AllThingsD » New Delhi

Facing Lawsuit, Google Drops Some Content in India

Amol Sharma — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:30:30 +0000

Google Inc. removed some controversial content from its Indian services to comply with a court order in a civil lawsuit, the latest twist in the legal drama over Web censorship in the world’s largest democracy.

A person familiar with the matter said Google removed content from its search service, YouTube video site and Blogger after receiving an order to do so from Judge Mukesh Kumar of a New Delhi district court.

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RIM, India at Stalemate as Deadline Arrives

John Paczkowski — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:01:35 +0000

Research In Motion has reached another impasse in its negotiations with the Indian government, and this one may not be as easily overcome as those that preceded it. Though New Delhi has been provided with access to RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service and BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS), it continues to demand access to the company’s BlackBerry Enterprise Service–something RIM insists it is unable to provide. With the deadline for compliance with these demands expiring today, the threat of a countrywide ban on BlackBerry services looms in the background.

“They have given us a solution to the Messenger service,” India’s home affairs minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, said today. “We will insist that they give us the solution for the enterprise service too.”

And RIM will likely insist it can’t. Unless the situation has suddenly changed from last week, when VP Robert Crow reiterated the company’s claim that it cannot decipher the encrypted corporate emails sent over its network. “We can’t give a solution for enterprise services,” he said. “It’s not possible to do so, because the keys of that service are with the corporate enterprises and corporate entity that owns the server.”

So what, then? That’s not yet clear, but we may know more shortly. Said Chidambaram, “I think a decision [about the future of RIM in India] will be taken today by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Telecom Ministry.”

How do you say “deadline extension” in Hindi?

Qualms Arise Over Outsourcing Of Electronic Medical Records

Amol Sharma and Ben Worthen — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:00:43 +0000

Indian technology companies are eyeing a coming wave of U.S. spending to digitize health-care records. But sensitivity over outsourcing and resistance by American hospitals to sending medical information overseas could thwart efforts to win big contracts.

The U.S. government next year will begin to dole out billions of dollars to health-care providers who adopt electronic medical records. Doctors also face a federal mandate to upgrade software as the U.S. switches to a new system of insurance billing codes.

For Indian companies with experience in software outsourcing, the flurry of health-related tech spending in the U.S. is “like another Y2K opportunity,” says Pradep Nair, head of the health-care practice at New Delhi’s HCL Technologies Ltd., referring to the turn-of-the-millennium computer glitch that provided work for Indian tech firms.

But cashing in on what Forrester Research expects to be a nearly $50 billion U.S. health-information market in the next two years won’t be straightforward for Indian companies. While they have had success handling outsourced work for pharmaceutical companies and insurers, Indian companies have struggled to win business from U.S. hospitals, which will do the bulk of new health-tech spending.

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Canaan Makes A Deja Vu Investment In Indian Used Cars

Ty McMahan — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:40:41 +0000

Emerging markets like India are still catching up to U.S. consumers’ comfort level with buying cars through online marketplaces like eBay (EBAY) and AutoTrader.

“I don’t think India is ready for that,” Canaan General Partner Deepak Kamra said.

But the firm believes it won’t be long before some of the Internet-bubble breakout businesses that found traction in the U.S. years ago, do the same in India. That bet has led Canaan to invest in MotorExchange, a New Delhi-based online dealer-to-dealer marketplace for used cars.

“We figure India is probably 10 years behind the U.S., but given its growth and a trend of upgrading from scooters to four wheels we believe there’s a lot of opportunity in used cars,” Kamra said.

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Nokia Mulls Netbook

John Paczkowski — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:05:00 +0000

Microsoft (MSFT) is prepping a slimmed down version of the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system to work on so-called netbooks. Asustek is mulling a mini-laptop that runs on Google’s (GOOG) Android OS. Now, Nokia (NOK) is looking with interest at the netbook market as well.

“…the PC and the mobile will continue to come closer and merge,” Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said at a press conference in New Dehli. “A lot of opportunity can be seen in this converged area. We at Nokia is actively looking at this converged market….We are looking at the netbook market to see what kind of opportunity is there.”

Likely a decent one for a cellphone maker like Nokia looking to diversify a bit from its core business. The company’s Symbian smartphone platform could likely be optimized for the task were Nokia to bring some of its $6 billion R&D budget to bear on it. The OS already has a Microsoft-compatible office suite in MobiSystems OfficeSuite 4, so Nokia’s ahead of the game there. Question is: Might the company’s efforts be better directed toward developing a credible competitor to Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone?

One Time Inc. Casualty: Digital Boss Ned Desmond

Peter Kafka — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:51:16 +0000

Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. still hasn’t figured out exactly how many people the magazine publisher will fire this fall–the 600 number the New York Times reported earlier this week, we’re told, is a guesstimate. But as Ann Moore and co. sort that out, they are moving ahead with plenty of high-level org chart changes, which are being laid in a series of text-heavy memos.

One of note for MediaMemo readers: The departure of Ned Desmond, a longtime Time Inc. vet who was most recent title was President of Time Inc. Interactive. Ned’s bio is here; nice-to-know-you memo from Ann Moore follows:

To: Time Inc. Employees

From : Ann Moore and John Squires

Re: Staff Announcement

As a consequence of the organizational changes outlined yesterday, our longtime Time Inc. colleague, Ned Desmond, President of Time Inc. Interactive, is leaving the company.

Ned is leaving after 22 years with Time Inc. and having had one of the more distinctive careers we’ve seen. He distinguished himself as a correspondent for TIME in Asia for nearly a decade, serving as TIME bureau chief in both New Delhi and Tokyo, and then left to dabble in technology in Silicon Valley. He then returned to Time Inc. as a senior correspondent at FORTUNE under John Huey, and was later charged to start eCompany Now magazine and website, eventually to be named Business 2.0. After three years of hard labor in the midst of the tech blow out, John convinced him to leave his beloved northern California to run Time Inc. Interactive.

That was six years ago, and it’s bracing to recall how much ground Ned, his excellent TII team, and the company as a whole have covered in that short time. We went from being a digital backwater, or “black hole” as one Time Inc. notable once called it, to joining the highest ranks of digital media with great properties like People.com, CNNMoney.com and SI.com, to name a few. Time Inc.’s digital leadership under Ned has been extraordinary. Our websites now receive more than 26 million unique visitors each month and we are one of the top 20 largest online media properties in monthly unique visitors, page views and time spent per user.

Ned played a leading role in creating the vision for our digital future while at the same time literally building that future by hiring many of our key digital leaders, developing more compelling consumer experiences on our sites, championing the use of metrics and audience development, raising our technology smarts, and wiring our businesses into the digital powerhouses at AOL, Yahoo, Google and elsewhere. In a way, Ned and his TII team succeeded so well at it that, well, there’s not much revolutionizing left to do. The time has arrived to move all the digital responsibility to the new teams in our new Business Units, where, to no surprise, many of the key leaders are folks Ned brought into the company.

We’re sorry to see Ned leave but he’ll always be remembered for his vast contributions in making Time Inc. a leading digital player.

Please join us in thanking Ned for his many contributions to Time Inc. and wishing him the very best.

A.M. J.S.