Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said on Thursday that India will add a significant part of the next 5 billion Internet users, with maths suggesting that it is the country to look out for.
Moreover, Schmidt, who is in the national capital for the Google's Big Tent Forum said that this place is going to be rocking and that in the short term it is China, but math favours India and Schmidt being a mathematician, replied when being asked by Guardian's Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger on his choice on India and China.
In fact, Schmidt expressed great hope for the growth of Internet and broadband users in the country while speaking at the question and answer session with Rusbridger.
He added that there are roughly 600 million mobile phone users in India while there are about 130 million Internet users, but there are only about 20 million broadband users. That's why by any definition India is under-penetrated and in their book, they talk a lot about the importance of the next 5 billion.
2 billion people on Internet...
The discussion included that there are only 2 billion people on Internet in the world today. While many of those 5 billion would be coming from India. Therefore, imagine a situation 5 to 10 years from now when there is a billion people on the Internet and will they be significantly different from the first 100 million users.
He is sure there will be many more languages and they won't be so English focused. Nevertheless, Schmidt added that to achieve this growth India needs to build out the infrastructure and to lower the cost of devices and he think the sum of all that is that this place is going to be rocking.
Schmidt stressed on the fact that it is important for service providers to check offensive data on the Net while going on with regulation in India, especially clauses pertaining to liability on the intermediaries.
A strong and vibrant democracy...
He stressed that India is a country with very very strong element to free speech and public discussion, which is admirable with a strong and vibrant democracy with a strong legal system. There are some clarifications that we needed to some of the aspects of law (section 66) and intermediate liability. While he added the reason is that we want entrepreneur to be willing to take risks and if they do take a risk, you don't want them to be going to jail, unless they are very evil.
Therefore, for example when content is put up, it is offensive it will genuinely take time to discover its offensive and take it off.
Moreover, the Google chief went on to say that it will be people who will actually make lies, they will be dramatic, they will promote things, they will do things, which are inappropriate and which are covered by their laws. Therefore, it is important that the intermediaries such as the telcos, the ISPs, the start-ups have an ability to take that information down.
Nevertheless on the dark side of the Internet he discussed there are also negatives for example the loss of privacy, which is a very real concern while also there is a possibility of misuse of this information by governments and while stressing this factor Schmidt said, if it can happen in about half of the US and may be another half in Europe, it can certainly happen here as well.
Now, the concluding fact remains that Schmidt said that he don't know enough Indian law with respect to civil liberties but he think it is very important that as this technology becomes spread throughout in Indian society, the Indian Laws and so forth will honour the right to privacy.
Technological advancement and safety measure against privacy must accompany each other for a fruitful justification of the intention of genuine communication.
Kill piracy practice privacy!
(AW:Samrat Biswas)
