Donald J. Trump, CEO at Google
An executive order has broken up Google and Huawei. The MadHATTERs Editorial, 22 May 2019.
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Google has complied with an executive order requesting US companies blacklist Huawei. The company will no longer supply Google Play Store, Maps, or Gmail to Huawei phones.
This doesn’t matter in China — there the OS of the phones has been provided by open-source Google code (as it is everywhere else) but the apps haven’t been available previously anyways.
Everywhere else, Huawei’s phones — the most numerous on the planet (likely 30% of all of Europe’s last quarter) — will be significantly impacted, and while the company reportedly has a Plan Bs in the form of its own services and apps, the argument one supposes is that they would have been better executing plan A.
The analysis is that “this will make its phones very hard to sell.”
Existing apps on a Huawei phone will not stop working, but buyers used to Google’s services will be loathe to purchase one over a competitors’ alternatives. Updates to apps over time are another matter entirely. Plus Huawei said that it spends more than $1 out of every $7 of its annual $70 billion procurement budget buying equipment from U.S. companies.
I suppose they’ll find some other way to be spending that money shortly.
Stocks in five companies that all ceased business operations with Huawei looked like they fell following the news, so this doesn’t look (yet) like it’s helping anyone — although that’s kind of the point I suppose.
If there isn’t any pain to the intended affectants, there isn’t much incentive for the powerbrokers to reconcile perceived wrongs. I’m also not sure how I’d want to be positioned at the outbreak of a trade war if I’m being honest, but I doubt it would be as a front-line prizefighter — for either side. Feels to me as though that’s the role both companies have been boxed into. (or chosen?)
Maybe the retaliation will be Game of Thrones?
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