Some people have one blog. I have 6. Yes 6. It sounds crazy but I do. I basically have this blog in Spanish and English which I use mostly to write about technology and my own experiences building FON. Then I have Safe Democracy in Spanish and English. Safe Democracy is the blog that remained as a result of the March 11th Conference on Democracy and Terrorism. This is a collaborative blog with many different authors. While it´s been dormant for a year this week the Safe Democracy Foundation which I manage has started accepted new contributions by many different authors both in both languages. Lastly I have my political/social blogs. They are the Varsavsky Foundation blogs in Spanish and English and in those blogs I write my political/social views. Interestingly I rarely translate my blogs. I don´t believe in translation. I believe in cultures and I say raise different issues in different languages something that frequently annoys my Spanish readers many of whom believe everything can be translated.

Why do I have the feeling that Bill Gates is making a “been there done that” T Shirt to send to the people at Google? Been there, been trashed, been there, fought the US government, been there, fought the Chinese, been there done that. At Davos when Eric Schmidt said that Google thought long and hard about its choices and decided to offer most of its search capabilities but not all in China, Bill Gates replied, that´s “do less evil”. He was having a ball. Still my heart is with Google. To me and I think to most, there´s still a huge difference on how Google succeeded vs how Microsoft succeeded.

Today the Financial Times Rankings came out and I was very pleased to see that the school where I have been teaching entrepreneurship for 9 years, Instituto de Empresa, has been ranked first in Spain, 3rd in Europe and 12th in the world. Congratulations to everyone at IE!

Just came back from DLD 06. Americans may have the best technology companies but Europe gets the upper hand on great technology conferences. What I like about the European events is that they take place in beautiful cities, DLD in Munich, Les Blogs in Paris and SIME in Stockholm, that they have fantastic nightcaps, and that they bring the best selection of American participants. Why are the best speakers in the world American? Is it because the American speakers are just great or that the ones who make it over here are chosen by Europeans? Mine was an all American but me panel, and it was a pleasure to be part of it.

Having managed three ISPs, Viatel, Ya.com and Jazztel I think that this senior American executive is clueless. Liberalization: it all started in America. But with the Bush Administration, monopolists are having a ball. Witness unbundling, Americans invented it, we copied it in Europe, now Americans lost it and we get much more bandwidth for less money than in the States that it´s not even funny. And that´s with the euro at 1.2. With ideas like selective speed management soon America will revert back to the Internet Dark Ages of dial up.