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September was the month of the failed CEO. Adam Neumann of WeWork has stepped down. Mark Hurd is out on sick leave. Devin Wenig of eBay quit. And Herbert Diess if Volkswagen is under investigation for fraud.
What is the takeaway? Nobody is perfect. And – the time of the unicorns is coming to a close (thankfully). A business has to have a profitable model and if they don’t… heads are going to roll.
With SoftBank coming under more scrutiny for these runaway business valuations, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the darlings of Silicon Valley.
Acquisitions/Investments
- Facebook has acquired Servicefriend, which builds ‘hybrid’ chatbots, for Calibra customer service
As Facebook prepares to launch its new cryptocurrency Libra in 2020, it’s putting the pieces in place to help it run. In one of the latest developments, it has acquired Servicefriend, a startup that built bots — chat clients for messaging apps based on artificial intelligence — to help customer service teams, TechCrunch has confirmed.
Although Facebook isn’t specifying what they will be working on, the most obvious area will be in building a bot — or more likely, a network of bots — for the customer service layer for the Calibra digital wallet that Facebook is developing.
Facebook’s plan is to build a range of financial services for people to use Calibra to pay out and receive Libra — for example, to send money to contacts, pay bills, top up their phones, buy things and more.
Artificial Intelligence
- Ex-Google worker fears ‘killer robots’ could cause mass atrocities
Nolan, who has joined the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and has briefed UN diplomats in New York and Geneva over the dangers posed by autonomous weapons, said: “The likelihood of a disaster is in proportion to how many of these machines will be in a particular area at once. What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed.
“There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways. Which is why any advanced weapons systems should be subject to meaningful human control, otherwise they have to be banned because they are far too unpredictable and dangerous.”
- Microsoft launches its AI presentation coach for PowerPoint
The new PowerPoint Presentation Coach aims to take the hassle out of practicing. In its current version, the tool looks at three things: pace, slide reading and word choice. Pace is pretty self-explanatory and looks at how fast or slow somebody is speaking. The “slide reading” feature detects when you are simply reading the words from your slides word for word. Nobody wants to sit through that kind of presentation. The “word choice” tool doesn’t just detect how often you say “um,” “ah,” “actually” or “basically,” it also gives you feedback when you are using culturally insensitive phrases like “you guys” or “best man for the job.”
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/microsoft-launches-its-ai-presentation-coach-for-powerpoint/
Cloud
- Oracle reportedly funding anti-Amazon lobbying group
Oracle Vice President Kenneth Glueck, who runs the company’s lobbying efforts out of an office in Washington, D.C., confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that Oracle has backed Free and Fair Markets. Oracle declined to comment on the report to CRN.
Glueck has been the chief architect of Oracle’s strategy to lobby the U.S. government against AWS winning the entirety of the looming JEDI contract—the centerpiece of the military’s potentially $10 billion cloud transformation initiative from which Oracle has been knocked out of contention. Only AWS and Microsoft remain on a short-list, but delivery of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure award has been delayed because of political factors.
https://www.crn.com.au/news/oracle-reportedly-funding-anti-amazon-lobbying-group-531322
Reminder: Oracle did the same thing against Google in Europe - Oracle speaking with Google’s antitrust investigators
The House Judiciary Committee has asked for information from dozens of companies potentially harmed by anti-competitive actions of the tech giants. The committee will issue subpoenas based on how many voluntarily answer the requests.
Oracle and Google have a long-standing legal battle over whether Google infringed on Oracle’s Java copyright to make the Android OS. The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to take up a Google appeal to the suit.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3502058-oracle-speaking-googles-antitrust-investigators
Security/Privacy
- DoorDash confirms data breach affected 4.9 million customers, workers and merchants
The breach happened on May 4, the company said, but added that customers who joined after April 5, 2018 are not affected by the breach.
It’s not clear why it took almost five months for DoorDash to detect the breach.
DoorDash spokesperson Mattie Magdovitz blamed the breach on “a third-party service provider,” but the third-party was not named. “We immediately launched an investigation and outside security experts were engaged to assess what occurred,” she said.
- Facebook’s Suspension of ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Apps Reveals Wider Privacy Issues
The social network said in a blog post that an investigation it began in March 2018 — following revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy, had retrieved and used people’s Facebook information without their permission — had resulted in the suspension of “tens of thousands” of apps that were associated with about 400 developers. That was far bigger than the last number that Facebook had disclosed, of 400 app suspensions in August 2018.
Other
- CEO of WeWork, Which Has Lost an Unfathomable Amount of Money, Is Stepping Down
Adam Neumann, the eccentric co-founder of WeWork, is stepping down as CEO after a torrent of news cycles that read like pulp fiction, the New York Times reported. The Times reports that pressure came from investors and board members, and Neumann will stay on as the nonexecutive chairman of WeWork’s parent, the We Company.
In a press release, Neumann said “While our business has never been stronger, in recent weeks, the scrutiny directed toward me has become a significant distraction, and I have decided that it is in the best interest of the company to step down as chief executive.”
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne8dbw/ceo-of-wework-which-has-lost-an-unfathomable-amount-of-money-is-stepping-down
The Week the C.E.O.s Got SmackedAdam Neumann stepped down as chief executive of WeWork after a botched attempt to take the company public. Devin Wenig left his role as chief of eBay after the company’s board grew impatient with poor performance. And Herbert Diess, the chief executive of Volkswagen, was charged with stock market manipulation and misleading investors. Mr. Diess remains in his job, but all week, smartphone push alerts seemed to ping with the news of executive heads rolling.
Those three executives joined the recently departed chiefs of Juul, Nissan, comScore and HSBC as reminders that at the end of the trading day, corporate chieftains are there to make shareholders money.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/28/business/wework-juul-ebay-ceo.html
- Poll: Two-thirds of Americans want to break up companies like Amazon and Google
Across political party identification, Americans are pretty consistent about breaking up Big Tech. The poll shows that on the more extreme ends of both the left and the right, there is more enthusiasm on the matter.
Forty-two percent of Americans who consider themselves very liberal and 40 percent of those who say they’re very conservative strongly support breaking up tech companies to foster competition, while about 30 percent of those who identify as liberal or conservative say the same. (Moderates and people unsure of their political affiliation showed the lowest support). On breaking up for content, 56 percent of people who say they’re very liberal and 47 percent of people who say they’re very conservative back breaking up Big Tech.