March 2010

Over the past few months, Hyundai Heavy, the world's largest maker of ships, deployed a high-speed wireless network across the yard, one of the first such installations in an industrial setting anywhere in the world. Data zips around the complex at four megabits per second, about four times as fast as on a cable modem that is common in U.S. homes.

Now, the company can use radio sensors to track the movements of parts as they go from fabrication shop to the side of a drydock and onto a ship under construction. Workers on a vessel can also access plans via notebook computers or handheld phones and hold two-way video conversations with ship designers in the office more than a mile away. Hyundai Heavy is nearing completion on the network just as it and other shipbuilders adjust to one of the worst downturns in the industry's history. In large part, the new technology is designed to help Hyundai Heavy reduce expenses and streamline production. The company estimates it will save around $40 million annually in reduced labor costs and improved efficiency.

The PC has been at the center of the computing universe for 30 years. But that's about to change. Within two or three years, smartphones will outsell PCs, if analysts' projections hold true.

Already, netbooks — essentially low-cost laptops with more limited capabilities than standard PCs — are the fastest-growing part of the PC market. In coming years, the very idea of having a center for computing in the home is likely to go away, replaced with a distributed array of linked devices that will include not just smartphones and notebooks, but TVs, set-top boxes, tablet devices, appliances and even alarm clocks. These devices will largely eliminate the need for a powerful PC and allow us to communicate with friends, access information such as stock quotes and control things such as lighting and alarm systems, wherever we happen to be inside our outside our house.

After two months of talks with the Chinese government, Google remains determined to shut down its Google.cn search site rather than accept government censorship — but is worried about sacrificing its other business interests in China. Search is just one element of Google's business there.

Google says the company's maps, mobile phone and language translation services are rapidly gaining audience in China, with the Mountain View Internet giant booking its highest revenues there during the final quarter of 2009. Google in particular wants Chinese companies to still be allowed to buy advertising on its sites elsewhere in the world, and to retain the services of the more than 500 people it employs in China, including the stable of highly trained engineers and researchers it has recruited there, according to a person familiar with Google's thinking on the matter. But the company fears that the government could retaliate and force it out of China if it shuts down Google.cn. Losing access to what is about to become the world's second-largest economy could potentially cost Google billions in future revenues.

Google's possible withdrawal from China, the world's biggest Internet market by users, must meet Chinese regulations, according to the nation's Ministry of Commerce.

Google should properly deal with any withdrawal, Yao Jian, spokesman for the ministry, said today at a press conference. The company should continue to abide by Chinese laws as it agreed to do when it initially entered the country, he said. The U.S. company is required to file a notice if it ends its operations in the country, and such a document hasn't been received by the government, Yao said. In 2006, Google agreed to comply with requirements to filter its search results to expand operations in China, where the ruling Communist Party restricts information it deems unfavorable.