wrote in message
oups.com...
I'd guess the money made from the Internet enabled outsourcing of jobs to
countries outside the US is more than the money being made by
"cataloguing
and indexing services", which would include Internet sales and companies
like Google that make money from online ads. Unfortunately, it's really
hard to say how much outsourcing of jobs overseas is enabled by the
Internet. US companies tend to be tight lipped about how much money
they're
really spending on outsourcing overseas due to the public backlash over
things like call centers and customer support centers in India.

Well, call centers and customer support centers aren't internet
products, they are the product of really cheap long distance.

I personally lump applications like email, Usenet news, instant messaging,
application sharing (e.g. Microsoft NetMeeting), and other applications that
involve data being sent around the world using Internet Connections to be
using the Internet. They're not really using the World Wide Web (e.g.
Internet Explorer), but they're certainly using the Internet.

The
outsourcing of jobs has yet to be be shown to help the long-term bottom
line - a lot of companies are finding that they have to pay triple time
to US employees to re-write poorly written code, and that
communications problems cause costly snafus and customer disloyalty.

The company I work for has been at this for maybe 10 years. I really can't
comment about how many people are overseas versus in the US, but for the
company I work for, outsourcing isn't a fad, but a strategy that's working.
It certainly takes time to build up the necessary core level of experience
at an overseas site, but once that's reached, it's pretty much self
sustaining without much help (i.e. rewriting of code) from the remaining US
employees.

While outsourcing looks like it saves money in the short run, in the
long run whether it really is worth it for programming is up in the
air. However, I would argue that it's the -internet- not -the web- (I
realize I'm splitting hairs here a bit) that enables that.

The company I work for has gone well beyond the short run and yes, it really
is worth it, for the corporation that is. Those US employees that remain
nearly all have more than 10 years of experience in writing engineering
software. I've got over 15 years experience. That seems to be the only
reason to keep *us* around is our experience. Anyone with less experience
than the average overseas employee wouldn't be hired in the US in the first
place.

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)