Amazon had good news this week as their AWS cloud hosting platform continues to dominate commercially and critically. The company took the top spot again in Gartner’s annual cloud quadrant report.
The company did have a bit of a PR problem this week with news that their Alexa home assistant accidentally recorded a couple’s private conversation and sent the recording to someone in their contact list.
The EU is putting the PR in GDPR (get it?) thanks to news that an Australian privacy group is filing GDPR privacy complaints based on Facebook and Google forcing users to adopt a “take it or leave it” approach regarding privacy options. There could be billions of dollars of fines (but I doubt that will happen… but it is the EU).
Acquisitions
No acquisition news this week…
Artificial Intelligence
- Eric Schmidt says Elon Musk is ‘exactly wrong’ about AI
“He doesn’t understand the benefits that this technology will provide to making every human being smarter,” Schmidt said. “The fact of the matter is that AI and machine learning are so fundamentally good for humanity.”
He acknowledged that there are risks around how the technology might be misused, but he said they’re outweighed by the benefits: “The example I would offer is, would you not invent the telephone because of the possible misuse of the telephone by evil people? No, you would build the telephone and you would try to find a way to police the misuse of the telephone.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/25/eric-schmidt-musk-exactly-wrong/
Here’s why Elon Musk isn’t “exactly wrong” when it comes to A.I.This is not the first time that Schmidt has pushed back on people’s fears about A.I. and the inevitable rise of the machines. Google DeepMind researchers may disagree with their former boss, though. The AI research group suggested that bots may eventually learn to interfere with humans and suggested creating a “big red button” to turn off AI and prevent them from fighting back. So, while Musk may be “exactly wrong” about many things (particularly this week) despite what Schmidt says, even Google thinks he may not be “exactly wrong” about A.I.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40577884/heres-why-elon-musk-isnt-exactly-wrong-when-it-comes-to-a-i
- How a Pentagon Contract Became an Identity Crisis for Google
The polarized debate about Google and the military may leave out some nuances. Better analysis of drone imagery could reduce civilian casualties by improving operators’ ability to find and recognize terrorists. The Defense Department will hardly abandon its advance into artificial intelligence if Google bows out. And military experts say China and other developed countries are already investing heavily in A.I. for defense.
But skilled technologists who chose Google for its embrace of benign and altruistic goals are appalled that their employer could eventually be associated with more efficient ways to kill.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/technology/google-project-maven-pentagon.html
Cloud
- Gartner drops 8 IaaS vendors off Magic Quadrant in favor of broader market players
Amazon Web Services once again came out on top of Gartner’s Infrastructure as a Service Magic Quadrant, cinching a spot in the top right of the leaders’ quadrant. Microsoft came in second, almost on par with Amazon in terms of “completeness of vision” but a little farther behind in “ability to execute,” while Google eked out of the visionary category and into the bottom of the leaders group for 2018.
Alibaba Cloud, Oracle and IBM rounded out the niche players category, scaling back from positions in the visionaries category last year.
- IBM Exec: We Have Ways to Stand Out in the Cloud Wars
IBM, Oracle (ORCL) and Alibaba (BABA) (tops in China) are now labeled as “Niche Players” rather than “Visionaries.” And eight other firms, including CenturyLink (CTL) , Rackspace and Dell EMC’s Virtustream unit, have been thrown out of Gartner’s report altogether.
IBM did, however, get some praise for its ability to migrate mainframe clients to its cloud, as well as its large global footprint. In a talk with TheStreet, Jason McGee, the CTO of IBM’s Cloud Platform unit, argued Big Blue’s strong support for hybrid clouds is a competitive strength, as are unique offerings in fields such as security, blockchain solutions and AI/machine learning (Watson). He also noted IBM’s cloud partnerships with the likes of Red Hat (RHT) , New Relic (NEWR) and Box (BOX).
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/ibm-exec-we-have-ways-to-stand-out-in-the-cloud-wars-14604579
Security
- Google and Facebook are already accused of breaking GDPR laws
Both companies are engaging in “forced consent” according to privacy group noyb.eu. Forced consent is a “take it or leave it approach” where a company requires that users opt into data terms it sets or blocks them from accessing their service entirely
https://www.fastcompany.com/40577794/google-and-facebook-are-already-accused-of-breaking-gdpr-laws
GDPR: Google and Facebook face up to $9.3B in fines on first day of new privacy lawGoogle, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have been hit with privacy complaints within hours of GDPR taking effect Friday — complaints that could carry fines of up to $9.3 billion in total.
- Google Emerges as Early Winner From Europe’s New Data Privacy Law
Since the law went into effect Friday, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, or DBM, a major tool ad buyers use to purchase targeted online ads, has been directing some advertisers’ money toward Google’s own marketplace where digital-ad inventory can be bought and sold, and away from some smaller such ad exchanges and other vendors. That shift has hurt some smaller firms, where Google says it can’t verify whether people who see ads have given consent.
Google is applying a relatively strict interpretation of how and where the new law requires consent, both on its own platforms and those of other firms. The stringent interpretation helps Google avoid GDPR’s harsh penalties and pushes the company to buy more ad inventory from its own exchange, where it is sure to have user consent for targeted advertising.
- Amazon Alexa-Powered Device Recorded and Shared User’s Conversation Without Permission
Amazon said the Portland incident involved a series of such misunderstandings. It said the Echo woke “due to a word in background conversation sounding like ’Alexa.’ Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ’send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ’To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list.” Amazon said Alexa then asked for confirmation and interpreted further background conversation as giving it.
Amazon also recently said it was adding a fix for Alexa-powered devices after users reported the machines started laughing for no reason. The company also attributed that to the software misunderstanding what it heard.
- AT&T and Verizon both want to run massive ad-tracking networks to rival Facebook
To sum that up, AT&T’s plan is to use the data it tracks and collects about customers on its networks — including location data and all the media they consume over those networks — to serve targeted ads for high prices against Time Warner content.
This is obviously quite upsetting from a privacy standpoint, but it’s actually a familiar strategy for a major carrier. When Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo and combined them into the tragically-named Oath in 2017, the company was explicit the goal was to use Verizon’s network data to better target ads on Oath’s millions of pages of content across Yahoo and AOL’s various zombie brands. Oath CEO Tim Armstrong spent years buying tons of mid-level ad-tech companies, and Verizon inserts “super cookies” across its entire network to track every site you visit along with the location of your phone. (I wrote about the Oath ad tracking nightmare in the past, if you would like to giggle at companies with names like Adapt.tv and Vidible.)
https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/30/17410942/att-verizon-facebook-ad-tracking
Software/SaaS
- Don’t read this, Oracle… It’s the rise of the open-source data strategies
While databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Apache Cassandra have long scored points with web developers, historically they didn’t compete on Oracle’s core database turf.
But that was then, this is now. According to recent Gartner analysis, open-source databases now constitute 7.6 per cent ($2.6bn) of the global database market, worth $34bn. If that doesn’t seem like much, consider that over the past two years the open source DBMS market averaged 75 per cent growth, compared to a more tepid 7.7 per cent growth in the total market.
Where is that growth coming from? In part, it reflects developers’ desires to run new applications with modern databases. Those decisions have been made much easier by AWS, in particular, which has taken many of the most popular open source databases and turned them into services, removing the complexity of managing them. As such, according to DB-Engines, which ranks database popularity across a number of factors, half of the world’s most popular databases are now open source.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/31/rise_of_the_open_source_data_strategies/
Other
- IBM’s Watson Health wing left looking poorly after ‘massive’ layoffs
IBM has laid off approximately 50 and 70 per cent of staff this week in its Watson Health division, according to inside sources.
The axe, we’re told, is largely falling on IBMers within companies the IT goliath has taken over in the past few years to augment Watson’s credentials in the health industry. These include medical data biz Truven, which was acquired in 2016 for $2.6bn, medical imaging firm Merge, bought in 2015 for $1bn, and healthcare management business Phytel, also snapped up in 2015.
Yesterday and today, staff were let go at IBM’s offices in Dallas, Texas, as well as in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Cleveland, Ohio, and Denver, Colorado, in the US, and elsewhere, it is claimed. A spokesperson for Big Blue was not available for comment.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/25/ibms_watson_layoffs/
- Microsoft surpasses Google’s Alphabet to become 3rd most valuable company
At the end of trading, Microsoft’s market value was $760 billion, holding off Alphabet, whose market value was $746 billion. Only Apple and Amazon.com are worth more, at $922 billion and $788 billion, respectively. The ballooning valuations have fueled speculation as to which U.S. tech company will be the first to reach a $1 trillion-market cap. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Photo by Kelly Jean on Unsplash