A history lesson, big companies / bad decisions, and other such stuff

Hello there! :)

Continuing with my "blog evangelism" here are some links to sites that tell you about the history of blogs - look here, here and here. And if you are the bookish type check out this book.

I'm wondering what makes big companies make bad decisions? The type of stuff that is absolutely detested by customers but which "big company" makes any way because it feels so grandiose about itself and doesn't bother what customers think? Let me give you an example to help you along.

I subscribe to Sify's Broadband service at home - for those that are reading this from the other side of the world (yes I am a well-read blogger now and on the verge of winning a Bloggie) Sify is one of India's (few) national ISPs that provides dialup and broadband (in addition to esoteric "corporate offerings" such as IP based VPN, VPN based IPs, and whatever).

Right from when I received access to my broadband account I have been very happy. In fact I was estastic initially because they had no bandwidth or speed cap and it costed just Rs 1000 per month all you can surf. Which meant I could like download 20GB every day at speeds ranging from 512 kbps to 1 mbps (and at 2am in the night even more), which is a boon by the way to the starving, poor, Internet-impoverished Indians like me. But Sify soon realised that I (and many like me) were a hazard to their bottomlines and hence promptly put a bandwidth and/or speed cap based on which one had to purchase the "recharge packs". So now I've settled for a paltry 64kbps connection with no bandwidth cap (its based on hours I use, and comes with no metering on Sundays which is when I hog). But I was not complaining - until now.

A few weeks back the powers-that-be at Sify Broadband decided that all its users are computer newbies and hence needed divine assistance. So over the weekend they made it mandatory for users to download some sort of program that provides you an "easy to use interface to login to your Sify Broadband account". Well, I had no problems with that either. Earlier I would get a login page whenever I tried to browse without first signing in and once I was signed in I could browse. But hey, this program was supposed to be easy to use! So I decided to give it a try (I had no other choice, as I was about to discover).

The problem started when after installing this easy to use program I was asked to uninstall my existing antivirus program (I use Grisoft's AVG an excellent antivirus program, by the way). The easy to use broadband sign-in refused to work till I uninstalled AVG (and prayed that tons of viruses not hit my system at that exact point in time, but I had insurance in the form of ZoneAlarm which is another great product). Then, to my surprise, the easy to use program went ahead and installed an outdated copy of McAfee's VirusScan program which it claimed would protect me from the evils that lurk out there.

OK... what's happening here? What good does it do to Sify to force McAfee VirusScan down the pipes to each of its customers? Maybe McAfee was in cahoots. But I failed to get the idea behind an outdated copy of the scanner. So I thought while I'm stuck with VirusScan I might as well update it so that its current - trading AVG for VirusScan, no big deal as long it prevents those creepie crawlies from getting into my system. Now comes the best part - the copy of VirusScan that the easy to use broadband sign-in program installed refuses to be updated. The "Update Agent" always quits with a cryptic "unspecified error".

I called up the "customer care" and got an answer that due to various reasons all users had to install the new sign-in program, remove their existing antivirus software, and install the (outdated) McAfee VirusScan program. I asked the tech support guy what would happen if I wanted to use an antivirus software that I already had - and he replies "Sir, have you purchased the antivirus software?". Does Sify think that we are all software pirates or that quality free software does not exist? I gave up trying to explain to tech support that Grisoft's AVG was an excellent freeware antivirus software.

So now I am stuck with an easy to use sign-in program and a vestige of an antivirus program that is over two weeks old. I'm praying for some real divine assistance. I'm wondering what it takes for big companies to make bad (or suicidal decisions) like this one. And I'm waiting for Reliance Infocomm to start offering its broadband-to-home service and hoping better sense prevails with them.

I read today in NewsWeek's cover story that Estonia is the country which is considered the software developer haven. India better look out - Estonia is valued for its cheap, high quality developers that are on a nearer time zone to the West.

And according to the same cover story (which cites an impressive sounding "index") Nigeria has the happiest people in the world. Looks like we'll have to look hard at what happiness is really all about. So get jiggy with it.