I respectfully disagree. We're not talking bananas and sugar, we're talking US companies being unwilling to make the effort to sell to people in other countries.
I worked on Terespondo, a search advertising company focussed on SA from 2002-ish to 2006. We were thirty dorks who happened to speak the language, and we captured 65% of a continent-wide market. Why?
- MS AdCenter didn't get multilingual support until 2008 or so.
- Google Adwords required a US credit card until 2004 or 5.
I worked on Terespondo, a search advertising company focussed on SA from 2002-ish to 2006. We were thirty dorks who happened to speak the language, and we captured 65% of a continent-wide market. Why?
- MS AdCenter didn't get multilingual support until 2008 or so.
- Google Adwords required a US credit card until 2004 or 5.
- Overture (Yahoo) were idiots.
It's gotten much better in the last ten years.