That is what I was confronted with, and it is not out there, it is in me. It all started this afternoon when I got wind of an issue via the Human Right Watch. The article (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/13/saudi-arabia-microsoft-should-hold-data-center) gives us ‘Saudi Arabia: Microsoft Should Hold Off On Data Center’, I tried to convince Amazon to go there and it would smooth things over for my IP and of course their setting would be billions per year, in this I was certain and that was merely the beginning of it. They could have chiseled in stone a strafe of progress (for Amazon) and I got my purse of coins. Amazon did not react and the Saudi government only does business through partners. Now Microsoft has an advantage and I am not certain how aware they are, but I will not accept them or their purse with 30 pieces of silver. This now beckons the thought, is Tencent aware what they could gain? For me it is a serious question. You see, the HRW gives us “Microsoft should suspend its investment in a new cloud data center region in Saudi Arabia until it can clearly demonstrate how it will mitigate the risk of facilitating serious human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said today.” Well that might seem nice, but corporations ignore privacy parts all over the planet, so the HRW setting is slightly naive. Does Tencent know what thy could gain? And it is also interesting that I get this through HRW, Microsoft hasn’t been spinning this all over the field. As such I wonder what their goals are. Mine are long term and going well beyond 10 billion a year (in phase 2), but I do not trust Microsoft. Their goals are greed and the limitation of options pushing them to more revenue. That is a simple truth and nothing (no kind of spin) from people like Phil Spencer will me contemplate their words.
But Tencent is an option. I know too little about them, yet I have learned that they are embracing at least one of the essential solutions I need to rely on, making the conversation (for me) a lot easier. So are my principles stupid? The fact that I do not cater to some American corporation is actually trivial. Where are the principles on making sure that your IP gets the best coin, the best value for money. As I stated before, I will hand my IP to the Saudi government at 35% of its value before I would ever consider selling it to Microsoft at 165% of its value. It is more than principle. I saw Microsoft destroy IP in many ways and I want my IP to flourish, it is more than ego (ego is not innocent here), it is the simple stage here the IP is flagged with my name and seeing that IP rise high is important to me (which is weird because after death no one cares). There is still the sweet dream of handing Microsoft the wooden spoon, but if they continue with it, they might not collapse in 2026 (my personal goal) and Tencent could assist in that matter.
So is Tencent any better than Microsoft? That is my impression, but I do not know enough of Tencent to make that call. Still in this case the beast you do not know is to be preferred to the one you do know and that sets me in the stage of ‘stupidity of principles?’ Where I need to wonder what drives the choices. And knowing that Tencent will offer cloud services in Saudi Arabia yet whether there will be a center in Saudi Arabia, or if the center in Bahrain will service all nations around it is currently unknown to me, but that is off less importance to me at presence. What matters is that Microsoft will not get that level of advantage. And to think that the downfall of Microsoft (as I personally see it) all started with them betraying gamers. That should shape a nice epitaph on their tombstone. Of course it will not be me, but the stage that they lost against Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, Sony and Tencent is just too juicy to pass up. This is what happens when you set the stage to a group of fakers, they never made it and those who did (the other six) is a nice end to a company that went from greatness to massively substandard.
Still the questions mulls in my head, what is the stupidity of principle and how much value does that have in the field of Business Intelligence?
Enjoy the day.