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Supplier Report: 5/31/2019

There were several privacy/security events disclosed over the last week that continues the conversation about how our data is secured…

Google stored passwords in plain text for over a decade,  Snapchat employees spied on users, and a real estate company leaked 885 million real estate documents to the web.

Huawei is a good example of what happens to a company that the US government does not trust. Could this be the first draft of a playbook, or is Huawei unique in their punishment?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • As Amex scoops up Resy, a look at its history of acquisitions

    In addition to Resy, AmEx has been on a buying spree as of late. In March, we reported on its purchase of LoungeBuddy, a former partner that helped travelers with reviews of various airport lounge areas. Also this year, AmEx picked up Pocket Concierge, a firm that we wrote “helps book in-demand restaurants and is similar to OpenTable.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/19/as-amex-scoops-up-resy-a-look-at-its-history-of-acquisitions/

Cloud

  • As Oracle’s growth stagnates, insiders say that its all-important cloud business has suffered layoffs, infighting, and confusion

    But the interesting thing isn’t just how many people Oracle is cutting. It’s also the business units being targeted.

    Specifically: 300 people were cut from Oracle’s Seattle offices in the early rounds of layoffs, including 25% of of the all-important group known internally as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI, one employees told us and another, who was laid off in Seattle, confirmed. Corporations do not have to report layoffs in the state of Washington unless 500 people are impacted in a single location at one time, and Oracle has not publicly reported layoffs in the state.

    This Seattle team is Oracle’s second cloud engineering and development group, but arguably its most important one. Its mission is to build what Oracle calls its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Generation 2 cloud, which is also known internally as OCI. The new cloud has become the centerpiece of Oracle’s whole technology strategy. Gen 2 was announced in the fall.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-insiders-describe-slow-growth-chaotic-cloud-unit-2019-5

  • An Amazon employee explains why thousands of workers want the company to stop selling cloud services to oil companies, just like it won’t sell guns

    Amazon employees submitted a shareholder proposal and held a press conference calling for the company to become a leader in sustainability by vowing to quickly reduce its carbon footprint in line with recommendations by climate scientists.

    They also want their company to ditch the unit that sells cloud computing services to oil and gas companies.

    Their efforts seem to be having an impact, as Amazon has finally promised to share its carbon-footprint data and to reduce the impact of its massive shipping operations.But one leader of the employee protest explains that thousands of employees don’t think Amazon is doing all it can, and haven’t given up the fight.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employee-explains-climate-change-protest-2019-5

Security/Privacy

  • Snapchat employees reportedly snooped on users with ‘SnapLion’ tool

    In total, Motherboard spoke to four former employees and a current employee that verified the existence of the SnapLion tool. Two former employees said that the abuse of the SnapLion tool occurred “several years” ago, but it’s unknown whether it’s still happening today. Emails obtained by Motherboard revealed an employee using the tool to look-up a user email address in a non-law enforcement related context. Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request from Engadget for comment.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/23/snapchat-employees-spied-snaplion-tool/

  • Amazon under greater shareholder pressure to limit sale of facial recognition tech to the government

    Months earlier, shareholders tabled a resolution to limit the sale to law enforcement and government agencies Amazon’s facial recognition tech, called Rekognition. It followed accusations of bias and inaccuracies with the technology, which they say can be used to racially discriminate against minorities. Rekognition, which runs image and video analysis of faces, has been sold to two states so far, and Amazon has pitched Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A second resolution will require an independent human and civil rights review of the technology.

    Now the ACLU is backing the measures and calling on shareholders to pass the resolutions.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/amazon-shareholder-pressure-face-recognition/

  • Google says some G Suite user passwords were stored in plaintext since 2005

    The search giant disclosed the exposure Tuesday but declined to say exactly how many enterprise customers were affected. “We recently notified a subset of our enterprise G Suite customers that some passwords were stored in our encrypted internal systems unhashed,” said Google vice president of engineering Suzanne Frey.

    Passwords are typically scrambled using a hashing algorithm to prevent them from being read by humans. G Suite administrators are able to manually upload, set and recover new user passwords for company users, which helps in situations where new employees are on-boarded. But Google said it discovered in April that the way it implemented password setting and recovery for its enterprise offering in 2005 was faulty and improperly stored a copy of the password in plaintext.

    Google has since removed the feature.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/21/google-g-suite-passwords-plaintext/

  • First American security flaw leaked 885 million real estate documents

    First American Financial Corporation left as many as 885 million real estate documents dating as far back as 2003 exposed, according to Krebs on Security. The company, one of the largest real estate title insurance firms in the US, has already fixed the vulnerability as of Friday afternoon after the security researcher notified it of the flaw. Before the patch rolled out, however, anybody armed with a link to one of the documents hosted on its website could simply change a single digit in the URL to access somebody else’s files. The documents didn’t require a password or any kind of authentication.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/25/first-american-leak/

Software/SaaS

  • Google suspends Huawei’s Android support

    Reuters sources claim Google has suspended transactions with Huawei that require transferring proprietary hardware and software, hobbling much of its smartphone business outside of China. It “immediately” loses access to future OS updates beyond the Android Open Source Project, according to the insider, and upcoming phones would have to go without official apps like the Google Play Store and Gmail.

    The company is still “internally” discussing which services are going away, the source said. Google would cut off all tech support and collaboration for Android and services, however.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/19/google-pulls-android-support-from-huawei/

  • Microsoft, once considered a stodgy software maker, has outperformed tech unicorns since 2015

    For example, ride-hailing company Uber was valued at $55 billion at the time, and is now only at $68 billion following its IPO this month. Investors valued Snap at $16 billion in late 2015, and the company’s inability to find a profitable business model since its 2017 IPO has left it worth $15 billion on the public market. Pinterest went public in April and has a market cap of $12.9 billion, up just a bit from its $11 billion valuation in 2015. Dropbox has slipped from $10 billion then to a market value of $9.4 billion now.

    Microsoft, meanwhile, is cranking out earnings from its dominant Windows products and its ability to push legacy clients to emerging cloud products like Azure and Office 365. Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has recorded eight straight quarters of year-over-year double-digit sales growth. In April, it became the third public company to reach a $1 trillion market cap, though it’s fallen some since then.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/25/microsoft-has-grown-more-than-a-basket-of-unicorns-since-2015.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft and Sony strike partnership for gaming and AI services

    “The two companies will explore joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services,” Microsoft said in a statement.

    Sony’s existing game and content-streaming service will also set to be powered by Microsoft Azure in the future. The companies also hope to build better development platforms for the content creator community.

    On top of this, the Microsoft and Sony will work together on AI, semiconductor and image sensing technology.

    https://www.gigabitmagazine.com/ai/microsoft-and-sony-strike-partnership-gaming-and-ai-services

  • China’s largest chipmaker is delisting from the Nasdaq

    Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) announced in a filing published Friday that it plans to delist next month ending a 15-year spell as a public company in the U.S. The firm will file a Form 25 to delist on June 3, which is likely to see it leave the NYSE around ten days later. SMIC, which is backed by the Chinese government and state-owned shareholders, will focus on its existing Hong Kong listing going forward but there will be trading options for those holding U.S-based ADRs.

    In its announcement, SMIC said it plans to delist for reasons that include limited trading volumes and “significant administrative burden and costs” around the listing and compliance with reporting.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/24/smic-nasdaq-delisting/

Other

  • With Barry Padgett leaving SAP, what’s next for new Intelligent Spend Group?

    Barry Padgett has left SAP only weeks after being named president of the newly created SAP Intelligent Spend Group (ISG), a combination of SAP Ariba, SAP Concur and SAP Fieldglass.

    Padgett had previously served as president of SAP Ariba, before being promoted to the new role as leader of the combined group. Spend Matters sources suggest he has accepted a new role as chief revenue officer for Stripe, a payments company, although this is unconfirmed at this time.

    https://spendmatters.com/2019/05/21/barry-padgett-leaving-sap-and-new-intelligent-spend-group/

  • Ford will slash 7,000 salaried jobs by August

    This cuts will result in annual savings of about $600 million, Hackett said in the email. “We also made significant progress in eliminating bureaucracy, speeding up decision making and driving empowerment as part of this redesign,” he wrote.

    The layoffs were anticipated by employees. Ford informed employees last October that it would be restructuring the company, a move that would likely result in layoffs and voluntary buyouts.

    The reorganization is part of a broader strategy to prepare for a future with autonomous vehicle technology, electrification and unconventional ownership models.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/ford-will-slash-7000-salaried-jobs-by-august/

  • Hertz-Accenture lawsuit highlights billing issues inside agencies

    “This disagreement is less an indictment of the consultant model and more of a wake-up call to slow down and do a better job scoping a project,” wrote Mark Bachmann, partner and chief client officer at independent agency Marcus Thomas in an email.

    Clients have been looking more closely at agency billings, which has resulted in the further splintering of agency-client relationships. Some of that has been a direct result of the issue at play in this suit: that the rise of digital means the old model of scoping a project and therefore deciding the payment plan simply doesn’t work anymore. As Digiday previously wrote, making 10 YouTube videos isn’t the same as making one TV spot.

    This suit and the disagreement between Accenture and Hertz are likely part of that trend, a sign that the change clients were looking for in the move from agencies to consultancies may not be as great as they had anticipated.

    https://digiday.com/marketing/wake-call-hertz-accenture-lawsuit-highlights-scoping-issues-agency-model/

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 5/29/2019

  • How work became the millennial religion of choice

    According to Jobvite’s annual Job Seeker Nation survey, 42% of American workers define themselves by the jobs they perform and/or the companies they work for, and that number rises to 45% among those under the age of 40. Furthermore, of the 42% who say that they define themselves through their work, 65% say it’s “very important” to who they are as people.

    “We have spiritual lives, we have physical lives, we like to have intellectual stimuli in our lives, we have our communities and our families and friends; humans are complex, and to have a really healthy balance, it requires all of those components,” says Rachel Bitte, Jobvite’s chief people officer. “Expecting all of that to come from your work could be an unrealistic expectation.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90350861/how-work-became-the-millennial-religion-of-choice

  • Diverse Workplaces Generate 19 Percent More Revenue Than Less Diverse Competitors

    Other tactics that La Mendola took to task for organizing multicultural teams included pinpointing personalities. By identifying the types of personalities on a team, from Type A taskmasters to creative working out-of-the-box types, you’ll begin to understand how to best approach the team as a whole.

    For a more laid back crowd, La Mendola recommends establishing a laissez-faire work environment–humor helps, too. In a multicultural environment that is more serious and straightforward, keep the crew on task for the best results. This is how La Mendola is able to manage a team of engineers from around the world and is also key to dealing with a multigenerational employee group.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/333873

  • How AI will liberate doctors from keyboards and basements
  • How Silicon Valley gamed Europe’s privacy rules

    Smaller firms — whose fortunes were of special concern to the framers of the region’s privacy revamp — also have suffered from the relatively high compliance costs and the perception, at least among some investors, that they can’t compete with Silicon Valley’s biggest names.

    “Big companies like Facebook are 10 steps ahead of everyone else, and 100 steps ahead of regulators,” declared Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a privacy expert who helped uncover Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. “There are very big questions about what they’re doing.”

    The patchy record of Europe’s data protection overhaul — on the one-year anniversary of its implementation — has given industry an opportunity to blunt similar efforts outside the European Union to emulate the region’s new privacy rules.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-data-protection-gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-facebook-google/

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Supplier Report: 5/17/2019

There is growing public pressure on Facebook to make some kind of change. Former employees and government officials want to break up the company calling it a monopoly, but are Facebook’s services essential?

Seeing this drama unfold, Google is quickly pivoting to privacy-based position. In recent weeks the company is allowing users to limit tracking and delete information Google has stored about usage.  Very smart move… but is it enough?

Meanwhile Oracle just can’t give up on Project Jedi.

Acquisitions

  • Apple buys companies at the same rate you buy groceries

    This weekend, CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that Apple purchases a new company every two to three weeks on average, and has bought between 20 and 25 companies in the last six months alone.

    That’s roughly as often as I bought groceries during some… oh, let’s just call them “fresh vegetable adjacent” periods of my life.

    You know how human beings never fail to be surprised when they get to the cash register and see how much of their paycheck is about to turn into food? I wonder if Apple ever feels that way. I’d guess not, considering how the company’s reportedly sitting on $225.4 billion dollars of cash on hand alone — enough to settle a historic array of lawsuits with Qualcomm 50 times over, if push came to shove.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18531570/apple-company-purchases-startups-tim-cook-buy-rate

  • Marvell to Acquire Aquantia, Eying Automotive Networking Market

    Marvell on Monday announced that it had reached an agreement to buy the networking specialist firm Aquantia for $452 million. The acquisition will allow Marvell to significantly augment their current networking capabilities, with the company intending to use Aquantia’s technology in future PC, enterprise, and especially in-vehicle applications.

    Under the terms of the deal, Marvell will pay Aquantia shareholders $13.25 per share in cash, bringing the total value of the deal to $452 million. The transaction has already been approved by board of directors of both companies, and subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close by the end of calendar year 2019.

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/14300/marvell-to-acquire-aquantia-eying-automotive-networking-market

Artificial Intelligence

  • The Morning After: All the important stuff from Google I/O

    An AI-powered assistant that responds to voice commands faster than you can type or swipe, even offline? That’s what Google promised at I/O, with demos showing off how its next-generation assistant could operate across and through several apps, using voice control almost exclusively to get the information users need when they need it. Plus, it learns what you like and can even make restaurant or menu suggestions based on those preferences. Expect to see these features roll out on Pixel phones first later this year.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/08/the-morning-after-google-io-highlights/

Cloud

  • Oracle Alleges AWS Recruited DoD Officials To Influence JEDI Cloud Award

    After Oracle first raised the issue, the DoD Inspector General, assisted by the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad, reopened a prior investigation and again concluded those potential improprieties didn’t impact the integrity of the process. A previous Government Accountability Office investigation also found no flaw warranting a change in how the military was selecting a cloud vendor.

    But Oracle argued Tuesday the military’s contracting officer was wrong to take Ubhi’s claims at face value during the investigation, noting he actively sought to return to AWS, where he previously worked, during his short stint at DoD, where for a time he worked as a JEDI project manager.

    https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/oracle-alleges-aws-recruited-dod-officials-to-influence-jedi-cloud-award

  • SAP embraces cloud customization – with interesting partners

    SAP is launching SAP Embrace, a new initiative to enable users of the SAP S/4 HANA ERP system to move it to the cloud, with platform, software, services and infrastructure customized to their specific industry needs. Interestingly, SAP is collaborating with cloud competitors Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud. SAP Embrace customers will be able to select one of those three cloud services providers as a hyperscaler, and also leverage SAP’s network of global strategic service partners.

    https://www.chainstoreage.com/technology/sap-embraces-cloud-customization-with-interesting-partners/

Security/Privacy

  • Google Says It Has Found Religion on Privacy

    Google plans to permit users to navigate its maps, watch videos on YouTube and search for information in “incognito mode,” limiting the amount of information shared with the company. It will also allow users to delete web and app activity history automatically after three months or 18 months.

    Google added incognito mode to its Chrome browser a decade ago.

    The company also said it would make it easier for users to find and delete information they have shared with the company, including location data in maps. For its Android operating system, Google said a new update would simplify how to limit the sharing of location data with app providers.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/technology/google-privacy-tools.html

Software/SaaS

  • Symantec CEO Abruptly Resigns Amid Financial Turmoil

    Symantec CEO Greg Clark abruptly resigned yesterday immediately before the embattled security company reported its fourth-quarter 2019 earnings, which included weak enterprise sales and disappointing forecasts for the first quarter and full 2020 fiscal year.

    The company appointed Richard Hill, current Symantec director and former chairman and CEO of Novellus Systems, as interim president and CEO, effective immediately, and said it will begin a search to find a permanent CEO.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/symantec-ceo-abruptly-resigns-amid-financial-turmoil/2019/05/

  • IBM sells $28.6b of bonds to help fund Red Hat buy

    The Red Hat purchase will push the combined company’s borrowings above $US60 billion with debt that’s more than three times a key measure of earnings, said Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Schiffman and Mike Campellone. Though IBM won’t buy back shares in the next two years, it still risks a potential downgrade to the BBB range, the tier of corporate debt that’s just above junk, they wrote.

    IBM took out a $US20 billion bridge loan to fund the Red Hat deal and will use some of its cash pile, the company said in October when the transaction was announced. S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings cut IBM one level to A at the time, the sixth-highest investment-grade rating, while it remains on review for downgrade at Moody’s Investors Service.

    https://www.afr.com/markets/debt-markets/ibm-sells-28-6b-of-bonds-to-help-fund-red-hat-buy-20190509-p51li8

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft open-sources its quantum computing development tools

    This move, the company says, is meant to make “quantum computing and algorithm development easier and more transparent for developers.” In addition, it will make it easier for academic institutions to use these tools, and developers, of course, will be able to contribute their own code and ideas.

    Unsurprisingly, the code will live on Microsoft’s GitHub page. Previously, the team had already open-sourced a number of tools and examples, as well as a library of quantum chemistry samples, but this is the first time the team is open-sourcing core parts of the platform.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/06/microsoft-open-sources-its-quantum-computing-development-tools/

  • Apple’s would-be sapphire glass supplier charged with fraud

    Apple loaned $578 million to a company called GT Advanced Technologies, which was supposed to build highly scratch-resistant screen covers from synthetic sapphire crystals. Instead, it produced flawed “boules” of sapphire that couldn’t be cut into displays and went bankrupt months after it started. Now, the SEC has announced that it’s charging the company and its ex-CEO with fraud for allegedly withholding key information from stockholders.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/06/apple-sapphire-glass-supplier-charged-with-fraud/

Other

  • Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, calls for Facebook to be broken up

    The tl;dr of Hughes’ argument against Facebook/Zuckerberg being allowed to continue its/his reign of the internet knits together different strands of the techlash zeitgeist, linking Zuckerberg’s absolute influence over Facebook, and therefore over the unprecedented billions of people he can reach and behaviourally reprogram via content-sorting algorithms, to the crushing of innovation and startup competition; the crushing of consumer attention, choice and privacy, all hostage to relentless growth targets and an eyeball-demanding ad business model; the crushing control of speech that Zuckerberg — as Facebook’s absolute monarch — personally commands, with Hughes worrying it’s a power too potent for any one human to wield.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/09/facebook-co-founder-chris-hughes-calls-for-facebook-to-be-broken-up/

    Facebook is not a monopoly, and breaking it up would defy logic and set a bad precedent

    Hughes and others have cited historical precedents such as the government’s breakup of Standard Oil and AT&T as a justification for stricter antitrust regulation against tech giants. But these companies not only had clear monopolies with pricing power that hurt consumers, they also offered products that were vital to the economy.

    Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are only three of many ways people can communicate digitally, and while many people spend hours every week using them, they are replaceable and inessential — and, in fact, getting away from Facebook and Instagram might make people happier. Even Hughes acknowledges, when he finds himself scrolling through Instagram at idle hours, “The choice is mine, but it doesn’t feel like a choice.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/09/facebook-should-not-be-broken-up-commentary.html

  • Elon Musk is going to trial for calling a cave diver a pedophile on Twitter

    Defamation law doesn’t apply to opinions or derogatory hyperbole, and Judge Wilson concluded that Musk’s case would be stronger if he’d simply tweeted an insult. But Musk “did not call [Unsworth] a ‘pedo guy’ and leave it there,” writes Wilson. “Rather, he made follow-up statements indicating that he believed his statements to be true.” That included the emails to BuzzFeed, where Musk “purported to convey actual facts and even suggested that the BuzzFeed reporter call people in Thailand to confirm his narrative.”

    The decision doesn’t mean Musk is guilty, but it means Unsworth’s case is strong enough to deserve a trial. A pre-trial conference will take place on October 7th. This won’t be the first time Musk has gone to court for some bad tweets. He recently settled a separate lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of making misleading financial statements on Twitter.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/10/18564625/elon-musk-vernon-unsworth-pedo-guy-tweets-defamation-lawsuit-trial-date-set

Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 5/15/2019

  • Google walkout organizers demand company investigate HR department

    In a Medium post from the official walkout account, the employees released a series of demands. On the list: meeting previous demands made during the November walkout, having Alphabet CEO Larry Page address those demands, reversing alleged retaliation against organizers, and opening an investigation into the company’s “abysmal handling of employee complaints.”

    “Google seems to have lost its mooring, and trust between workers and the company is deeply broken,” the post reads. “As the company progresses from crisis to crisis, it is clear Google management is failing, along with HR.” The post demands that an investigation be conducted by a third party and that the results be released publicly.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/8/18536996/google-walkout-organizers-hr-retaliation

  • New study shows human development is destroying the planet at an unprecedented rate

    In the most comprehensive effort undertaken to date, some 145 expert authors from 50 countries working with another 310 contributing authors spent the last three years compiling and assessing changes in global biodiversity over a 50-year period for a study conducted under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

    They found there are now 1 million species that are threatened with extinction; that more than one-third of the world’s land surface and 75% of all freshwater resources are devoted to crop or livestock production; that 60 billion tons of renewable and non-renewable resources are extracted globally every year; that land degradation has reduced the productivity of global land surface area by 23% and roughly $577 billion worth of crops are at risk from pollinator loss annually; and, finally, that up to 300 million people are at increased risk of floods and hurricanes because of the loss of coastal habitats.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/06/new-study-shows-human-development-is-destroying-the-planet-at-an-unprecedented-rate/

  • We’re Running Out of Water
  • Slack’s head of workplace design thinks open floor plans “suuuck”

    At Slack we’ve done a lot of different things. We do have open offices—we’re actually making them smaller, the desk per square foot smaller, and swatches of open office much smaller. We also have a variety of privacy phone booth options, small quad and double rooms, and one-person rooms. Some of them are bookable, some are not bookable, so people can really drop in and book them.

    We also have the luxury of having a human right now. Her role is space and room planning, so if you need a space you can air a complaint. And we have a human being who has purview into all your rooms and spaces and is able to help you.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90341688/slacks-head-of-workplace-design-thinks-open-floor-plans-suuuck

  • Why AT&T Was Right About HBO. In a Word, We’re Talking … ‘Silos.’

    Now, consider the impact of silos on a startup. Whatever their cause, silos of all types — to my way of thinking — end up encouraging stagnation and stunting growth. When each department looks out for itself, employees come to fear outside opinions and new ideas because they threaten the security of the walled-off group.

    Silos are part of the reason Microsoft lagged behind when the world went mobile. They also played a part in some of Google’s big stumbles, such as the demise of Google Plus.

    Now, think again about startups: It’s not enough for a startup to grow; it has to be able to handle that growth. Silos tend to spring up when management fails to recognize that a company is no longer a handful of scrappy entrepreneurs but an increasingly large, successful organization. To ensure that growth doesn’t kill your startup, it’s important that you be proactive when it comes to breaking down these walls –before it becomes too late.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/333544

Photo by WestBoundary Photography chris gill on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 5/8/2019

  • The push to break up Big Tech, explained

    A few years back, for example, Amazon essentially monopolized the market for e-books. Major book publishers fought back by teaming up to take on the bigger company and the Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against them. Why? Well, Amazon was using its power in the marketplace to keep e-book prices low. The publishers, the government argued, were trying to form a cartel to force Amazon to raise prices. And, indeed, even though the publishers ended up settling with the government, the introduction of more competition into the e-book marketplace (primarily from Apple) has had the impact of making e-books more expensive than they were when Amazon ruled the roost. The standard, in other words, isn’t that one company dominating a market is bad. It’s that it’s bad if a company’s market domination leads to bad outcomes for consumers.

    Back to Facebook and Instagram. At the time, few observers saw how significant this deal was. But technology industry analyst Ben Thompson told the Code Conference audience last year that allowing this acquisition was “the greatest regulatory failure of the last 10 years” by allowing Facebook to entrench its dominance of social media. Yet under the contemporary antitrust framework, one might argue there’s no harm to consumers here — Facebook and Instagram are both free, so there’s after all no increase in prices. Yes, the fact that the combined entity is such an advertising juggernaut, pulling in $17 billion last quarter, is a big problem for other companies trying to sell ads (such as publishing companies that use ad revenue to fund actual journalism, for example) — but that’s not necessarily a problem for consumers.

    https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18520703/big-tech-break-up-explained

  • Facebook Faces a Big Penalty, but Regulators Are Split Over How Big

    The F.T.C.’s five commissioners agreed months ago that they wanted to pursue a historic penalty that would show the agency’s teeth. But now, the members are split on the size and scope of the tech company’s punishment, according to three people with knowledge of the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    The division is complicating the final days of the talks.

    Along with disagreement about the appropriate financial penalty, one of the most contentious undercurrents throughout the negotiations has been the degree to which Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, should be held personally liable for any violation of a 2011 agreement, according to two of the people.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/technology/federal-trade-commission-facebook-mark-zuckerberg.html

  • ‘Resulting’: Don’t mistake a bad outcome for a bad decision
  • Ajit Pai admits FCC got broadband growth figures wrong

    The impressive broadband growth numbers the FCC reported in February were actually off by millions, and now the agency has admitted in a revised draft that its figures were indeed inflated. It was advocacy group Free Press that originally revealed (PDF) the inaccuracy in March, though commission chief Ajit Pai didn’t even mention its role in the discovery. The organization found that a new ISP called BarrierFree falsely told the FCC that it has started serving 20 percent of the country just six months after it opened.

    That mistake led the agency to announce that the number of Americans lacking access to a fixed broadband connection was down to 19.4 million by the end of 2017 from 26.1 million the year before. Turns out, the correct figure is 21.3 million — a big difference, for sure, but not big enough for Pai to backpedal on his declaration that the changes he implemented led to massive broadband growth.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/02/ajit-pai-fcc-broadband-growth-figures-error/

  • ‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are Sick of It.

    Across the different groups, the basic strategy is to push, but not so hard that the Chinese government feels compelled to react.

    That means no strikes and no demonstrations. In one group on the messaging app Telegram, references to Marx and Lenin are forbidden. The philosophies of communism’s leading lights often run contrary to the way China is run today. The government cracked down against a labor rights movement in the tech hub of Shenzhen this year.

    Instead of sit-ins, the tech workers are harnessing the power of memes, stickers and T-shirts. Some have pushed for a holiday to celebrate beleaguered software engineers. Mr. Zhuge is rallying workers to mail paper copies of China’s labor law to Mr. Ma of Alibaba.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/technology/china-996-jack-ma.html

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