• silicon.com
• Technology
• Software

By Sarah Left, 11 October 1999 09:54

COMMENT If you've been keeping up, you'll know that everyone from Tony Blair to Craig Barrett has been forecasting the next dark age if Europe doesn't make a rapid assault on the Web. Every company will be an Internet company or it won't be a company at all (Barrett); the economy will nosedive if small businesses don't go online (Blair). My fellow Europeans: relax. Because the Americans are being told exactly the same thing.
Intel CEO, Barrett - who only this summer was admonishing Europeans for our failure to slash phone costs for Internet access - told an assembled multitude at the Internet World conference in New York that America's incredible lead in the digital economy is under threat from just about everywhere else. Europe, Latin America, Asia: Craig's been doing the rounds, it seems, and he's convinced that the "exponential" growth rates of ecommerce in the geographical area he termed "non-US" could give the behemoth a run for its money. The truth is the Americans are scared. And it all comes down to one acronym: WAP. Wireless application protocol is widely acknowledged to be the next big thing, and it's all ours. It's killing them. Oracle chief Larry Ellison took the stage after Barrett and announced: "I'm going to make a radical prediction: Europeans will pass Americans in Internet usage." The reason? WAP. The audience shifted uncomfortably. Another Internet World speaker, Linus Torvalds, outlined the superiority of his home turf on Wednesday, saying that things just don't work as smoothly across the Atlantic as they do in Finland. "Silicon Valley is supposed to be the centre of the universe, but it's a third world country in many ways," he scoffed. "Stuff like electronic banking - it's electronic in name only here. Banks are still sending cheques back and forth to each others' mainframes. When you push a button in Finland, it's in the other person's account." Just like Linux, being small and agile makes it possible, said Torvalds. So whether we're on the cusp of a worldwide hijack of the digital economy via wireless (Ellison), or whether we're playing catch-up to the United States' colossal lead (Barrett), Europe should take pride in its ability to agree across all its member states what a single, sovereign nation hasn't managed to do: a simple standard. And if that's not building a basis for the next millennium, Tony, we don't know what is.