Singapore's prime minister takes in Yahoo and LucasArts.
May 8, 2007 - 2:36PM
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited Internet giant Yahoo on Monday for a personal look at the company's new technology and the economic opportunities they offer.
"We just want to learn about the prosperous growth of the US economy and the non-stop innovation in this great country," Lee said after getting private demonstrations of a trio of new Yahoo products.
"We are a small country so we want to learn what is happening in the outside world so that we can contribute."
Lee spent an hour in a closed-door meeting with Yahoo executives including co-founder Jerry Yang and chief executive Terry Semel.
"We are pretty delighted the prime minister came to talk to us," said Yahoo vice president of international emerging markets Keith Nelson, who took part in the meeting.
"He has a keen interest in technology and asked a number of very smart questions about Yahoo and the Internet space."
Lee and Yahoo executives discussed increasing the Internet giant's investment in Singapore and having it use the country as a "hub" for doing business throughout the region, according to Nelson.
"It was a light, casual, positive meeting," Nelson told AFP. "The prime minister was pretty supportive of building Internet technology hubs in Singapore."
Yahoo has had operations in Singapore for a decade and has been in discussions with its government "for a long time," according to Nelson.
The country is strategically located in a part of the world with the potential for a billion people in developing countries to become Internet users in the coming years, according to Yahoo.
"We are pretty much a natural fit for opportunities they want to pursue," Nelson said.
"Singapore has a stable government, strong intellectual property protections, and an infrastructure in place for Internet technology. All of that bodes well for using it as a hub."
Yahoo steered clear of commenting on Singapore's conservative political regime and its history of censoring films, newspapers and other material presented to the public along sexual, political, religious and racial lines.
Yahoo said its concerns about freedom of speech and keeping Internet use free of controls have been allayed by the "pro-active rapport" of the Singapore government.
"They certainly allow Yahoo to do what we need to do," Nelson said. "From a business standpoint it is a positive place to be."
Nelson would not comment on what developments might come from Lee's visit.
"They are very interested in investment in Singapore and we are interested," Nelson said. "I think the prime minister is personally driving a lot of the leadership in making Singapore a hub for these kinds of initiatives."
The Sunnyvale, California-based firm was the only Internet search engine visited by Lee, whose day included a tour of Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas's new Letterman Digital Arts centre campus in San Francisco.
Yahoo leaders gave Lee a Nokia mobile telephone with the Internet company's new oneSearch mobile online search software.
OneSearch was among the innovations Lee scrutinized during private demonstrations that also included a look at Yahoo's freshly launched free web-based email service in multiple languages.
Lee took particular interest in an online service Yahoo will roll out in the United States this summer to give teachers a free way to collaborate on and research educational presentations.
"The next time I make a speech I'll try using that," Lee quipped after Yahoo Teachers project leader Karon Weber showed how the tool made it easy to pull together authoritative sources, images and video.
"It's a great honour to demonstrate a new education tool like this for the prime minister of a country that is passionate about education," said Weber, noting that Singapore's literacy rate is nearly 95 percent.
Lee is to visit computer-maker Hewlett Packard in the Northern California city of Palo Alto on Tuesday.
"I'm just enjoying my trip," he told AFP before taking a quick stroll of the Yahoo campus with company founders Yang and David Filo.
Sydney Morning Herald --
Oh bollocks to him.
