Opinion

We’ve known for a long time that Google makes content decisions, but recent moves in the direction of censorship are going too far. Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine a regulatory backlash given Google’s victims: websites that no mainstream politician will defend. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, told a conference on Monday the company was working …

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently laid out a bold vision for transforming his country into a fully developed economy by 2050, with a particular emphasis on spurring innovation and technology. Given China’s current level of human capital — and some looming changes in the world economy — that may be harder than he expects. A widely held view in the …

Facebook and China’s Tencent are entrenched among the global technology elite, and they are more alike than at first glance. Yes, the two companies are quite different businesses. Facebook Inc. makes nearly all of its $36 billion in annual revenue from selling advertising to companies eager to reach the 2 billion people who use its internet hangouts each month. Tencent …

Are you ready for another thrilling fight over network neutrality? It’s coming. Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, plans to dismantle rules put in place in 2015 that require internet service providers to treat all content travelling through their pipes equally. The rules prohibit the ISPs from blocking or “throttling” certain web traffic, and from offering “fast …

Pity Philip Hammond, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer. His budget announcement yesterday has to contend not just with the long-term fiscal implications of sluggish growth in productivity — a nagging issue for the British economy — but also with the government’s lack of a parliamentary majority and the enormous uncertainty surrounding Brexit. These conditions demand an exacting balance of …

There was widespread excitement last week on the news that Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund has announced an intention to sell off its oil and gas holdings. This amounts to about 6 percent of the fund’s stockholdings, about $37 billion. Environmental activists, in particular, are delighted and expect this to trigger a broader sell-off in fossil fuels. Bill McKibben, …

Two billionaire brothers, two bonds, two very different fates. This isn’t the plot of yet another sequel to Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel, though it could very well be. Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, sold 10-year dollar notes at just 130 basis points over US Treasuries on Monday. None of the existing debt of Indian nonfinancial issuers, including state-owned firms, …

The Bitcoin rate spike, still alive despite bitter divisions in the community that supports the cryptocurrency, has laid bare the biggest problem with Bitcoin: Compared with fiat currencies, it’s painfully inconvenient and expensive to use as a means of payment. Bitcoin is set up to reward users for verifying transactions. Miners who package transactions into “blocks” receive two kinds of …

China is opening its financial firms to more foreign ownership. The opportunity might seem tempting. But developed-world buyers should beware — it’s possible that it’s a trap. On November 10, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao announced changes in the rules limiting foreign ownership of Chinese financial companies. Foreign investors will now be allowed to take controlling interests in Chinese securities …

Asia’s two rival financial centers are starting to look very different, and the gap is going to widen. The divergence of Singapore and Hong Kong is already evident in the quality of their transportation networks. MTR Corp.’s main rail lines in Hong Kong have been glitch-free for 5.6 million kilometers of passenger journeys on average this year, while Singapore’s subway …