Google did ask, what sort of a twerp would agree?

Google isn't abandoning its mission. It's pursuing it. With precisely the rigorous logic that seems now to have deserted the Economist.

Time was when the Economist's mission was to bully the world into behaving rationally. Now they just want to quiver with self-pity. Which they call "rearranging our mental architecture".

That narcissism is a problem. Google and a few other companies (the latter-day Pied Pipers of Hamelin) exercise considerable and growing power:

What Google has actually done is create a powerful infrastructure. The shape of that infrastructure influences everything that goes online. And it influences the allocation of mental resources of everyone who interacts with the online world ... That's a lot of power to put in the hands of a company that now seems interested, mostly, in identifying core mass-market services it can use to maximise its return on investment.

Some people see the web as the key to transforming government in the 21st century – the old Economist could have helped to temper that uncritical, star-struck naïvety.

In the UK, the Government Digital Service work every day to transfer power from the government to the Pied Pipers – the old Economist could have restrained the projected embrace of web-enabled totalitarianism.

As it is, all they can do is bleat about the death of Google Reader:

The bottom line is that the more we all participate in this world, the more we come to depend on it.

Google and The Economist

... what sort of a twerp would agree?

Google Reader is a service that was offered by Google which has now been discontinued. Or as the Economist put it on 21 March 2013:

GOOGLE is killing Google Reader ... Google Reader has been mourned over, angrily at times, ...

"Killing"? "Mourned"? "Angrily"? A bit melodramatic, surely. But not as melodramatic as one Google Reader murder report quoted in the Economist article:

Google is in the process of abandoning its mission. Google's stated mission is to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. RSS is a way that a small number of us organize our information. Google no longer cares. It seems what they care about is mass-markets...

"Abandoning its mission"? "Google no longer cares"? Any minute now, you sense, someone is going to accuse Google of not understanding them, before stamping their foot, walking out and slamming the door behind them, their lip quivering with helpless indignation at the unfairness of Google's behaviour.

GreenInk 5 – The Economist magazine publishes a surprising article

Unpublished:

From: David Moss Sent: 17 January 2012 15:26 To: 'letters@economist.com' Subject: ... seeing what/the man will do/unbribed, there's/no occasion to. http://www.economist.com/comment/1208953#comment-1208953 Sir With their suggestions that only the dimmer Indians have stayed at home, and that Indian men are all ne'er-do-well drunks, and that the blandishments of the snake oil salesmen of the biometrics industry are all credible, last week's articles on India's Unique Identity scheme (14 January 2011: Reform by numbers and The magic number) didn't read like real Economist articles. Were they unflagged advertorials, written by its desperate management, trying to save the fast failing UID project? Yours David Moss

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For information on the Unique Identification of Authority of India and their Aadhaar project, please see India's ID card scheme – drowning in a sea of false positives.

GreenInk 5 – The Economist magazine publishes a surprising article

Unpublished:

From: David Moss Sent: 17 January 2012 15:26 To: 'letters@economist.com' Subject: ... seeing what/the man will do/unbribed, there's/no occasion to. http://www.economist.com/comment/1208953#comment-1208953 Sir With their suggestions that only the dimmer Indians have stayed at home, and that Indian men are all ne'er-do-well drunks, and that the blandishments of the snake oil salesmen of the biometrics industry are all credible, last week's articles on India's Unique Identity scheme (14 January 2011: Reform by numbers and The magic number) didn't read like real Economist articles. Were they unflagged advertorials, written by its desperate management, trying to save the fast failing UID project? Yours David Moss

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For information on the Unique Identification of Authority of India and their Aadhaar project, please see India's ID card scheme – drowning in a sea of false positives.

The Economist magazine's chickens, now on their way home to roost

Normally hard-boiled, The Economist magazine chose to publish a glowing soufflé of a report on the Unique Identification Authority of India in its 14 January 2012 edition. Not surprisingly, this article, The Magic Number, now takes pride of place on UIDAI's website:

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UIDAI website, 1 February 2012

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UIDAI does have its detractors.

"Some of the resistance", The Economist said, "is principled, but much comes from the people who do well out of today’s filthy system. Indian politics hinge on patronage—the doling out of opportunities to rob one’s countrymen. [UIDAI's Aadhaar initiative] would make this harder. That is why it faces such fierce opposition ...".

The resistance to UIDAI at government level comes from the Home Ministry and the Finance Ministry. Are these "the people who do well out of today’s filthy system", as The Economist put it? Are they the ones "doling out of opportunities to rob [their] countrymen"?

The Economist may or may not be wise to jump into bed with UIDAI. But they run the risk – surely quite unnecessarily – of putting some very powerful noses out of joint. No more juicy stories coming their way from the Home Ministry and the Finance Ministry for The Economist any more.

Which is a shame, because there are some good stories around:

• UIDAI are fighting a turf war with the Home Ministry, who have a rival identity management scheme of their own, the National Population Register (NPR).
• And the Finance Ministry were opposed to funding any more work by UIDAI, who were about to run out of money – until the Prime Minister sorted out a (slightly ham-fisted) truce.
• Not only that, but the statutory basis for UIDAI's work is questionable. The National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 still hasn't been enacted.

Why did The Economist do it?

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NB For anyone who reads the articles linked to:

• 1 crore = 10,000,000. 1.2 billion Indians = 1,200,000,000 Indians = 120 crore Indians = 12,000 lakh Indians, because
• 1 lakh = 100,000. 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 1 crore and
• £1 = 78.7618 Rupees

The Economist magazine's chickens, now on their way home to roost

Normally hard-boiled, The Economist magazine chose to publish a glowing soufflé of a report on the Unique Identification Authority of India in its 14 January 2012 edition. Not surprisingly, this article, The Magic Number, now takes pride of place on UIDAI's website:

---

UIDAI website, 1 February 2012

---

UIDAI does have its detractors.

"Some of the resistance", The Economist said, "is principled, but much comes from the people who do well out of today’s filthy system. Indian politics hinge on patronage—the doling out of opportunities to rob one’s countrymen. [UIDAI's Aadhaar initiative] would make this harder. That is why it faces such fierce opposition ...".

The resistance to UIDAI at government level comes from the Home Ministry and the Finance Ministry. Are these "the people who do well out of today’s filthy system", as The Economist put it? Are they the ones "doling out of opportunities to rob [their] countrymen"?

The Economist may or may not be wise to jump into bed with UIDAI. But they run the risk – surely quite unnecessarily – of putting some very powerful noses out of joint. No more juicy stories coming their way from the Home Ministry and the Finance Ministry for The Economist any more.

Which is a shame, because there are some good stories around:

• UIDAI are fighting a turf war with the Home Ministry, who have a rival identity management scheme of their own, the National Population Register (NPR).
• And the Finance Ministry were opposed to funding any more work by UIDAI, who were about to run out of money – until the Prime Minister sorted out a (slightly ham-fisted) truce.
• Not only that, but the statutory basis for UIDAI's work is questionable. The National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 still hasn't been enacted.

Why did The Economist do it?

---

NB For anyone who reads the articles linked to:

• 1 crore = 10,000,000. 1.2 billion Indians = 1,200,000,000 Indians = 120 crore Indians = 12,000 lakh Indians, because
• 1 lakh = 100,000. 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 1 crore and
• £1 = 78.7618 Rupees

The Economist magazine sticks its nose into Indian politics, comes away with egg on its face

After 30 years of reading The Economist, you know what to expect.

The correct answers to most questions are found by letting markets operate freely, as far as The Economist is concerned and politically, that rules out any system that pretends to be able to manage control the economy. The magazine is socially liberal. There's not a hint of racism in it, or sexism – "meritocracy" is the name of the game. Arguments are conducted logically, preferably they're quantitative, the emphasis is on rational management techniques and evidence-based public administration. The magazine is the opposite of insular, open to new ideas wherever they come from, and always up to speed with new technology.

Given which, what on earth happened in the 14 January 2012 edition? It was out of character. Its Scottish Enlightenment body was snatched by aliens. Did The Economist suffer some sort of editorial stroke?

Take a look at The magic number, a leader on Aadhaar, one of India's many identity management schemes, this one operated by the Unique Identification Authority of India, chaired by Nandan Nilekani:

Armed with the system [Aadhaar], India will be able to rethink the nature of its welfare state, cutting back on benefits in kind and market-distorting subsidies, and turning to cash transfers paid directly into the bank accounts of the neediest. Hundreds of millions of the poor must open bank accounts, which is all to the good, because it will bind them into the modern economy. Care must be taken so mothers rather than feckless fathers control funds for their children ... Mr Nilekani harnessed the genius of Indians abroad, including a man who helped the New York Stock Exchange crunch its numbers and one of the brains behind WebMD, an American health IT firm ... India plainly needs better data-protection laws, but even if the existing rules remained unchanged, the threat to liberty would be dwarfed by the gains to welfare: to people who live ten to a room, concerns about privacy sound outlandish. Some of the resistance is principled, but much comes from the people who do well out of today’s filthy system. Indian politics hinge on patronage—the doling out of opportunities to rob one’s countrymen. [Aadhaar] would make this harder. That is why it faces such fierce opposition, and why it could transform India.

According to The Economist then, Indian fathers are feckless but Indian mothers aren't, the Indians who have left the country are brighter than the ones who have stayed at home, poor people don't need privacy the way western journalists do and UIDAI are clean whereas the other gangs dispensing opportunities to rob their own countrymen are "filthy", a most unEconomist word.

And this, too, is most unEconomist – normally the magazine would instantly spot the problem with the following claims:

The state spends a fortune on subsidised grain for the hungry, but an estimated two-thirds of it is stolen or adulterated by middlemen. The government pays for an $8 billion-a-year make-work scheme for the rural poor, but much of the cash ends up in the capacious pockets of officials who invent imaginary “ghost workers”. Suppose those thieving middlemen were obliged to deliver grain, not to poor people in general but to named individuals who could confirm receipt by scanning their fingerprints? And suppose those ghost workers had to undergo an iris scan before being paid?

UIDAI computerisation may make it harder to steal public money from PDS, the food security programme, and from NREGA, the temporary employment scheme, as The Economist suggest. But equally, it may make it much easier.

Aadhaar could make corruption a much more modern, clean, white collar, highly automated pursuit. It's a lot quicker to use a computer to claim wages for thousands of ghost employees than it is to complete manual requests. If Aadhaar wants biometrics, then a computer will provide them. And if Aadhaar has helped to provide everyone with bank accounts and electronic transfer facilities then, thank you very much UIDAI, the "thieving middlemen" may say, now there's no need to handle any cash and it's easier to launder our ill-gotten gains.

This leader of The Economist's barely rises above the level of sales literature. It is obvious why UIDAI would want it published. But why did The Economist allow it? That is a question for Adam Roberts, the South Asia bureau chief based in Delhi, and for Dominic Ziegler, the London-based Asia editor, and for Patrick Foulis, the India business and finance editor in Mumbai, and maybe for Alpesh Kandoi, to whom all media enquiries should be addressed.

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(See also)

The Economist magazine sticks its nose into Indian politics, comes away with egg on its face

After 30 years of reading The Economist, you know what to expect.

The correct answers to most questions are found by letting markets operate freely, as far as The Economist is concerned and politically, that rules out any system that pretends to be able to manage control the economy. The magazine is socially liberal. There's not a hint of racism in it, or sexism – "meritocracy" is the name of the game. Arguments are conducted logically, preferably they're quantitative, the emphasis is on rational management techniques and evidence-based public administration. The magazine is the opposite of insular, open to new ideas wherever they come from, and always up to speed with new technology.

Given which, what on earth happened in the 14 January 2012 edition? It was out of character. Its Scottish Enlightenment body was snatched by aliens. Did The Economist suffer some sort of editorial stroke?