Doing Business Internationally: How to act in each country

I was reading one very interesting article on Journal du Net about the different customs in countries around the world, till I stumbled upon two countries that were very interesting to me: Germany and Morocco. For those of you who don't know it, I'm Moroccan, I have traveled a bit around the world for my studies and I am currently working in Germany. All right so let's get to the point here and read what about Germans:

• Germans are rigorous, and this makes them very appreciated in the business world. meetings always start on time, being late is very negative. Meetings also always end up on time. The use of titles such as Dr. and Prof. is very important and one should know with whom one speaks, in order to avoid looking very impolite.

Well. I can speak as I see this from an outsider's perspective, the description given by the french is really not far at all from truth, and it takes some time to get used to all this. But overall, such properties make the Germans the people I like to work with most, because of their seriousness and their rigor, even though they don't always understand my jokes :D

Now what about the Moroccans:

• Don't be surprised if moroccans get very tactile and show much familiarity towards your person, moroccans don't like barriers and calling you by your surname, using the second person of the singular ("Tu" in French and "Du" in German, it doesn't exist in English), and even kissing you is totally normal and is a sign of their appreciation. they will often invite over at home to have meal or dinner, this is where you can discover all the richness of Moroccan culture and hospitality. And this is where some well chosen compliments won't do your business no harm at all...

I can only agree 100%. This is well hit. I'm sorry to tell you that due to my "internatiolaization" and heavy work on my person after living so long in Europe in different countries...I don't kiss people :D

If you want to read the whole story, and see what is important in other countries, go here: http://www.journaldunet.com/management/dossiers/0708201-coutumes-etranger/. Ahemm...It's in French...

Marwane El Kharbili

Might google experience a recession?

Some voices might say it, Google might experience hard times. Its considerable source of revenue, clicks sponsored links has been experiencing a deceleration for the last three years, but this year have even been decreasing: -0,3 %. This is the first time that this happens. So many jumped on the information and speculated about a possible recession of Google's activity on this sector. Yahoo's activity has been decreasing by -1%. Microsoft's activity has been increasing with 4% however. Would this play a role in Microsoft's attempted overtaking of Yahoo?

Marwane El Kharbili.