Why Greece will never succeed - Internetwise
What’s the best way to start a month, if not with a lengthy ranting. Some recent facts reminded me why my beloved country will always be about 10 years back, in terms of Internet and relevant technology usage.
Reason #1: Expensive Internet
Take a chance and check the aDSL prices of greek providers, or if you’re not greek, let me explain: You can have from 512Kbps to 1Mbps for about 20-25 euros per month. Cheap? No, including the fares we have to pay for phone access to our beloved national telephone company (OTE): all in all, to have a satisfying Internet access at your home, you have to pay about 50 euros a month. Let’s not fool ourselves, this thing is ridiculously costly.
Reason #2: Really bad QoS
If you’ve ever had to deal with any budding Internet company you know what I mean. It doesn’t matter if it’s about Internet providing, or web hosting, or web design: most middle-class companies in Greece don’t even use their e-mails to communicate with potential clients. I’ve lost the count of times when I tried to communicate via e-mail (call me schizophrenic, but I hate talking to unknown people on the phone) and they replied to me in the context of “Thanks for the e-mail! Give us a call to tell you more!”.
Reason #3: No respect for copyrights laws
It’s not all about the music and how piracy kills it. When I devote my time to assemble a nice photo collage for use in my website, I don’t expect to see it everywhere in the greek internet. I don’t know why, but Greeks tend to ignore copyright laws as far as the Internet is concerned. And this does not concern only individuals… Even web design companies adopt this kind of techniques to get their job easily done.
Reason #4: Idiotic application of laws
When a person who owns a greek blog aggregator gets sued for the content of one of the blogs in his catalog, then things are ugly. When some years ago all Internet cafes had to shut down because there was a gambling scandal including politicians, you can tell something is real bad. The Internet and the technologies included is an unknown thing for the greek government - all efforts to constrain some aspects of it have concluded to spastic, moronic moves.
Reason #5: Mentality
Let’s not fool ourselves: a large piece of the Internet market in Greece is just in for the money. The things I’ve heard those past few years… People just want to throw some easy deal, get it done in the cheapest and most mediocre of ways, and then get the money. This, in addition to the fact that small class clients do not pay (that’s a fact), are the reasons why the greek Internet is struggling those last few years.
Honorable Mention #1: The Whiners
I’m talking about the people that all they do is whine, whine and whine (and yes, I know I’m in a whining mood right here, but spare me, I don’t do it much). I know I’m not the one to judge, but in my opinion, they’re a waste of Internet space. Blogs full of whining over the news is nothing new for me, I can turn on the TV and find out more. This is one of the main reasons I never read any greek blogs, except some selected ones. People tend to believe that the most shocking and whining a post is, the more culture points it gives to them. Yet again, it’s just a personal opinion.
Honorable Mention #2: The Technophobics
You know who they are: Those that declare that they “hate the computers” and that they “don’t want anything to have with them”. A waste of sources, both physical and mental, because apparently, after a few years everyone will have something to do with a computer. These people are a common problem in Greece: 9 times out of 10, these are the people that will call you in a stormy night and plead you to come over because apparently, “something is wrong with the screen”. And when you finally go and squibble the mouse, the screen wakes up from sleep.
I know I’ve ranted much today, but I wanted to get it off my chest. What I hate the most about my work is mediocrity, but it seems that we’ve got plenty of it in Greece.
