Monday, July 27, 2009

Filled Under: ,

Open gates for foreign workers, Bill Gates tells US

Bill Gates, the first citizen of commercial mass computing, vouched for an open source US immigration policy, raised hands for India’s unique national ID project, and smiled aside the threat posed to his Windows home base by Google’s planned operating system as he embarked on his sixth visit to India, this time to receive an honour for his efforts in social work.

The co-founder of Microsoft and its current nonexecutive chairman told a CEO Forum on Friday that his firm would like to participate in the unique ID project, which envisages a biometric-based national ID for every Indian citizen.

Mr Gates also met Nandan Nilekani, the cofounder of Infosys, and the man the government has put in charge of rolling out the ID project. He said the project could help in areas such as immunisation of children to detect who’s left out of the process. “Banking and healthcare are two applications we would like to see on top of the list under the programme,” Mr Gates said.

On immigration, he reiterated his well-stated stand urging the US government to increase the number of foreign workers entering the US. “I have been speaking out against immigration restrictions in the US. Free exchange of talent is a very important thing,” Mr Gates, who requested the US Congress to reform immigration policies last year, told a press conference.

He also asked Indian companies to focus more on research, citing the low number of PhDs produced by the country. India produces about a quarter million engineering graduates and around 100 PhDs. The US, on the other hand, has 70,000 engineering graduates and 1,500 PhDs, over 250 of them from India.
“Companies need to be a big part of this. The IT industry in India has matured to a point where it (research ) can be on their agenda,” he said.

The potential threat posed by Google, the search engine behemoth that is now entering Microsoft’s mainstay operating systems platform, was “fun” , said Mr Gates who pointed out his own firms efforts at relaunching its search platform with its new search engine Bing that has made a dent in the market.

“Google has done a lot of good work but we think search should be dramatically better in the next 1-3 years. We have hired great people who are doing innovative work to make it more competitive,” he said. Mr Gates said search has changed from a list of top 10 links to a place where people go to organise a trip, buy a gift or learn something new.
Source: IndiaTimes

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive