Mobilised has pretty much kept away from this subject in the past six months.
Once we posted the comment piece: Is The OLPC Project Doomed? in April last year that was pretty much all that needed to be said about the failing project. Sure we covered how Microsoft was trying to meddle with the project in May and had a bit of a laugh when Nicholas Negroponte got all hot and bothered over Intel on 60 Minutes (Ashamed? Intel? I doubt it).
Mobilised spotted the Sin in July when Intel announced it would join up with the OLPC (Intel Moves To Ease OLPC Conscience). But you know, once that was done there seemed no point in repeatedly stating the bleeding obvious... it is extremely important for these two companies (Wintel) to see that the OLPC project fails.
These two multi-Billion dollar corporations will kill it off, eventually, if no white knight comes along and saves it. They have to. For Microsoft and Intel to miss out on getting a solid foot hold in the emerging markets that the OLPC targets would represent the height of strategic failing and neither Barret, Balmer, Gates or Otellini will let it happen.
So when Walter Bender, Chief Operating Officer for OLPC came out this week feigning surprise at Intel's failure to support the project and see through on its promises, I just had to laugh.
Bender said (here) he could not "think of a time when they [Intel] were not disingenuous," accusing the chipmaker of never following through on widely publicised promises and written agreements to assist the OLPC on software development and learning tools.
"It was a lot of pie crust promises as Mary Poppins would say," said Bender. "I can't think of a single thing they said they were going to do that they actually did."
And: "We got constant complaints from people in the field that they were being bullied by Intel," said Bender. "That was the message we got from anybody and everybody working on these educational problems in the developing world."
I'm sorry, but what did he seriously expect?
Negroponte was equally scathing: "We don't want one of own partners competing with us, and trying to unravel agreements we've made with countries. Nobody's trying to stop competition. But when you're partners, you don't try to compete with your partner".
Negroponte appears shocked that Intel would use its Board position on the OLPC to its competitive advantage. "Intel continued to disparage the XO laptop in developing nations that had already decided to partner with OLPC (Uruguay and Peru), with countries that were in the midst of choosing a laptop solution (Brazil and Nigeria), and even small and remote places (Mongolia)," he says.
Goodness me. What did these two think Intel was going to do as a member of the OLPC board? Stop selling its Classmate PC and help them. Why would it do that?
Let's get real, Intel only joined the OLPC as a PR response to the 60 Minutes show which exposed the company's cold corporate heartlessness. It is easy to see it never wanted to help and never intended to help, rather to be seen to have tried. Intel PR can now safely say the company wanted to help out the OLPC, but it just couldn't and that's not Intel's fault.
Nothing but PR spin. Intel even duped Negroponte when it came to making the announcement that the coopreration had failed. Intel's spin doctors made sure they got out their version of the story first while they tricked the OLPC exeutive into thinking they were working on a joint statement.
"Intel issued a statement to the press behind our backs while simultaneously asking us to work on a joint statement with them," Negroponte alleges.
Ha. Now that's clever. History will not remember Intel or its employee's lack of morals or truthfulness; it will remember that Intel tried to work with the OLPC project to help developing countries, but had couldn't continue becuase the OLPC "tried to stop them from selling their own product".
You've been duped, Nicholas!
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