Google had a lot of things happening in the news this week…
First their parent company Alphabet announced it is pruning its “other bets” (aka Moonshot” projects). These projects tend to focus on “greater good” goals like energy, internet availability for poor countries, or security. Alphabet has been moving these projects back under the Google umbrella, reducing funding, or looking to sell off companies.
Rumors continue that Alphabet companies are toxic and poorly managed. Like Nest, Jigsaw (a company focused on internet protection and security) has employees fleeing due to bad leadership and a lack of action when issues and complaints are raised.
Finally, the company is not making friends with the DOJ as the anti-trust case ramps up. Meanwhile, their rival Oracle (and Larry Ellison), continue to get very friendly with President Trump.
Google was a company that said “don’t be evil” and invested in technologies that could help billions of people across the planet. Now it is de-funding those projects, trying to find ways into China, harbors creepy out-of-touch executives, and is being called out for a “culture of fear” while their list of enemies grow…
What the hell happened?
Acquisitions/Investments
- Google parent Alphabet is pruning its ‘other bets’
That list has been amended over the last four and a half years. Many Alphabet companies have simply rebranded — Life Sciences has become Verily, for instance, Google Ventures is now GV and Google X has dropped the word Google from its name. Of greater importance, however, are the “other bets” that Alphabet has created, killed and casually moved under Google management. Surprisingly, these decisions have accelerated over the last 12 months, highlighting Alphabet’s changing ambitions and just how difficult it is to turn a moonshot into a billion-dollar business.
Take Makani. The team was developing kites with tiny turbines that could be tethered to a stable structure — a large boat or buoy, for instance — and leverage the wind to generate energy. Google invested an undisclosed amount in 2007 and then, through its X factory, acquired the company six years later. Makani worked in the secretive laboratory before partnering with Shell and ‘graduating’ to Alphabet company status in February 2019. Last August, the team completed its first off-shore demonstration in the North Sea, roughly 10 kilometers away from Norway. But that wasn’t enough for Alphabet management. Earlier this week, the company admitted that it was no longer confident in Makani’s moonshot.
https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/20/alphabet-makani-chronicle-jigsaw-other-bets/
- SoftBank spends $2.5 billion to get second Vision Fund off the ground: sources
Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) account for the bulk of the first Vision Fund at $60 billion. They have yet to commit to the second fund.
Son spoke to Mubadala executives last week to convince them that the turnaround the Vision Fund was implementing in its investment portfolio was working, said one of the people, who declined to be identified as the information was not public.
SoftBank and PIF declined to comment. A Mubadala spokesman said his company was a long-term partner of SoftBank, with which it was in regular discussion.
Cloud
- Google Plots Course to Overtake Cloud Rivals
Within Google, the cloud business has been growing in importance. The cloud generated 5.5% of Alphabet sales last year, or $8.9 billion, up from $4.1 billion, or 3.7% of total sales, two years earlier. Alphabet only began separately reporting cloud sales in the last quarter, further highlighting the growth push.
Mr. Kurian’s changes have led to tensions within Google’s cloud ranks, where engineers had largely worked unencumbered by deadlines, according to current and former employees. Engineers were often more focused on projects they deemed interesting, former employers said, rather than what customers were wanting. That meant such features as databases and identity management—which didn’t excite employees but were prized by corporate buyers—were neglected, former employers said.
Under Mr. Kurian, said a former Google Cloud engineer, “we have to build stuff we can sell. People weren’t used to having that.” Mr. Kurian also upset some sales people when he shifted their compensation plans by lowering their base pay but offering more in bonuses for the deals they secured, former employees said. Google declined to comment.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plots-course-to-overtake-cloud-rivals-11582383601
Security/Privacy
- Google shifts authority over UK user data to the US in wake of Brexit
Since 2019, shortly after Europe’s GDPR privacy rules were enacted, the official service provider and data controller for UK users had been Google’s Irish subsidiary. According to Reuters, the change in data controller could have implications for the extent of legal protection over Google’s UK user data. While Ireland is covered by the EU’s strict GDPR data protection regulations, the USA’s privacy protections are comparatively weaker. Reuters says the shift could make it easier for British authorities to obtain the data, in instances such as criminal investigations. The USA’s recent Cloud Act, it notes, could make this easier still.
However, Reuters also says that the UK’s privacy rules will continue to apply when British authorities request user data, regardless of the fact that they’ll now be directed at Google’s US headquarters. For the foreseeable future, these rules are likely to be aligned with GDPR.
- Google’s Jigsaw Was Supposed to Save the Internet. Behind the Scenes, It Became a Toxic Mess
Among Jigsaw’s products and research projects are Project Shield, a free service to stop distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks; Outline, a controversial VPN for people who live under censorious regimes that’s used by 50,000 people, according to a source with knowledge of the product; a tool to automatically moderate comments and a hate-speech-fighting AI that can spot “toxic” comments that’s used by The New York Times; and a program to steer people away from violent extremist content called the Redirect Method.
These projects have gotten a lot of attention when they’ve launched, but none have been transformative for the internet. Experts say it’s unclear how much of a difference Jigsaw has made.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb98pb/google-jigsaw-became-toxic-mess
- Hackers Were Inside Citrix for Five Months
In March 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alerted Citrix they had reason to believe cybercriminals had gained access to the company’s internal network. The FBI told Citrix the hackers likely got in using a technique called “password spraying,” a relatively crude but remarkably effective attack that attempts to access a large number of employee accounts (usernames/email addresses) using just a handful of common passwords.
In a statement released at the time, Citrix said it appeared hackers “may have accessed and downloaded business documents,” and that it was still working to identify what precisely was accessed or stolen.
But in a letter sent to affected individuals dated Feb. 10, 2020, Citrix disclosed additional details about the incident. According to the letter, the attackers “had intermittent access” to Citrix’s internal network between Oct. 13, 2018 and Mar. 8, 2019, and that there was no evidence that the cybercrooks still remain in the company’s systems.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/hackers-were-inside-citrix-for-five-months/
Other
- Jeff Bezos announced a $10 billion fund to fight climate change
In a post on Monday morning Bezos announced that the Bezos Earth Fund will finance “scientists, activists, NGOs — any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”
Bezos is already an investor in Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund whose mission is to finance the development of technologies that can mitigate climate change and reduce the use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions in industries, including energy generation, food production and manufacturing.
Questions about the new fund are being referred to Amazon, which doesn’t have much to share. The money is from Bezos’ personal wealth and is separate from the foundation that he’d established, according to a spokesperson for the company.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/17/jeff-bezos-announced-a-10-billion-fund-to-fight-climate-change/
- Texas AG accuses Google of delaying antitrust investigation and ‘pushing us towards a fight’
In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton pointed to Google’s attempts to prevent the state from using certain outside consultants as one delay tactic. And Paxton said he’s willing to take a more aggressive stance as a result.
“They’re pushing us towards a fight,” Paxton told CNBC. “We don’t necessarily want one. But we won’t back off if they’re not going to cooperate.”
Google has said it objected to three consultants because they worked for competitors, including Microsoft and News Corp, and that it wants to ensure any documents they review remain confidential.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/05/texas-ag-paxton-says-google-delaying-antitrust-investigation.html
- As Google heads to the Supreme Court, Oracle takes aim at its industry allies
Google has argued that calling its work copyright infringement would hurt software interoperability, saying that it copied elements of Java to support Java developers building apps for Android. Earlier this year, it garnered around two dozen briefs supporting its position.
But Oracle claims that in reality, “Google appears to be virtually alone — at least among the technology community.” Glueck says Google’s most prominent backers had ulterior motives or “parochial agendas”; either they were working closely with Google, or they had their own designs on Java. Microsoft, for example, settled a Java-related lawsuit with some parallels to Google’s case. (That was, granted, nearly 20 years ago.) Oracle alleges that IBM simply wants easier access to Java after acquiring software company Red Hat. And Google is a prominent member of the CCIA.
Glueck also argues that these briefs don’t support Google as wholeheartedly as they seem. It cites Microsoft’s brief, for example, as only addressing one of Google’s two arguments for why its borrowing is legal. (That argument involves establishing Google’s actions as fair use, though, which would still be enough to get it off the hook.)
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21142366/google-supreme-court-oracle-java-copyright-microsoft-ibm
- Dear Sophie: I need the latest details on the new H-1B registration process
No, there is no limit to how many times a company can sponsor an individual. A lot of companies tend to do it three times because candidates can often work for you for three years with OPT and STEM OPT, but the law doesn’t set out an upper limit. Also, you can sponsor current F-1 students as well as people who have accepted your offers who are currently outside the United States.