Last part of the book on Warren Buffet talks lot about US dollar devaluation. It explains in detail how US is importing more and exporting lesser and lesser, and US dollar being under pressure. It's not a news anymore that China (with all the cheap goods) and Middle East (with all the oil money) own many American assets. If this trend continues for a while they will be in far more control. This very same thing has been explained really well in a movie - I.O.U.S.A. with lot of animation.
So here is a question - What's most widely used product / service OR Intellectual Property across the world which originates from USA? Internet Search. Google. Bing. Yahoo. Millions of users from Hundreds of countries submit and benefit from Billions of Search queries every day. And, although these companies have resources (employees and hardware and some advertisers) in many of these countries, most of the other countries are pure beneficiaries and don't contribute as much.
What if America asks other countries - with exception of some very active partners such as India, China, western European nations, etc. - to pay for the use of Internet Search and other related services that as of now are globally free?
Could Internet Search be treated as a product that is being exported out of the USA - adding to US coffers and of course, the company coffers?
Could Internet Search be denied to the countries as part of government sanctions?
If sale of an iPod or notebook to other country can add to the US export, why a set of 10,000 search queries originating from that same country (with some exceptions as noted above) shouldn't be treated as a 'product' and add to the US export?
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