Conquering a market, part 2 – the WTO-column

(later also at Chinabiz)

Do you still remember the fairy tale about those three brave brothers, the older Micro, the evil Yahoo and do-goodie Google, who tried to entered the woods in the so-called Middle Kingdom and who we left while they were in the middle of dealing with the smaller and bigger dragons that played around in the woods. No? Better read this then first.

Now, the story continues, as we see how Google tries to act evil to promote his bonsai-business.

Dealing with the dragons in the woods of the Middle Kingdom has always been very troublesome. The dragons have never told this to their foreign guests, but they have put some secret medicine into the delicious dishes they offered their innocent visitors. When you eat those dishes, you actually start dreaming and believe that anything you touch changes into gold. Mostly that is over the next morning after a good night of sleep, but when you eat a lot of those dishes, on a daily basis, you might actually never sober up anymore.

The dragons do not do this because they are bad. They just want to make their guest happy, since they know those guest are mostly a big scared anyway. Of course, the dragons eat the same dishes, but then they have been warned from their early childhood by their mothers: never trust anybody, no matter how nice the dishes are. So, they know they are dreaming. Unfortunately, the foreign visitors did not have such distrustful mothers.

Today we will see how Google, the youngest and less evil of the three brothers, tries to become a little bit evil and fails. Both Yahoo and Micro had already many dinners with the dragons. They had to tell their hosts how much they hated the FLG-dragon, a dragon that had been expelled from the woods after really annoying the otherwise quite benign mother dragon. They had to bow and murmur sentences they really did not get like: the wood of the middle kingdom is only one wood. They first had to denounce homosexual dragons, but since the mother dragon had decided to change its mind, being a homosexual dragon had actually become an asset.

So, little Google was crying every night before going to bed, thinking of the nice dishes his bother Micro and Yahoo had been eating and the wonders he might perform when be became good friends with the dragons. He then made a solemn decision: tomorrow he would daringly walk into the woods of the Middle Kingdom, murmur all those weird sentences and hope he would not get eaten by the dragons.

“Down with the FLG-dragon”, Google practiced before the mirror. “The wood of the Middle Kingdom is only one wood.” He was scared. “Maybe that is not enough to become friends with the dragons,” he panicked. So, he thought of all the gruesome evil things the dragons might not like and he could denounce too. So, what did he not like himself? Homosexuals? Google shivered and decided to denounce them too. Dating? That was the last thing Google could think of doing: so it came on his black list. Beer? Brrr, thought Google, who preferred mineral water himself. Jokes? Can I denounce jokes, Google thought. Jokes can be very nasty, he knew, so they came on his blacklist.

So, the night before Google would enter the dangerous woods of the Middle Kingdom he lay alone in his bed, thinking what he should do to defend himself against the evil dragons. Am I as evil as my bother Yahoo, he wondered just before he fell asleep.

He entered his latest nightmare before he could actually answer the question himself. He saw himself walking into the woods of the Middle Kingdom. In his nightmare he met a little dragon who was known for his practical jokes. “You have not yet denounced mineral water,”grinned the little dragon after listing to Google’s list of denouncements. “I have and will never tough mineral water,” Google said quickly. The bigger dragons could not stop laughing and steam and smoke darkened the sky. Little Google was even more afraid.