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Tag: Google

  • Google brings free WiFi to Indonesia

    Google brings free WiFi to Indonesia

    Google is extending its successful Google Station program to Indonesia. The company is partnering with internet service providers (ISPs), venue owners, and system integrators in Indonesia to provide consumers with free access to Wi-Fi at railway stations, universities, and other public areas.

    The expansion of the program, which was first launched in India 18 months earlier, could bring more users online, expanding Google’s global footprint and bolstering its potential ad revenue. Google Station can, in effect, boost the country’s rising internet penetration. Internet users in Indonesia increased 51% year-over-year (YoY) in January 2017, however, internet penetration remains low, at 40%. 

    By extending the program to Indonesia, Google is likely seeking to replicate the success of its Google Station program in India:

    • Free internet access has resulted in an early uptick in daily internet usage in India.In 2016, it was found that, on average, consumers used 15 times more data each day on Google’s Wi-Fi network than they did on their cell networks.
    • Offering high-speed data for free could mean new users associate Google with fast internet. Each day, around 15,000 people use one of these stations in India to connect to the internet for the first time, according to Google India Head of Connectivity Gulzar Azad.

    Google Station is just the latest effort by the company to connect the next billion users by catering to the needs of those in emerging markets. Google has previously released products and services targeted toward these smartphone users. Just last week, Google began experimenting with a light version of its Search app in Indonesia. The company is also rolling out Android Go, a low-data and budget-friendly version of the upcoming version of Android for developing markets.

    However, Google is not alone in turning to Indonesia to build out a user base. In 2015, Facebook launched its connectivity initiative, the Internet.org mobile app, in Indonesia, to get more people online. The app includes numerous connectivity strategies, including the Free Basics app, which enables consumer access to certain

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  • Walmart, Google in voice shopping deal

    Walmart, Google in voice shopping deal

    Walmart is diving into voice-activated shopping with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping through Google Assistant.

    The capability will be available in late September.

    It’s Google’s biggest retail partnership – and the most personalised shopping experience it offers – as it tries to broaden the reach of its voice-powered assistant Home speaker. It underscores Walmart’s drive to compete in an area dominated by Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo device.

    “Voice shopping is becoming a more important part of everyday shopping behaviour,” said Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart’s US e-commerce business.

    The voice-activated devices are becoming more mainstream as they become more accessible. Walmart has said Google’s investment in natural language processing and artificial intelligence will help make voice-activated shopping even more popular.

    Lore said the personalisation of the partnership means people can shout out generic items like milk, bread and cheese, and Google Assistant will know exactly the brands and the size that the user wants.

    Google introduced shopping to Home in February, letting people use voice to order essentials from more than 40 retailers like Target and Costco under its Google Express program. But that was far behind the Echo, available since late 2014.

    Walmart, which has more stores than any other retailer and the largest share of the US grocery market, is also working hard to close the gulf online between itself and Amazon.

    To be more competitive, Google Express is scrapping the $US95 ($A120)-a-year membership starting on Wednesday, allowing shoppers to get free delivery within one to three days on orders as long as the purchase is above each store’s minimum.

    Walmart says it will be tapping its 4,700 US stores and its fulfilment network next year to offer more kinds of customer experiences using voice shopping. For example, shoppers can tell Google Assistant they want to pick up an order in a store.

    Lore said the company wants to make voice shopping as easy as possible.

    “That’s why it makes sense for us to team up with Google. We know this means being compared side-by-side with other retailers, and we think that’s the way it should be,” he wrote in a corporate blog post.

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  • Vinaphone debuts carrier billing on Google Play

    Vinaphone debuts carrier billing on Google Play

    Vietnam’s Vinaphone has become the fourth and last of the nation’s four major mobile operators to launch carrier billing over Google Play using the Fortumo payments platform.

    The operator’s 20 million subscribers will be able to use the Fortumo platform to pay for apps and in-app content using their airtime balance.

    With the launch, 95% of the population of Vietnam can now make payments on Google Play through Fortumo – significant for a country with smartphone penetration of 40% but credit card ownership of below 2%.

    Fortumo will also provide Vinaphone with access to its Fortumo Insight statistics and data analytics platform, which helps operators analyze the performance of Google Play and use the data to make improvements to their payment infrastructure and marketing campaigns using the platform.

    “Vietnam is one of Asia’s fastest growing markets for mobile services. Vinaphone has been able to successfully capitalize on this expansion and enabling Google Play for carrier billing is the logical step for Vinaphone to accelerate the growth further,” Forumo chief business officer Gerri Kodres said.

    “Fortumo has established itself as the provider of choice for carriers in Asia and we are proud to help Vinaphone make Google Play payments available to millions of their users.”

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  • Google adds voice search for 8 Indian languages

    Google adds voice search for 8 Indian languages

    Google has added voice search functionality for eight additional Indian languages including Bengali, Malayalam and Tamil.

    At the moment, the voice search feature is available in English and Hindi in India. The other languages being added are Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Telugu and Urdu.

    “Speakers of these languages will be able to use their voice to dictate queries — both in Gboard on Android as well as in Search through the Google App,” Google Technical Program Manager Daan van Esch explained through a video conference.

    Esch explained that in order to perform a voice-based search, users will need to set their language in the voice settings menu in the Google app.

    “Globally, we now support voice search for 119 languages. We are introducing support for 30 new languages today, of which eight are Indian languages,” he said.

    The update will require the user to just tap the microphone icon (usually on the home screen of Android smartphones) to start voice search.

    Google has been increasing support for Indian languages across its various products like Maps and Search as a large number of the new users coming online are Indic language users.

    Esch explained that Google has worked with native speakers to collect speech samples. Machine learning models were trained to understand the various sounds and words, thus translating words from sound to text in the process.

    “Voice input for each of these languages is expected to get better over time, as more and more native speakers use the product,” he added.

    According to an earlier report by Google-KPMG, an estimated 536 million Indians are expected to use regional languages while online by 2021 as compared to about 199 million users who are expected to access the web in English. This growth is driven by increasing affordability of devices and data charges as well as availability of more local content, the report had said.

    The report had also pointed out that apart from Hindi, Marathi and Bengali users are expected to drive volume growth, while Tamil, Kannada and Telugu users are expected to be among the most digitally engaged through 2016 to 2021.

    Voice search in these new languages will be available in Google Search on iOS as well. These will soon be extended to other Google apps and products, including the Translate app.

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  • Google Earth to let users post stories, photos in coming years

    Google Earth to let users post stories, photos in coming years

    ‘The story of your family history, the story of your favorite hiking trip – it could be anything. It doesn’t have to be profound.’

    Alphabet Inc wants users to post millions of stories, video and photos on its Google Earth platform in the next few years, the program chief said on Tuesday at a launch event in Brazil for content focused on showcasing the Amazon rainforest.

    The “Voyager” tool allows internet surfers to take interactive tours of exotic destinations on Google Earth led by the likes of primatologist Jane Goodall, with photos, information and maps.

    However, regular users will be able to create their own unedited content for private or public use within two to three years, Google Earth Director Rebecca Moore told.

    “The story of your family history, the story of your favorite hiking trip – it could be anything. It doesn’t have to be profound,” she said at the event in Sao Paulo.

    Moore took the stage at an event in Sao Paulo to unveil the “I am the Amazon” project, which has mapped 11 sites to document the relationship between the rainforest and its people, touching on topics like food, water and cultural origins.

    To tell the stories of communities such as the Yanomami people, Cinta Larga and the Boa Vista Quilombola, Google and partners used tools like 3D cameras to accompany satellite images with videos and text.

    Moore did not reveal the budget for the project but she ruled out the idea of advertising on the platform and said it is not Google’s intention to turn a profit from the venture.

    “Google Earth is our gift to the world,” she told. “In terms of budget, Google has nice revenue from advertising, and not everything Google does has to make money.”

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  • Google set to face record EU antitrust fine as soon as Tuesday

    Google set to face record EU antitrust fine as soon as Tuesday

    EU antitrust regulators are likely to impose a record fine on Alphabet unit Google over its shopping service as soon as Tuesday, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday, concluding one of three cases against the company.

    The European Commission’s case was triggered by scores of complaints from both U.S. and European rivals, leading to a seven-year-long investigation into the world’s most popular internet search engine.

    The EU competition authority charged Google in April 2015 with distorting internet search results to favor its shopping service, harming both rivals and consumers.

    The Commission declined to comment.

    Google said: “We continue to engage constructively with the European Commission and we believe strongly that our innovations in online shopping have been good for shoppers, retailers and competition.”

    The company has said regulators ignored competition from online retailers Amazon and eBay Inc.

    Reuters exclusively reported on June 1 that the EU competition enforcer aimed to sanction the company before the summer break in August.

    Companies found guilty of infringing EU antitrust rules can be fined as much as 10 percent of their global turnover, which in Google’s case could be about $9 billion of its 2016 turnover but it is not expected to reach this level.

    A 1.06 billion euro fine handed down to U.S. chipmaker Intel in 2009 is the highest to date.

    Apart from the fine, the Commission will tell Google to stop its alleged anti-competitive practices but it is not clear what measures it will order the company to adopt to ensure that rivals get equal treatment in internet shopping results.

    The Commission’s tough line is in sharp contrast with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission which settled its own web search case with the company in 2013 by requiring Google to stop “scraping” reviews and other data from rival websites for its own products.

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  • Google launches first SEA Cloud Platform region

    Google launches first SEA Cloud Platform region

    Google has launched its first Google Cloud Platform (GCP) region in Southeast Asia. Named “asia-southeast1”, the region, located in Singapore, has been established in a bid to improve latency for both GCP customers and end users in or near Singapore.

    The Singapore region is GCP’s third in Asia and primarily caters to customers in Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. GCP’s other two Asian regions are located in Taiwan and Tokyo. Google had initially intended to open a data center in Hong Kong but plans were abandoned in 2013 due to land availability issues.

    According to a blog post by Dave Stiver, a product manager at GCP, customers in Southeast Asia can expect to enjoy between 51% and 98% improvements in round-trip time (RTT) latency, compared to using other GCP regions such as Taiwan and Tokyo.

    Google already runs a data center in Singapore, and the addition of a second facility next to the first is expected to cater to an expanded customer base across all company sizes as GCP widens its footprint in the region.

    Current GCP customers in the region include Blackberry Messenger (BM), Carousell and Go-Jek.

    BM has selected IT services firm Pythian to assist in migrating its mission-critical infrastructure from Blackberry’s on-premise data centers in Canada to GCP in Asia. The move is aimed at catering to a significant increase in media consumption by its users worldwide, as the messaging platform seeks to move into the commerce and services space.

    “We are excited to be able to deploy into the GCP Singapore region, as it will allow us to offer our services closer to BBM Messenger key markets. Coupled with Google’s global load balancers and extensive global network, we expect to be able to provide a low latency, high-speed experience for our users globally,” said Matthew Talbot, CEO of Creative Media Works, the company that runs the BBM Messenger Consumer service globally.

    GCP also counts Carousell, Indonesia’s Go-Jek, Avaya, Adidas, Deloitte, HSBC and Netflix as customers.

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  • Google Settles Tax Matter with Indonesia

    Google Settles Tax Matter with Indonesia

    Alphabet’s Google has made an agreement with Indonesia for 2016 after a long-standing dispute over charges of insufficient annual payments to the government.

    The latest settlement figure has been estimated using a new method which will finally conclude to charges that the tech firm was avoiding the required tax payments in the country.

    The report also corresponds with information that a decision was expected very soon.

    Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said on Tuesday that they already have reached a deal with the group based on prior year but they cannot release the figure yet.

    Google has so far not provided any statement.

    It is a notable progress seeing that both parties have settled for just one collection year. The government had been going after the search giant for tax avoidance and failure to pay the required amount for the past five years.

    Indonesia is doing the same but is coming across complication with tracking the money flow in view of the fact that the revenue of Google’s Indonesian business is managed at its Asia Pacific headquarters located in Singapore.

    The search giant was expected to pay about $376 million in taxes for 2015 but only paid $391,000.

    Google had mentioned that the estimated size of Indonesia’s digital advertising market was at $300 million for the said year.

    If found to have failed with taking care of payments, the five years of back taxes will cost the company a fine of over $400 million for only the year 2015 which could put a slight pressure on Google’s swamp bank account.

    Indonesia is keen on increasing tax collection and is planning to make use of the newly loaded capital to reduce its budget shortage and add fund to their current infrastructure program in the country.

    Other governments around the world are searching as well so as to crack down on what they consider as business tax avoidance.

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    During the Ramadhan, Google Indonesia e-commerce consumer behavior presented data searches on areas associated with the celebration in the country rose up to 28 percent while spending added to 30 percent.

    The country’s e-commerce head Henry Prihatna said that fashion product had the biggest sales gaining 180 percent, home appliances with 100 percent high and cellular phones edged up 80 percent.

    On the other hand, Google’s shares closed its Monday session losing as much as 0.7 percent to $942.90 on the Nasdaq Composite Index as tech stocks declined nearly 75 percent with Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet falling almost 6.5 percent.

    The three companies make up for approximately 30 percent of the index’s weighting.

    However, some experts believed that investors do not have to worry as any decline is likely to be buying opportunity and that the market is overbought from a long-term point of view and estimations are extended.

    With regards to money flows, investors may think about merging the variation between rising and falling matter in the stock market or their preferred index with money flows so as to have a useful perspective.

  • A Chinese unicorn backed by Google ready to take on the Amazon Alexa

    A Chinese unicorn backed by Google ready to take on the Amazon Alexa

    China’s Google-backed artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, Mobvoi, could soon take on the world’s leading smart voice assistant technologies, according to the firm’s founder and CEO. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Shanghai, Mobvoi’s Li Zhifei told that the firm could “absolutely” compete with the likes of Amazon in the digital voice assistant market space.

    “We are just like Amazon‘s Echo … We are making our own device and putting the technology into this device but gradually we are also going to open this AI service into third parties so that we can empower more devices,” Li Zhifei told on Thursday.

    In Western markets, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana are the dominant voice assistants. Amazon has continued to push Alexa across numerous products, while Google has rolled out Assistant across Android devices and its own Google Home device. Even Apple came out with its own smart speaker called HomePod this week.

    Though Mobvoi’s CEO acknowledged his signature chatbot device still has long way to go in order to improve its sophistication and compete on a global scale, he stressed the company was making a “huge amount of progress” in its development.

    The Beijing-based start-up was founded by a group of former Google research scientists five years ago and gained prominence after launching its flagship smartwatch, Ticwatch, in June 2015. The watch’s success led to a direct investment from Google and by May 2017, Mobvoi unveiled Tichome, its Chinese language chatbot designed to facilitate human-machine interaction.

    “In the last few years we have made a huge amount of progress in speaker recognition but we haven’t made much progress in natural language understanding, which makes the device not that smart (yet),” he added.

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  • Google promises to work with Vietnam to remove ‘bad’ content

    Google promises to work with Vietnam to remove ‘bad’ content

    The tech giant has been asked to open a representative office and coordinate with Vietnamese authorities. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has asked that Google open a representative office in Vietnam to better manage its increasingly popular services in Vietnam, including preventing bad content on YouTube, according to a report on the government’s website.

    Phuc said during a meeting with Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, in Hanoi on Friday that many of Google’s services are widely used by Vietnamese businesses and people.

    He reportedly asked for more cooperation from Google to prevent and remove bad information on its video site YouTube.

    According to the report, Schmidt has pledged to work with Vietnam government to filter its content, and said he will consider opening the Vietnam office.

    Vietnam has the second largest number of YouTube users in the world, he was quoted as saying.

    Major market

    Nearly 49 million people in Vietnam, or more than half of the country’s population, are online.

    A report from Think With Google, the research arm of the tech giant, last month said many Vietnamese spend their summer on searching on Google and watching YouTube.

    Trailers on the site got more than 500 million views in summer 2016, up a staggering 136 percent from previous year.

    Data from the company shows that last summer, YouTube views in Vietnam doubled compared to spring, with more than 60 percent from mobile.

    Every day during that summer, 100 million mobile searches were made on Google – that’s even more than the population.

     

    ‘Toxic’ content

    In March, Google Europe had to apologize for allowing ads to appear alongside offensive videos on YouTube, after big companies either pulled ads or threatened to do so.

    A month later, Vietnam’s government called on all companies doing business in the country to stop advertising on YouTube, Facebook and other social media until they could find a way to end the publication of “toxic” anti-government information.

    The information ministry in April confirmed that it had asked Google to block and remove 2,200 videos on YouTube that had “defamatory” content against Vietnamese leaders.

    Facebook, the most popular social network in Vietnam, last month also pledged to cooperate with the Vietnamese government to block “bad” and “toxic” content.

    Google CEO Sundar Pichai visited Vietnam in December 2015, joining a talk with Vietnamese businesspeople and startup community.

  • Google offers support to tourism SMEs

    Google offers support to tourism SMEs

    Smartphone adoption in Vietnam is now at 72 percent and the same as in the US, but a far higher proportion of Vietnamese travelers use smartphones to research hotels and travel than people in the US do, according to Google’s 2016 Consumer Barometer report.

    The proportion of people using smartphones for researching hotels in Vietnam stands at 48 per cent, much higher than the US’s 18 per cent, while 42 per cent research overland travel compared to 25 per cent, and 37 per cent research flights against 18 per cent in the US.

    “The key to current and future success for travel businesses lies in getting mobile right,” Ms. Ha Lam Tu Quynh, Head of PR & Communications at Google Asia Pacific, told a recent conference on “Solutions for the Development of Vietnamese Tourism Businesses” in Ho Chi Minh City.

    Vietnam welcomed 10 million tourists last year, a 26 per cent increase from 2015, and the industry contributed 6.6 per cent of GDP, with the target for 2017 being 10 per cent of GDP.

    The conference heard tips and tools to help over 30 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam’s travel industry win on mobile.

    “Mobile has transformed the way we live our lives,” Google noted in the report. “It’s speed and convenience has changed everything from shopping to entertainment. Mobile has also changed the way we travel. Tourism in the past used to mean paper maps and hefty guide books, but now you can carry all the information you need in your smartphone, not to mention all the stages of booking flights and hotels before you step on the plane.”

    In the mobile world, time is money so slow sites or apps lead visitors to head elsewhere. A study by DoubleClick revealed the stark finding that 53 per cent of consumers will abandon a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

    Businesses can also receive good support from Google via consultancy sessions with accredited Google Developer experts or discounts from Google’s special deals with market-leading website designers.

    Mr. Trinh Quang Chung, Head of Google Industry, said “every Vietnamese business is an online business now, because that’s where consumers are spending an increasing amount of their time.

    For any travel business looking to attract consumers in mobile-first Asia, not being present on mobile, or offering a slow and inconvenient experience means giving competitors who are set up well an immediate advantage.

    Mobile helps Vietnamese small businesses find customers across oceans without needing to hop on a plane themselves – which is why we’re offering a range of tools and programs to help Vietnamese businesses make the most of mobile.”

  • Rakuten drone network under development

    Rakuten drone network under development

    US company AirMap is helping develop technology to manage a Rakuten drone network in Japan.

    Rakuten, Japan’s giant online retail platform, and AirMap hope drones will be allowed to be used at low altitude.

    Rakuten set a world record early this year for the longest drone delivery, flying a container of hot soup 12 km to surfers on a beach.

    CEO Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani expects drones to revolutionise the delivery sector. “The capacity in the skies above us is far greater than in the roads beneath our feet,” he has written in a blog post.

    Global rival Amazon is also making a push into drone deliveries.

    With more than 14,000 employees and revenue last year of more than ¥781.9 billion (US$6.8 billion), it is pushing to become a tech giant on the scale of Alibaba or Google.

    So committed is Mikitani to going global that he made English the official company language in 2010. This helped the company dispense with the honorifics and deference of Japanese, and also made it easier to hire foreigners, reports CNN Tech.

    Rakuten takes Japan’s “high-quality, really customer-oriented service mind” and mixes it “with the Silicon Valley, little bit techie, dynamic culture,” says Mikitani.

    A household name in Japan, Rakuten spent $900 million to buy messaging app Viber in 2014, and has also invested in startups such as US transportation company Lyft and Pinterest.

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  • SevOne, Google teamup for business agility

    SevOne, Google teamup for business agility

    SevOne has collaborated with Google to enable enterprises to leverage the critical network and operational data that SevOne collects with Google’s analytics platform to accelerate their business and IT initiatives.

    With the partnership, enterprises are now able to combine SevOne’s performance monitoring platform for data collection and operational insight capabilities with Google’s Cloud platform for rich analytics and machine learning.

    The engagement intends to ensure that organizations are able to drive faster and more effective business decisions as well as improve the performance of their current service offerings and accelerate the delivery of new network data services.

    “By leveraging end-to-end infrastructure visibility, valuable operational insights, and powerful analytics, organizations will be able to achieve unprecedented business agility,” said Jack Sweeney, CEO of SevOne.“Whether it’s rolling out new services or enhancing current offerings, this partnership will ensure they have the intelligence they need to win against their competitors.”

    Enterprises are promised the ability to unify their disparate data, normalize it, and analyze it effectively for intelligent decision-making across the organization to improve their operations.

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  • Telkom Ready to Face Google Balloons in Indonesia

    Telkom Ready to Face Google Balloons in Indonesia

    PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Persero (TLKM) or Telkom signals it is ready to block the expansion of Google’s hot air balloon as part of Google’s Project Loon across Indonesia, by increasing the number and capacity of its satellite.

    “We continue to add satellites to expand internet services that reach remote rural areas. So, do not let the balloon (Google Loon) over Indonesia,” said Director of Network and IT Solution Abdus Somad Arief.

    Abdus said in addition to continuing to build fiber-optic network infrastructure, Telkom also utilizes satellite technology to equalize communication access across the country. Moreover, he added, Indonesia with 17,000 islands, is unlikely to be completely reachable with optical cable network, Telkom’s satellite then should continue to be developed.

    Still cited by Antara, it is known around mid-2015, Google actively expanded in a number of countries, including Indonesia, bringing Internet networks in remote locations which are difficult to access with optical cable infrastructure, with balloons that acts like a satellite.

    The balloons used in the project fly with solar power, the company plans to expand its worldwide internet network coverage by creating Wi-Fi networks in the air using the balloons.

    Telkom’s efforts to block the Google Loon are reflected from the company’s planned launch of Telkom 3S Satellite scheduled on February 15, 2017, at around 4:39 AM, with launch site at the Guiana Space Center of Kourou, Guyana, France.

    Telkom 3S satellite will occupy an orbital slot of 118 degrees of east longitude which is above Kalimantan and currently is occupied by Telkom-2 satellite.

    With satellite’s active period about 15 years since its launch, Telkom 3S has a capacity of 49 transponders, consisting of 24 C-band transponders (24 TPE), 8 extended C-Band transponders (12 TPE), and 10 Ku-band transponders (13 TPE).

    “If Telkom 3S satellite [is launched], Telkom has three active satellites orbiting, i.e., Telkom 1, Telkom 2, and Telkom 3S Satellites,” he said.

    Abdus added Telkom has experienced in satellite management for 40 years; it is the time to make satellite with its self-produced technology. For Telkom 3S Satellite, in terms of local content, Telkom is no longer user, but it is capable of build its own.

    Telkom since 1976 has been managing satellite, Telkom through a center of excellence, especially in satellite field is ready to take part to build the nation.

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  • Tax office to summon Google to clarify data on revenue

    Tax office to summon Google to clarify data on revenue

    Director General of Tax Ken Dwijugiasteadi gave an assurance on Wednesday that he would summon Google representatives to confirm data that it submitted regarding the companys revenue in Indonesia.

    “I have the data, so I will ask for their confirmation on whether the figures that they submitted are accurate,” said Dwijugiasteadi.

    He did not mention when the summons would be made, but the agenda for the meeting has been decided due to Googles history of tax avoidance. The authorities have requested for a copy of electronic data relating to revenues from advertisements.

    He also hoped that Google will respond to the summons so the process of paying income tax on their revenues, which had already been significantly delayed, can be completed quickly.

    Dwijugiasteadi said that every company that operate and collect revenues in Indonesia are obliged to meet their tax obligations and contribute appropriately by paying the correct taxes to the state.

    “Regulations must be met and my job is to enforce them accordingly. I do not threaten or use force,” he added.

    The head of the Jakarta regional office of the Directorate General of Tax, Muhammad Haniv, said that Google has yet to submit additional financial reports that they requested regarding revenue collected in Indonesia.

    “We cannot fully trust their statements as we are still waiting for further supporting documents. Their income from sources such as pay per click and other applications are yet to be accounted for,” he added.

    He further questioned Googles reluctance to be listed as a permanent company in Indonesia as the company is already operating many of its servers in the country.

    “They already have servers in Indonesia. That is the physical evidence. Being permanently established requires a physical presence,” said Haniv.

    According to the Directorate General of Tax, Google was registered as a legal entity in Indonesia at Tanah Abang Tax Office III in Central Jakarta as a foreign investment company in September 15, 2011 as subsidiary of Google Asia Pacific in Singapore.

    Based on Indonesian income tax law, Google must be declared as a permanent company and all its revenue or income within Indonesia must be taxed.

    However, Google has rejected further tax inspections from the authorities and it will not take the status of a permanent company, despite its revenue being in the trillions with the majority coming from advertisements.