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Google Parent Alphabet and Aramco in Talks to Build Tech Hub in Saudi Arabia
- ttul 9y agoThis would really sheik things up.
- Bucephalus355 9y agoWhy would Google do this, along with their recent announcement for an AI office in China. What’s with their support of authoritarian regimes from the tech side? It’s an area unexplored by experience and regulation and which bad governments will certainly abuse in ways unseen.
- ihsw2 9y agoThe two are not mutually exclusive, personally I am quite happy to see that there can be support for socially conservative values despite the progressive supremacist cadre's most strident efforts in the US.
- maze-le 9y ago'conservative values' ... 'Saudi Arabia' ... something doesn't add up here. Since when is conservative synonymous with authoritarian?
- pavlov 9y agoSince at least the early 19th century? In Europe, conservatives were the ones who supported absolute monarchies.
- maze-le 9y agoThats because absolute monarchies were the status quo in the 19th century (except for switzerland and france -- on and off). Conservatism is a political agenda to preserve the status quo. Going further back and revive concepts of a long forgotten past is usually called reactionary.
- arethuza 9y agoWhat is now the UK hasn't had anything like an absolute monarch since the 17th century - indeed you could argue that the last one got his head chopped off!
- candu 9y agoAt least since the days of the Moral Majority, I'd say. (Or possibly since the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Or maybe since Industrial Revolution-era strike-breaking? (Or maybe - if you're gay, transgender, etc. - roughly since the Old Testament was penned?))) In other words: IMHO, social conservatism is very much authoritarian, in that it seeks to proscribe certain modes of living as contrary to the moral fabric of society. Saudi Arabia is, in this view, a prime example of this as it approaches its logical extreme. Fiscal conservatism, OTOH, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authoritarianism. We've unfortunately managed to conflate the two in modern American politics, which is how you end up with counter-productive policies like "tough on crime", "war on drugs", "cut basic social services", etc. that end up costing more than necessary in the service of "proving" a moral point.
- lern_too_spel 9y agoHow does a data center support an authoritarian regime, and why don't Amazon's planned data centers in Saudi Arabia also support an authoritarian regime?
- quadyeast 9y agoIt's building infrastructure.
- lern_too_spel 9y agoInfrastructure that people outside of Saudi Arabia can use to monetize Saudi Arabians. The huge data centers that employ a handful of people in backwards oppressive states like the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia haven't made tech powerhouses out of those regions but have allowed people in Silicon Valley to get rich off of them with Internet products and services.
- cobookman 9y agoMakes it harder for the us to go to war. Imagine if Afghanistan had lots of US company / investments. There'd be more backlash.
- tj-teej 9y agoReminds me of the Toby Ziegler quote from The West Wing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895
- sahillavingia 9y agoRevenue.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nopinsight 9y agoFor China, the answer is fairly simple: talent. An example: At the moment, 9 of the top 10 algorithms for Stanford Question Answering Dataset, including all of the top 5, are by Chinese teams. (2 of them by Microsoft Asia which is based in Beijing and the other 7 are by Chinese companies). https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/ I wrote this about 3 months ago and the trend becomes quite concrete faster than I thought: > Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace. > ... > My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the proportion will be about five times as large. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times. ... > ... > The distinct advantage of the US is that it is the magnet for top talents and ambitious people from all over the world, including the Chinese, so it might continue to lead for a while. However, if the US becomes inhospitable to talents or potential talents, it is clear that China with its quality and quantity of human resources will soon take the lead. Full comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339
- mtgx 9y agoSo why isn't Google lobbying for free and better college education in the US, if they foresee a decreasing pool of talent in the US in the future?
- pm90 9y agoBecause that's not Google's job, that's the job of the local, State and Federal Government of the United States. Edit: they do fund a lot of PhD research in US universities, including fellowship for PhD students. But one can't expect a company, even Google, to overhaul the entire system
- losteric 9y agoThe government's job is to lobby itself into spending more money on public education?
- peterwwillis 9y ago> What’s with their support of authoritarian regimes Because the US is very familiar with them?[1] US companies continue to make billions off of authoritarian regimes. Why should tech be a stranger? From a practical perspective, they are being smart, and safe. They know that China is positioning itself as the de facto global leader in trade, aid, finance, development, consumerism, etc, and their AI research is way ahead of ours. They know the Saudis have a butt-ton of money and can help them open up other middle eastern business. And they're getting in on the ground floor before their competitors do. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_supported_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...
- abdias 9y agoWell, one reason could be that Saudi-Arabia is planning so-called "smart" cities and Google wants to be in the center of it all (a UN driven program - IMO a potential tyranny sprayed in rose perfume). https://www.saudismartcities.net/ https://www.saudismartcities.net/ https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Saudi_Arabian_General_Investment_Authority_SAGIA_Engagement_Snapshot.pdf https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Sa... https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...
- mpweiher 9y ago"Don't be evil"
- borplk 9y ago"Don't be evil too soon."
- prepend 9y agoThis is an odd partnership. Is this part of some new uber lobbying effort by Google to buy business in Saudi Arabia? Or is this strategic to partner with Aramco over Exxon or BP. Or is it some sort of investment in hydrocarbon energy to make up for all their renewable data centers? Seems like a weird direction for Google. Especially since I think this is the first “tech hub” they have started in a specific country. Would be way cooler if it was in Nigeria or some developing nation with really high potential.
- ejanus 9y agoThey will be in Nigeria soon . They have fine-tuned YouTube so that with crappy networks they are amazingly fast in Nigeria and most of West African countries. Google is aggressively pushing heir products in this region.
- wand3r 9y agoFor mobile users with low bandwith please post a text dump or non paywall link.
- cryoshon 9y agohorrendous. US based companies need to stake a moral stand against working with backwards regimes with ongoing human rights violations. google is no exception. money chasing is, of course, amoral. to be clear, this isn't even a case of "oh but they were forced into it" or "they'll go out of business if they don't"-- not that either of those absolve responsibility. they're working to make this happen. they WANT to support the saudi regime. i guess some people will try to break out the old "not everything is black and white" chestnut wrt the saudi government. unfortunately this is in fact an issue that is black and white with no moral ambiguity; the saudis execute dissidents, oppress women, suppress free speech, are waging a war of starvation against civilians in yemen, all while supporting jihadists worldwide. the average saudi person is probably a nice person. but that doesn't make it okay to do business with them.
- s0rin 9y agoIt also falls on consumers to choose not to support such companies if they fail to abide by our moral code of ethics. Plugging for duckduckgo - making the switch is easy, free, and without ethical mishaps.
- maze-le 9y agoAlso: - using umatrix to block requests to googleapis, google analytics, etc. - dont use alphabets other products (youtube, hangouts, chrome, blogger, google earth, etc.) - dont use frameworks from google or google associated companies (angular, gwt, tensorflow) - dont use gogoles dns service if you happen to live in a opressive regime, that utilizes dns blocking Doing this is perfectly possible, but you will isolate yourself very quickly. I use DDG since a while, and its an adequate search engine. But everything else... way too much hassle...
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago> horrendous. US based companies need to stake a moral stand against working with backwards regimes with ongoing human rights violations. The US is a backwards regime with ongoing human rights violations. I mean look at your own shit first before throwing it at others.
- taneq 9y agoI wonder what compromise they'll make between respecting the local culture and promoting equal outcomes for women?
- mtgx 9y agoGood news! Google is already almost male-exclusive, so the company's culture seems to align quite well with the Saudi culture (I assume they aren't cutting people's hands for stealing users' data, but that policy could change in the future).
- beaconstudios 9y agobeing a majority-male company (70:30 so not exactly "male-exclusive") means that Google is like Saudi Arabia how exactly?
- taneq 9y ago...I'm gonna need a /s for sarcasm or a /s for serious here. I can't tell which this is.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post flamebait here.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tboyd47 9y agoCool. I wonder if this will lead to a rise in interest in open-source technology over there.
- gaius 9y agoI wonder how they’re pitching this in Silly Valley to their existing staff there, esp. in the wake of the Damore Affair.
- 13years 9y agoIt is that moment you realize that stated principles are not congruent with actions and just maybe those principle were mostly political theater
- nsnick 9y agoGoogle should not do business in countries that commit gross human rights abuses.
- rplnt 9y agoGoogle should not do many things, but investors want company that makes money, not one that is moral.
- sfifs 9y agoSure. And you should stop driving/riding petroleum using vehicles because fuel demand props up prices and funds these countries.
- BeetleB 9y agoMost of the oil in the US does not come from the Middle East.
- sfifs 9y agoplease read what I've written carefully. if the us didn't use so much oil, global oil prices would be much much lower and wouldn't enrich these countries.
- colanderman 9y agoFalse equivalence. Google does not have to open a datacenter in SA. Many, many people in the US have to drive to a job, and can't afford an electric vehicle. Beside (to address the tu quoque), among this crowd, I think you'll find that of those who (a) need not drive to work, or (b) can afford an electric vehicle (which is many of us), petroleum-based vehicle usage is far below the US average.
- BeetleB 9y agoAnd let me guess: We draw the line wherever it conveniently leaves out a preferred country (usually the US)? We throw in a modifier "gross" to have an escape clause?
- 9y ago
- baldajan 9y agoReading the comments, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions and biases. But one general rule that’s been thrown out the window: Goverment is not the same as the People. A tech hub, bringing coding, tech and entrepreneurship to a region (any region) is a good thing. It creates opportunities and helps lower and middle income individuals/family grow.
- 13years 9y agoOnly if a company can operate free of implementing a governments tyrannical policies. The question is if such a company will actually be free to serve/help the people or will it be a tool of the oppressive regime
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoGoogle might be a good example of that actually - they pulled out of China because they refused to conform to the regime there.
- gaius 9y agoBecause the regime wouldn’t let them make enough money there FTFY
- BeetleB 9y agoThis seems very much to be a false dichotomy. There's a whole space between the two extremes.
- 13years 9y agoSure, it can even be both. Look at the US and the issues of privacy and data sharing between the government and large tech. However, it certainly is a legitimate question as to what role the company may play, what control it will have etc. If a free country like the US spies on its people through tech, to what extent would be expected Saudia Arabia would have no issues going far beyond Unfortunately, if there are abuses, we will likely never know.
- hodder 9y agoHow do we get around the paywall on this? Google workaround no longer works and WSJ isn't worth a subscription to me.
- lern_too_spel 9y agoBookmarklet: javascript:(function(){window.location = window.location.href.replace('//', '//outline.com/')})()
- everdev 9y agoFor such a wealthy country with rich history and strong economic ties to the US, I've never heard of anyone visiting Saudi Arabia and I've never seen any promotions or advertisements to visit. Are there travel restrictions there?
- roymurdock 9y agoSA doesn't issue tourist visas. Also - "Many travellers remain wary of visiting Saudi Arabia due to its extremely conservative culture and instability in the region...Major cities in Saudi Arabia such as Riyadh, Jeddah and Dhahran are considered to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Saudi Arabia still enforces strict Islamic rules on dress codes and gender segregation, though the Crown Prince's reforms may see this change. Public cinemas and theatres are also banned, another restriction which may need to be lifted if the country is to attract foreign tourists." https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/saudi-arabia-tourist-visas-2018-first-issue-holidays-middle-east-flights-laws-relaxed-latest-his-a8073396.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/saudi-a...
- kahnpro 9y agoAnd aren't Mecca and (central) Medina off-limits to non-Muslims?
- Cthulhu_ 9y agohttps://wikitravel.org/en/Saudi_Arabia https://wikitravel.org/en/Saudi_Arabia has a nice overview: * No entry if you're from or have been to Israel * No entry if you're from or have been from a country afflicted with ebola * No entry if you're from Quatar * Heavy punishments up to death if you don't follow their laws. That is, no pork, no alcohol, no non-islam religions, no homosexuality, porn, or unmarried sex. Also keep the clothing things in mind; no shorts / t-shirt there, and women probably need to cover their heads. Anyway, I did see tourism adverts on TV, advertising the sail hotel and such (forgot the name).
- TuringNYC 9y agoCertainly not defending SA, but... Sail hotel is in Dubai (in the U.A.E.)...different country. As for the laws, pretty much everything goes inside compounds, which is where nearly all westerners live.
- olfactory 9y agoThis is consistent with Alphabet's trajectory of becoming a defense contractor. One might ask why during peak oil on the precipice of a major decline in relevance of Saudi Arabia (partner to the US military and client state of the US Government) this would be happening. There must be a need to have US-guided firms crowd out any other tech infrastructure investment in Saudi, to provide a substrate more friendly to surveillance and psychological operations projects in the future. There is also the factor that because we are at peak oil, Saudi elites have an unprecedented amount of wealth and they can simply transfer some of it to Alphabet in exchange for the increased political clout that teaming up with a major defense contractor offers. Note that for all the moralizing done by Google about not being evil, censorship, etc., Alphabet is teaming up with one of the most backward and corrupt regimes in the modern world, a regime that would have been replaced by something far more democratic long ago if it weren't for support by the US Government. So while in general economic cooperation makes wars less likely and helps reinforce private sector independence from the public sector (which is generally a good thing) anything involving Saudi or Alphabet is clearly a government sponsored, military-focused operation at its core. It's going to be pretty hard for Alphabet employees to explain to their grandchildren why they worked for a company that was known to cooperate with US domestic surveillance programs and team up with undemocratic monarchies. The greatest human evils are not obvious like scary monsters in movies, they creep up around us with the support of many reasonable people.
- gadders 9y agoI wonder how they square this with their commitment to diversity?
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoDiverse countries they settle in and where they adjust to local laws and customs maybe? Diversity also includes operating in countries that are not as liberal as e.g. the US pretends to be; it's the only way to get a diverse world view for anyone. Closing your eyes for a culture as different as e.g. Saudi Arabia is not the way to go.
- gadders 9y agoWell, I'm all in favour of different cultures. I don't think that justifies illiberal or, for want of a better word, evil cultures.
- gaius 9y agoI wonder how their rank-and-file do. When the Damore thing went down Twitter was alight with their righteous indignation but now Google is happy to do business with a regime that regularly executes LGBT and not a squeak. Maybe they are afraid of being labelled racist?
- TuringNYC 9y agoMy last [NYC-built] startup operated in the Middle East (not Saudi Arabia) for multiple years as they had regulatory fast-track for medical devices/startups. While it was a tough slog living in the middle east, I did it out of greed (my startup was doing ML-driven-health diagnostics...and...where else can you get years of medical records with full government buy-in). However..having been there I can see a lot of reasons for this possible Alphabet-SA-Aramco deal: - there is NO cloud endpoint in the region. no AWS/GoogleCloud/Azure/SoftLayer, nothing. So if you have data locality issues, like we did, you build your own storage/GPU cluster as we did. There is a huge opportunity for AWS/GoogleCloud/Azure/SoftLayer, locality laws make doing typical stuff impossible in the middle east -- just imagine how your life would be if you couldn't use cloud services?! - electricity is near free due to energy abundance, we paid no electricity costs on our giant GPU grid in the region - there is a lot of tech and ml talent in the region, most of it unable to take jobs in the US due to immigration laws and unable to take jobs in China due to cultural differences. there are also many customs like keeping your parents living in your home, which is now (post-2016) pretty must impossible with current western immigration laws. we hired locally (mostly Egypt) and got great talent for a fraction of US costs. - for the likes of DeepMind/DeepHealth trying to get UK NHS data, they can do it far more easily in Saudi Arabia for training models, etc. I'm back home in the US after 3yrs overseas. DM me if you are curious.
- charlesdm 9y agoMaybe the most important question: did you end up making (good) money, i.e. was it worth it going there looking back?
- TuringNYC 9y agoOur acquisition by a Fortune 100 got knocked over during due diligence (sad, but i'm told it is normal.) Made great money but a strategic acquisition was what we really wanted. I cant say I didn't try. We did a product with both market opportunity and one where the marginal cost would have allowed free distribution in needy countries. Inexpensive diagnostics help find conditions earlier so they can be treated more effectively and better human health, so very proud of what we achieved product-wise (whatever the business outcome.) Having a good country to work in with a sensible medical system and well-aligned incentives to improve the system allowed this. We tried to sell the idea/services in the US but the medical industry here is just out-of-control-complex-nonsensical. That said, whatever one might think of the governments, we had a great time with the local population. We were a bit bubbled in a western "compound" and a US embassy school for the kids, but life was very easy there. If you want apartment life, you can live/entertain pretty inexpensively on an artificial island with all things you might want: http://thepearlqatar.com/EN/TheIsland/Pages/The-Pearl-Qatar.aspx http://thepearlqatar.com/EN/TheIsland/Pages/The-Pearl-Qatar....
- test001only 9y agoSelling weapons worth 100 billion dollars, using oil from said country - no problem. Google considers opening campus - they are evil.
- colanderman 9y agoI'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that there's a strong correlation between those denouncing Google's move and those who denounce weapon sales to and oil purchases from Saudi Arabia.
- salimmadjd 9y agoIf SV has a true moral compass, that was so outraged by Travis Kalanick sitting on Trump's tech advisory board [1] they should be truly angry and outraged by Alphabet and its leadership for this move. Saudi Arabia, a country that has barbaric set of laws against women, and domestic workers [2] [3] which essentially the type of slavery we have not seen broadly in centuries. A country with very negative human rights records [4] that should be sanctioned by UN [5] It's so unthinkable that Alphabet, the "Don't be Evil" company would even consider that. It does not even make business sense, as the country is in the midsts of internal clashes [6] and not very stable nor it has any human capital that can help google [7] So, I'm lead to believe it's trading Saudi money for Google's brand to help create PR. So basically Google is used to promote evil! [1]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/02/travis-kalanick-delete-uber-leaves-trump-council https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/02/travis-ka... [2] www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34483504 [3] https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9ae4qd/where-maids-are-treated-like-slaves https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9ae4qd/where-maids-ar... [4]https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/saudi-arabia https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/saudi... [5] https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/12/19/its-time-un-sanction-saudi-arabias-crown-prince https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/12/19/its-time-un-sanction-sau... [6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-06/saudi-arabia-arrests-11-princes-protesting-over-bills-okaz-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-06/saudi-ara... [7]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296195348_Exploring_Recent_Saudi_Human_Capital_Development_Initiatives_An_Evaluation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296195348_Exploring...
- lern_too_spel 9y ago> nor it has any human capital that can help google [7] You don't need very much skilled labor to run a data center. The data centers in South Carolina are running just fine. If Aramco is putting any money into this, they are getting swindled.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoCreating a Tech Hub where women are treated worse than dogs is despicable on the part of Google. They should be ashamed of themselves.
- rektide 9y agoCoincidentally I'm sure, Saudi Arabia has recently awarded the first contract for their $500b city Neom: https://www.argaam.com/en/article/articledetail/id/527290 https://www.argaam.com/en/article/articledetail/id/527290