Google's Schmidt: Trade embargo hinders Cuba's Internet

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, fresh from a visit to Havana, has described the Internet in Cuba as "trapped in the 1990s," heavily censored and with a weak infrastructure dominated by Chinese equipment because of the US trade embargo.

The embargo "makes absolutely no sense to US interests," Schmidt wrote in a column. "If you wish (Cuba) to modernize, the best way to do this is to empower the citizens with smartphones (there are almost none today) and encourage freedom of expression and put information tools into the hands of Cubans directly."

The trip had "the goal of promoting a free and open Internet," he wrote, without detailing how the visitors tried to do that in a country where the government controls all access to the Internet and blocks "hostile" pages.

Turning to US policies on Cuba, Schmidt wrote that the half-century-old embargo had opened the doors to Chinese equipment. "As US firms cannot operate in Cuba, their Internet is more shaped by Cuban narrow interests than by global and open platforms," he argued.